The Mighty Tom Experience (MTE) - Recapitated

Friday started early for me (3:50am waking) with a flight at 5:50am EDT.

Arrived Indy about 10:00am EDT (yes, we're in the same time zone - it's insane) and without any attempt at organizing a pick-up location we still 'hooked up' on the curb of the arrivals area, MT cruising in the black Windsock - our chariot of choice much of the weekend.

The hour drive back to TH and the house, followed by a tour of said house and then out for lunch at local Mexican (Real Hacienda featuring freakishly fast service - less than 5 minutes from ordering to eating). Two beers consumed by me (Dos Equis Dark), one by MT.

Friday post lunch was a general tour of the TH metropolitan area in the Windsock with special emphasis on the campus area, and picking up Molly from school. Molly, secured and reintroduced (it had been a long time) we returned to TV and took Mr Tumnus for a walk through the neighborhood. Molly was critical of my fashion sense, referring to my habit of tucking my shirt in as being 'casual' (this derisively and clearly not in quite the same sense as the rest of us use the term) and whatever initial shyness there was disappeared and she began her relentless assault on my fashion and hygiene (hilarious from the daughter of MT).

I learned of the fabled Cornacho (or is it Corn Nacho?), a nickname attributed to the many nicknamed one, after a brief flirtation with Corky - dismissed quickly one assumes for fear of Life Goes On references. Various nicknames for me floated through the weekend, starting with Second Pat, merging eventually into 2Pat and then generally fading away. Apparently nicknames don't stick to me the way they stick to others. And, of course, my last name works as a nickname quite ably.

Friday afternoon drew to a close and Trista returned from work. Some catching up was done, with me providing the soundtrack via the MTE iPod dock, and then we were all off to Mogger's for some dinner. This seems to be one of the principal food themes amongst participants in the MTE, and for good reason. Good pub food and a good tap beer selection is really almost more than one can ask for. The Gibbys stuck with Franzenkeiner (sp?) Hefeweizen (in a bottle) while I partook of a 5 beer sampler including:

Barley Island Brown (this may have been Dirty Helen as it turns out - more on 'her' later)
Brugge Black - wild stuff not unlike barley wine, though less sweet
Upland IPA - from the same folks that bring MT Upland Wheat
3 Floyds Alpha King
Breckenridge Avalanche Ale
All local Indiana brews except that last one.

There is a small side story related to an abandoned sandwich finding itself under the tire of a parked car, the result of which could only have been a flatter, sadder sandwich. The world may never know.

We returned to TV for some more low-key familial merriment, with MT, Trista and I consuming some beers as Molly continued her assault on my appearance. The beers included Upland Wheat Ale (apparently an MT favorite - the man loves his wheat ales) and a Michelob Pumpkin Spice Ale (not especially spicy, but also popular with the Gibbys - ok by my standards). The Upland Wheat was tasty, with a color almost exactly like Mt Dew. The ladies retired and MT and I continued our conversation past midnight, exploring politics and religion and assorted buffonery of days past and present. Then to bed, for some long overdue rest for me.

Saturday began with waffles, later than I'm used to getting up. The sun rises around 8:00am in those parts, at least an hour later than I'm used to, plus I had a long day the previous day. That said, waffles are done with full pomp and circumstance, including syrups of various fruit flavors and Redi-Whip. Perhaps not the breakfast of champions, but damn damn tasty.

Once sated with waffles and coffee, MT and I headed off for some frisbee golf where I was determined to sort out my difficulties with the 'new fangled' discs. MT offered to let me throw two for every one of his (we didn't keep score regardless) in order to sort out my technical difficulties. We headed around the course, with me slowly modifying my technique to adjust to the physics of the hard small discs. Still, there were many wild throws at the beginning (from both of us, though MT was pretty consistent on his drives - the man is consistent) Things went reasonably well until one hole with a big bend around some woods. My throw was long, but seemed to be fading hard into the trees by the time it came down. It's a big dog leg, so we couldn't see where it landed. 30 minutes of searching through every conceivable trajectory that would find the disc in the woods was for naught. It turns out my throw was nearly perfect, landing well away from the woods and within 25ft or so of the goal. We pulled out Occam's Razor and found it to be a bit sharper than our imaginations.

