Tag: Soldiers and Sailors Monument

I think I should be dating these … Hmmm … I need to go back and edit them.

Thursday, July 25th, turned out to be another crazy, roller coaster day.

It started out fine. The usual breakfast at the hotel. I’m already over the egg choices. The first few days I was fine with the omelets. Most people who know me at all, know I don’t do scrambled eggs. At all. Ever. But I can handle omelets with lots of cheese and other ingredients. But the packaged ones here lost their appeal pretty quickly. I can’t eat sugar on an empty stomach (I get nauseated, clammy, and shaky), so no cinnamon rolls , pancakes with syrup, or sugary cereals. Like most of the country, I avoid carbs (toast/muffins/bagels). Which leaves sausage. Good thing I like sausage and they usually offer both pork and turkey. Sometimes there’s bacon. Sometimes I do have half a biscuit with gravy. One day I did half a bagel with cream cheese. There are enough options that I don’t leave hungry.

Anyway, after breakfast, I did a little work while Dave readied the trailer for our event in the afternoon. We headed out about 11:00 for Lawrence, which is about 25 minutes away. Our venue was a farmer’s market, on the grounds of the former army base, Fort Benjamin Harrison. It’s been converted to other uses. There are restaurants and housing now. A central greenspace hosts a weekly farmer’s market. We arrived, got the directions of where to set up, which involved pulling the trailer up a curb, over a sidewalk and down the grass to the other end of the area. We did that okay, with minimal adjusting. (Meaning Dave only had to back up and pull forward two or three times to get the trailer mostly straight and even with the sidewalk.)

We unhooked, and I ordered lunch from Panera across the street from my app. We grabbed it to go and headed to downtown Indy to meet our consultants/event schedulers to view a venue and decide on its viability for the trailer. It took us a while to find parking. The parking garage we found had a sign that said 6’8″ clearance. It felt like we couldn’t make it, but the attendant at the front watched us enter. He said only the antenna scraped and we’d be okay. So we went in. We parked without mishap and walked to meet the consultants.

From their office, we walked to the nearby venue, City Market. It’s very similar to the Oxbow Market in Napa. Or Chelsea Market in New York. A collection of independent shops under one roof in an older, converted building. We walked quickly through and out, to see their outside area, called a rain garden. There is a lovely plaza with bistro tables, trees, bocce ball courts. And an open area not nearly big enough for our 32′ trailer plus a pickup truck to pull it in. The director told us that they recently hosted a Cirque du Soleil team with their trailer. Except it was only 20′ and took a whole team to position and make 5-point turns. The only other option would be to get a permit from the city to block off a portion of the street and that could take up to a month. We only have a few days.

So we walked back to the consultants’ office, which is on Monument Circle, which circles a monument. Convenient, right? At the center is the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, which was built to honor those who fought in the Civil War and two other previous skirmishes. There is a possibility of getting a permit to park along the circle for a few hours. The consultants will work on that, and hopefully let us know by the end of the day.

They returned to work and we walked over to look at the monument. We paid $2 each to ride the elevator to the top for some amazing 360 degree views of downtown Indianapolis. Then we returned to the parking garage.

This is where the day fell apart. Because contrary to the sign and the attendant, we did not make it out of the garage unscathed. The top of the truck scraped a concrete beam. As soon as we heard the contact, Dave stopped and backed up and attempted a different angle, but a parked car was sticking out pretty far which hindered how he could take that corner. We ended up scrapping pretty significantly. After we exited, he went to find the attendant, who, of course, was on a break. I took pictures. Dave made notes. And we saw another garage across the street with a sign that said 7’3″ clearance. Another @#*%^$#&*@ moment. Why hadn’t we seen that place first??

By the time the attendant came back, we were pressed for time to make it back to Lawrence for the farmer’s market. But he gave us the owner’s name and number, and said he would pass on our information. And we hurried to the freeway.

We got to Lawrence just in time to meet up with the consultants again and to set up. They helped us unload all the boxes (mostly dried out from Monday’s rain) and set up.

We gave lots of tours. We think about 50-60 people went through the trailer. Dave gave a tour to the Lawrence police chief. I gave a tour to the adult sponsor and student captain of their Explorer post. And there were lots of other people. The consultants said they talked to about 150 people. About half of those said they’d seen the trailer on TV. So the media coverage Monday definitely got the word out.

Everyone I took through the trailer was very impressed and thankful and also surprised at how much they learned. And disappointed that this was likely our last Indiana event. They urged us to come back soon. We assured them we want to!

At 7:15, the last tour was over. The market ends at 7. We loaded the boxes back into the trailer, told the consultants goodbye. They promised to have a final answer about another event by the end of business today. 

We hooked up again, pulled off the sidewalk and into the road and headed back to the hotel. Got here about 8:30, exhausted. Dave felt like White Castle, so after we unhooked, I collapsed in the room and he made a dinner run.

Then he called our boss to share the trailer news. Not a fun moment. And the fact that the consultants still don’t know if we’re done in Indiana didn’t help. If we’re done, we’re going to move the trailer to its next venue in Minnesota. But if we have to stay for another event, our boss has to get someone else to drive the trailer to Minnesota. We took this job with the understanding that we had two previously scheduled trips we would be going home for. We need to be home August 1. At this point, we don’t know if we’re flying out of Indianapolis or Minneapolis. For people who like a plan, we’re learning to be flexible!

It’s Friday morning now, technically day 12. Dave’s doing laundry again, I’m working. He found a Ford dealer nearby. He’ll go see them soon, to see about getting touchup paint to cover the scratches so they don’t rust, until we can get them repaired. Hopefully the garage owner will agree to have his insurance take care of it. Prayers for that, please! Also on today’s agenda: finding the Indiana culinary specialty–the fried pork tenderloin sandwich.