to indianapolis and back

Just a few days before my birthday I went to the US again to visit Barbara in Indianapolis. She's doing an internship at a company called ProTrans in Indy during summer break and so that was the place to go. After some fun and a lot of waiting at Pearson Airport, Toronto and a rescheduled flight from Chicago I finally arrived in Indy.
Since Barbara had to work until 5 pm during the week I had lot's of time to clean the apartment, to do the dishes, to the laundry, etc, and of course to do some research for my thesis. During the first weekend we wanted to go to Southern Indiana to visit some nice cities and some caves but due to the weather we kind of canceled that an went to the nice town Columbus, IN. Even though you might not know this city it is kind of famous for it's architecture. A lot of 'well known' architects build some houses here so we walked around in the city and took some pictures.

The next weekend we went to Ohio to CedarPoint, the rollercoaster capitol. In this amusement park are 17 roller coasters and I don't really remember how many we rode, but there were a lot and the fingers of my two hands were not enough.
We started the day with a ride in millennium force. It was freaking high but since the engine was pulling you up really fast it was not possible to enjoy the sight. After that we rode some other rides including the Gemini, Mantis, Mean Streak, Cedar Creek Mine Ride, Iron Dragon, Corkscrew, Magnum XL-200, Raptor and so on. But there were some other rides that are not roller coasters. There was for example a huge swing, the SkyHawk, and this thing just scared the shit out of me. It looks like a swing and that's basically all it is, but it takes you up higher and higher. We also did the free fall thing and almost at the end we even felt ready for the Top Thrill Dragster. You get into a 'Dragster' and then you start and the thing accelerates up to 120 mph in 3 seconds. After that you go 420 feet up and then you basically just ride straight down again. This is something I have never seen before in an amusement park and it's probably one of the shortest rides you can Before you know it the ride was over but it was freaking awesome!
Since the park is about 5 hours away from Indianapolis we (about 12 people) stayed at a motel over night and the next day we went back to Indy.
That was the second weekend. On Monday we went back to work again but it is kind of a short week. Since July 4th is THE American holiday and Barbara was off work on July 3rd as well we had some time to go to Southern Indiana. Luckily the weather was really nice and so we went first to a little town called Nashville, IN. But we drove on, visited the towns Salem and Corydon, the first state capitol of Indiana took a look at the Ohio river and went to a cavern. At night we arrived in Louisville, Kentucky and met with Aaron and Angie. We had some barbecue and watched some fireworks. After the fireworks we drove home and arrived there around two o'clock. So we slept in on independence day and since we were invited for a barbecue at some friends who work with Barbara at ProTrans we went there. The 'party' was really nice, there was lots of food and we had some fun talking to the people and playing cornsacks or however they called that game. Unfortunately we had to leave the party early because we had tickets for the baseball game. The Indianapolis Indians were playing against Louisville. It was our first baseball game and it was kind of interesting to see how many families with little kids were there sitting on blankets. We almost had the impression that the people were not really going there because of the game but because of the socializing with other people. The game itself was kind of boring and to avoid 'rush hour' and to avoid getting wet, since some dark clouds were coming closer and closer, we left after the 7th inning and went back to Plainfield to watch some more fireworks.

Now I am back in Kingston and work hard on my thesis. The simulation is slowly getting along and I'll start writing pretty soon as well.

There are some more pictures, which you can find here.