A different kind of tourist

The week when finals were over I got invited to Louisville, Ky. to celebrate the Kentucky Derby.

Since I’m one of those weirdo environmentalists who believes that all who own/operate gas guzzling SUVs should be drafted into our armed forces simply for crimes of douchery, I biked there.

After my last final, me and my friend Job grabbed some Clif Bars, a GPS, spare tubes, jelly beans and set off towards Louisville.

Job crashed 10 miles outside of Bloomington, leaving him bruised and me laughing just slightly.

We found a road that paralleled Ind. 46, and from there the adventure began.

We biked on twisting country roads that slinked their way through small towns that in a car would pass you by in the blink of an eye.

I saw miles of rural corn fields and untouched forests hidden from the interstate.

The whole ride took us 10 hours through a scenic Indiana that I had only ever heard of
people trying to escape from.

I’ve been to Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, London, New York City and Jerusalem along with millions of other adventurers, but I doubt many people have ever stopped in Little York, Ind. (population 184)  for a cheeseburger.

At one point when we were munching down on chicken fingers, I wondered what these people thought of us.

There was a family of four sitting, chain smoking and talking among themselves.

I wondered how many visitors ever stopped by, and if any of them did so on bicycles.

Would they think differently if they knew that I was Jewish and that Job was gay?

They probably didn’t care. We weren’t rude or obnoxiously snapping photos like the freshmen from the East Coast who parade down Kirkwood on orientation weekend.

If we had been sensible enough to drive like normal Americans there would have been no adventure, and with that there would be nothing to tell.

Instead, we became a different type of tourist.

The kind that goes where no other traveler goes because we simply wanted to see a part of Indiana we knew little about.

Like when we saw a gentleman on the road to Little York fishing for sucker fish with a
bow and arrow.

In the end we had to seek refuge in an unlocked church somewhere in Salem, Ind. (population 6,463)  and wait for my cell phone to recharge.

Our GPS finally decided it was more lost than us and so we gave up and called our friend in Louisville for a ride.

I know I said that I’m militantly against fossil fuels, but she drives a hybrid.

So I’m pretty sure Mother Nature, Moses or whoever semi-agnostic Jewish people believe in will forgive me.


­— mokerler@indiana.edu