We finished up our round of golf and headed back to TV for a bite of lunch, to be followed by the real activity of the day, a trip to Turkey Run State Park for horseback riding. Both Molly and I were new to horse riding - she had ridden on ponies, I had ridden a camel - and so there was excitement in the air (and more than a hint of manure).












The paddock was empty when we arrived (the last group had not yet returned) but it wasn't long before a line of horses made their way to their clearly accustomed spots. One (MT's future mount) let forth a torrent of urine, mixing with the mud and creating a toxic muck. We were assigned our horses...MT first, then me, then Molly, then Trista followed by a dozen or so others with MT given the responsibility of leading us all (or at least riding the horse used to leading us all). He was given a stick to lightly tap the rump of his mount, the rest of us were given basic instructions in horse control and we were off, up hill and down dale, meandering along a path through the park.

Molly was a little overwhelmed by the scale of the horse, very nervous at first, but by the end of the hour she barely squeaked when her horse decided it didn't want to walk through a big mud puddle. None of them did. Almost right off the bat, MT's horse let fly a toxic tube of horsey goodness, which I of course had a front row seat for. Very smelly. I'm not sure if it was how my stirrups were configured, but almost immediately my knees were very painful, seeming to be twisted in a way that was both unnatural and unresolvable. Luckily we were only on the trail for an hour or so, otherwise I would have been in some serious pain. As it was my first step onto the ground was a bit dicey. MT has a good shot of me on the horse Dusty (pictured above, alone), but I was in no position to photograph myself.

When we were done with the horseback riding, MT had a sudden urge to follow in his horse's footsteps, as it were. After too traumatic false alarms at park amenities that ended up being locked, the three of us saw MT scampering off down some trail, seemingly into the woods to relieve an overwhelming urge. As we were to learn (or so he claims) there were indoor facilities along that path, and he was satisfied.

The trip home was uneventful, and it was decided we should have pizza (!!!), though Molly is a picky pizza eater so we opted for Little Caesars. MT and I got the pizza, it was consumed, and another evening of beer drinking and low key activity was begun. We did make a run out for more beer as IN does not allow alcohol sales on Sunday and we did not want to be without. This resulted in the acquisition of Dirty Helen Ale, a somewhat surprising ale with strong notes of coffee, but in no other way like a Porter. Dirty Helen elicited some wise cracks from the check out staff of Baesler's, another icon of the MTE.

MT and I settled in with beer and a DVD of Green Street Hooligans, a movie featuring Elijah Wood as a fish out of water amidst the violent hooligan culture of English premiere league soccer. We had planned to make copious Hobbit and LOTR references, but the movie was actually good enough that we were caught up in the story. The story was written by a former hooligan, and boy, there's good reason that they have a bad reputation. They are turds.

The evening finished up watching SNL, the first I'd seen an entire episode in a decade or so. Some decent stuff, including a commercial for John Hamm John Ham, a rolled meat product intended to meet your dietary urges while on the toilet. It definitely had a Bass-o-Matic or Super Colon Blow vibe to it. Obama Variety Half-Hour also had some moments.

Sunday was canoe day. We were headed east of Bloomington into the dark heart of Brown County, IN to canoe on the 'tributaries' of Lake Monroe. We had some cereal and stopped at Java Haute on the way out of town. It was a fair way to go, 2 hours as it turns out, skirting the edge of the IU campus and heading into the fringes of Hoosier National Forest.

We turned off the highway onto a road labeled Dead End, and we drove on. And on. And on. Pavement gave way to gravel. Various turns were made, but the dead end road went on. It may be the longest dead end on earth. At the end of that road (or nearly the end) is Brown County Canoe Rentals, run by Uncle Jesse and one of the bad guys from Deliverance (and that was a canoe trip gone horribly wrong). I shit you not. Uncle Jesse was sporting half a dozen teeth and his sidekick was almost unintelligible. What they thought of us two can only be imagined.

Uncle Jesse was having trouble with his cable, so while he was on hold Cletus put a canoe in the back of the pickup truck (a new pickup with nice graphics on the side) and organized all the paddles and life jackets. Cody, the dog, wandered about. He was referred to as CodyDog, perhaps to keep from confusing him with CodyCat. Once freed from his cable hell, Uncle Jesse gave us the low down, including two full explanations of how to exit a canoe - something that would come into play later. The put-in spot for canoeing was a little farther down the road and required the passage through a mud hole with a 'good bottom'. Uncle Jesse thought we would be up to the challenge.

