Bloomington, Indiana post Covid (The Grant Street Inn and Rob’s House)
October 29, 2021
The thing about Bloomington is that though almost everybody at IU is vaccinated (in theory), none of the places in town ask for proof of vaccination. Fortunately, masks are required. But not when you’re eating or drinking. Things seem a little lax. NPS bets that one day pandemic processes will be more like NY or Portland. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
Bloomington is an oasis of intellectual goodness in a sea of rural America. This has its positive aspects. The Midwest is a thing. For example, though NPS has stayed at the Grant Street Inn countless bazillions of times through the years, this trip happened to coincide with an important big ten football game. That meant that every hotel within 150 miles was filled to the gills with football fans. Heck, even the Dean’s Advisory Council arranged to send people to the game. No sportsball for us though. Instead, we focused our energy on intellectual pursuits.
The upshot was that we needed a place to stay Friday and Saturday nights. Fortunately our friend (and thesis advisor of yore) Rob and his partner Katy put us up in their gorgeous house on Lake Monroe where we kayaked, fossil hunted, and even tried an e-foil. Honestly, the weekend was the highlight of the trip with excellent conversation, shared art, baking, and fun in the lake. Real life, well lived.
We kayaked on Saturday which was cooler but not raining. E-foil experimenting was left for Sunday in wet suits. The weather was shockingly warm for mid-October.
We ended up staying at the Grant Street Inn Thursday and then again Sunday and Monday. NPS chose the usual room (number 30).
You can read more about the Grant Street Inn elsewhere on NPS.
The DAC meeting included a tour of the new Luddy AI Center. One day it will be filled with students. For now, it is still being set up.
Of course, Indiana places a big emphasis on breakfast (at least outside the confines of Rob and Katy’s house). Here is one example. This is a light breakfast.
While in town, we made a couple of visits to C3. One with Kay and one just ourselves. The cocktails are (still) excellent.
A dughof sighting (at the Spoon of course). This was a delightful lunch as usual.
The icing on the cake of our Bloomington run was a visit to the IU Art Museum which has been completely renovated and updated. Going to a museum chock full of history certainly puts things in perspective. 9000 years from now, we wonder if some off-planet Earth museum will have one of our everyday items on display.
Read about our visit to the museum here.
Fin.
Filed in we are not really sure
Tags: bloomington, c3 bar, c3 bloomington, center for research on concepts and cognition, cocktails, dughof, e-foil, fossil, geode, grasnt street inn, hotel, IU Art Museum, katy, kayak, Lake Monroe, luddy school, rob goldstone, travel
October 29, 2021 at 12:49 pm
Was great fun to have Eli and Gary over. Gratifying to see Gary still proving himself to be an exceptionally fast learner after all of these decades. He was not only standing, but up on foil, after only 20 minutes practice with the e-foil!