It’s good to know we’re making progress towards the Atlantic Ocean once more. Indiana is a flat, mostly gridded state – at least in the North. We’ve heard that the Southern part of the state is far more hilly & scenic. Not as hilly as Kentucky, which we regretfully did not travel to, even though there’s an allegedly spectacular Creation Museum there. (They have Dinosaurs AND Jesus!) But hilly and much more worth seeing than the north. Even Torrey Dawley, our host in Indianapolis and an AIGA colleague of my sister’s (thanks, Chelle!) said that if our requests for interesting things to do in Northern Indiana pan out, we should let him know because he couldn’t think of anything. It’s a shame we didn’t get to spend a bit more time in Indianapolis, because good things have been said about their museum. And their bike path (the Monon Trail) really was great. Tuesday was a dismal day though, and touring a town of any size would’ve been something only the most hardiest of travelers would do. Twoarmparty, on the other hand, likes watching action flicks on their days off.

One thing we missed – or at least *I* missed – was Karaoke night. In Indy, we would’ve gone to Karenoke hosted by a lady named Karen who happened to be sitting immediately behind us at a local brewpub as I said something like “if there was a town called Karaoke, even if it was in Gary Indiana, I would move there and be mayor just so I could be the mayor of Karaoke.” Eavesdropping, she told us about her show, which was a bit of kismet because I had just stumbled across Karenoke on a quick Indianapolis Karaoke google search. Even though we’ve missed it, perhaps we’ll try to make it to one of her NYC performances of “Assholes & Aurioles” in late July as part of some kind of Manhattan Theater Festival. I have no idea what the show is about, but since that random information just fell in my lap, I might as well check it out. (there’s no website for their show).

After Indianapolis, we turned left and finally started heading directly east again towards Dayton Ohio, where we’re going to spend the next week or so. Prepare for excruciatingly bombastic and dramatic blog updates. There are weddings, amusement parks, barbecues, airplanes, rain days with DVDs, and big hills in our future. And there better be Karaoke too. I’ve been promised.

On our way to Dayton, we stopped in Richmond. Richmond Indiana, where we’re the proud first warmshowers guests of Chris Hardie ( ChrisHardie on Twitter). We got in before he got off work, stashed our bikes in his garage, and promptly took naps in his spacious home. His friends, avid cyclists who are very active in the well developed bike culture here in Richmond (bike maps AND bike polo! Again, Richmond INDIANA – not Virginia), cooked us a carb-happy vegetarian dinner as we watched their 16-month-old toss pasta everywhere.

Thank you to everyone out here, our last stop in Indiana. We’re leaving momentarily, and in the last 6 miles of your state, we expect to see a few more fireworks and antiques shops. That seems to be the thing to do out here…as if when people die anywhere on the east coast, all their old crap gets shipped to small towns in Eastern Indiana, and someone else tries to blow it all up. It seems like an incendiary combination….