Everything loaded, map in hand, fee exchanged, we headed off to the put-in. The mud hole (we were following Uncle Jesse in the Windsock) seemed innocuous enough, but watching Uncle Jesse's pickup sink to the axles AND surge up and down over clearly treacherous terrain we decided to walk the rest of the way. Uncle Jesse promised to return to pick us up, but we could see the put in spot and eventually declined, after Uncle Jesse dropped the canoe off and returned. All we had to do was leave the canoe at the put in and leave. No more contact with the hillbillies was necessary.

So there we were, bladders emptied, canoe loaded and ready to go. Always willing to let MT show off his scouting skills, I left him the rear position in the canoe for steering, while I took the power front spot. It was a big canoe, aluminum and maybe 14 ft long, probably the same size as those used on the Des Moines River trip all those years ago - though TCLog was not riding in the middle of the canoe, and MT and I were not wearing our life vests. The entry was a bit sketchy - MT pushing off and things a bit tippy as we got fully into the 'river'. The bank was steep, so the canoe tended to pivot on the points until enough of the bottom was in contact with the river.







We paddled off, down a 'river' seemingly brought into existence by the flooding of Lake Monroe. There was no current, and the channel was filled with dead trees poking menacingly above the water. The weather was cool and cloudy, but pleasant enough, and we paddled on speaking in hushed tones of the orc menace on the eastern bank, occasionally referencing that 'too clever waterman'. The only menace we saw were a small deer, great herons, some ducks, and other miscellaneous wildlife.

Salt Creek (the 'river') meanders a fairly sinuous path, with one significant branch heading to Lake Monroe and another bending back on itself and leading to what was promised as dramatic topography and a beaver dam. We headed to the beaver dam first, and while the land on either side of the river rises 250 feet it was by no means dramatic. The beaver dams started popping up everywhere. Every pile of twigs was deemed to be a genuine beaver dam, until of course, we found THE beaver dam, complete with smoking chimney and cockney accented beaver couple. Then, of course, even more things were referred to as beaver dams, which may or may not have led to more LOTR references, and discussions of Gimli's gift from Galadriel, which we decided were pubic hairs. (imagine Gimli taking a deep sniff and shaking after - Silence of the Lambs fava bean style)

We'd picked up some Fig Newtons, peanut butter filled pretzels and water to sustain us through the day, in lieu of actually planning a meal and packing before hand. That woiuld have required more forethought than we could muster. So as we paddled, we nibbled, and once beyond the beaver dam to a blocked portion of the creek, we opted to double back to the fork and head off to Lake Monroe. It was along this stretch that we saw the fabled half-man/half-canoe (manoe) and his more conventional companion headed the opposite direction. It was also here that we saw the remains of the once fabled civiliation of the Hillbilloreans in the form of the stone foundations of a once great bridge across Salt Creek.

The sun had come out and brought a stiff breeze with it, but we paddled on to Lake Monroe. We never got there. It just seemed that the topo map we had was not quite right with respect to the water level. We should have gotten to a wider portion that would be lake-like, but it never happened. If only we'd gone around one more bend.... But we turned back, encountering the fable manoe again and retracing our steps back to our starting point, and this is where the fun really began.

As we rounded the bend to our destination (the actual bridge featured above), and after debating in my mind for a while, I opted to put my camera back in the zip-lock bag we'd brought for that purpose. After our shaky entry into the creek I just didn't want to risk the possibility of a calamity destroying my camera, and OH BOY was I right to listen to my inner pessimist. As we neared the spot, we swung wide and gave mighty strokes so as to get as much of the canoe onto the shore as possible. I'd say we got a good 5 or so feet onto land, including me in the front. And then we started to tip left. I mangaged to step out and onto the ground in an effort to right things, but it was still going over and a quick glance back showed MT completely out of the canoe and thrashing in Salt Creek. I was in mud but otherwise dry. The canoe wasn't underwater, but it was pretty full. MT thrashed himself ashore with a mighty yell and climbed up the bank. I gave a shout of 'BUFFOONERY!!!' that echoed through the forest, and then got down to rescuing the few items we had in the canoe. Thankfully, the camera was both safe in the zip-lock bag, and also in the dry end of the canoe. Almost everything else was floating in the back.

MT was drenched, head to toe. We got everything out of the canoe, speaking in amazement about what had transpired, and reflecting back on the words of Uncle Jesse. We hadn't even had a chance to implement his strategy for exiting the canoe. Damn fool city folk. We got the water out of the canoe and all of the items provided to us arranged in way that might mean they'd dry before our foolishness was made legend, and headed back to the Windsock, MT in shock about finding himself in the creek and unable to touch the bottom, and perhaps worse, getting a mouthful of the creek.


View Larger Map
All told, we did about 10 miles of canoeing in 4+ hours (using the measurement tool in the map above)

The Canoe Terminator.................Witch.......T & Mr. T.......Fire___Gooooooood







Mostly the ride home was occasional amazement of MT about his recent watery predicament, though we had a stretch of work talk and the usual dose of iPod on shuffle. The shuffle provided us with no end of Paul McCartney (as you might expect from the collection of MT) but also a surprising large amount of Peter Gabriel over the 4 days. We got back around dinner time and trista cooked up a fine meal of pasta and salad. Molly showed us off her witch costume and we all got ready to sit around the fire pit in the back yard.

MT whipped up a roaring blaze, then helped Molly track down some materials for a project for school (moss, twigs, etc). Everyone was outside for a while but the wind whipped up and a little rain started to fall. The girls went in and MT and I stuck it out for a bit, beer in hand, and a little multimedia project to work on (more on this from MT at some future date). We eventually retired to the indoors and wasted the night away doing some history of rock and roll watching, and beer drinking of course.

Monday started with no real plan. The thought was to squeeze in some athletic activities (basketball, football, maybe some more frisbee golf), some more pizza, retrieving Molly from school, and then off to the airport. We succeeded at all of the above, but not without some tangents, starting with our lack of frisbee golf discs, those having been left in the Windsock which Trista had taken to work leaving MT with the borrowed Taurus (so we might travel the roads of TH incognito, free from the terrors of Brown). We decided to start with bball and fball and deal with the missing frisbee discs when the time came.

MT and I have a long history of playing basketball together, but very little history of one on one matchups. Without much of a tradition we opted for the game to 30 by 2s and 3s. It began pretty evenly, with neither of us showing any spark, but soon MT launched into a solid lead around 15-8. I managed to get it back to a one point game but MT ran away again amassing a 27-18 lead. Things looked bad for me, and a bit worse after MT gouged a good chunk out of my right ring finger. We took a timeout so I could staunch the bleeding, but that proved generally unsuccessful. It slowed at least to a point of allowing uninhibited play (I basically stuck my finger in my mouth between plays and during transitions). The timeout proved a boon to me as I stormed back to win 30-27. Woo hoo! We grabbed the football after that and threw for a while as MT's ball slowly lost air. It seems to have a slow leak that needs some attention. Football didn't last long and then we decided to retrieve the frisbee discs from the Windsock, forcing MT to enter the lair of the dragon (he'd called in sick).

We drove onto the campus and checked out the easily accessible parking lots, the ones MT thought Trista would have parked in. No luck. MT sent me on foot to look in a more 'dangerous' location closer to the heart of darkness, but again no luck. After doubling back through the lots we headed home thinking maybe Trista had gone home for lunch. She had not. So MT called her and found out the actual location of the car and we were off again. The number of trips I made to and from the ISU campus is beyond comprehension, and this day we were really racking up the miles. We secured the discs and decided to get some lunch before hitting the links. We struck out at two local pizza places and ended up at Pizza Hut, a place of much historical buffoonery to be sure, but not quite the local flavor we were hoping for.

Too much cheese and bread later we were finally back at the course, but with only 35 minutes until we had to get Molly. We played the first half briskly, with little in the way of drama. I had really sorted out the worst of my throwing problems, but my short game is still pretty weak. By the last 5 or 6 holes we were jogging between throws, and by the last whole there were some good sprints. Nonetheless we got done in time and made our way to the pickup, collected Molly, and returned home so I could shower and collect my stuff.

All that was left was the trip to the airport, back in the Windsock, and our farewells. The rest of mt trip was the usual airport nonsense, though I did end up on the same plane as a coworker and her husband from DC to Manchester. They had been in Ohio for the weekend. After some maintenance issues and the drive home from the airport I got home around 1:00am EDT Tuesday morning, with few short hours before I needed to rise for work.

Worth every tired minute that followed.