It would have been a major hardship to get to Indianapolis
in time for the FT gathering at the new airport, so I
decided to do a compromise thing, showing up in time for
dinner and then taking the tour the next day while the rest
of the city was enthralled with the Colts. Sounded like a
plan, so I booked my ticket for a relatively puny amount,
little realizing that the air travel would end up being a
relatively small part of the total.

UA7299 PVD IAD 1006 1139 CR7 2F

There's nothing particularly wrong with ExPlus; it's your
standard domestic F product in miniature. This Mesa product
was unobjectionable, though the male flight attendant was
annoyingly punk. Amusing moment when he made the safety
announcement, which he improvised as "obey all signs,
placards, and whatever we tell you to do." One oddity -
there was no plain water on the flight. The female flight
attendant was appropriately apologetic but didn't offer any
alternative; when I asked if there was any fizzy water, she
said, "like club soda?" and when I responded in the
affirmative went to the galley and got me some. I did not
check to see if there was booze, though I've heard bad
things about availability on Mesa flights.

F was 3 of 6; I had an empty next to me. Somehow the guy in
2A had managed to con the gate people into letting him bring
a very fat carryon that wouldn't fit anyplace ... except
under the 2DF area ... so I let him put it there.

A nothing flight, on schedule.

UA7803 IAD IND 1227 1413 ER4 12A

The throne is a good seat. As it's quite comfy for an RJ
seat, I snoozed through most of the flight. Rachel, the
extremely cute (bottle) blonde flight attendant, seemed a
little surly. A nothing flight, more or less on schedule.

A free shuttle to the Days Hotel (formerly Days Inn), only
you have to call ahead, in contrast to the other hotels,
whose shuttles circulate. Very friendly personnel. Free
wi-fi. Free continental breakfast. A pool.

I got a decent room - sizable, quiet, extremely comfortable
king bed with five fluffy pillows, fresh-smelling - down at
the end of a tidy but somehow declasse, as in completely
tastelessly decorated, corridor.

They didn't bat an eyelash when I requested a shuttle right
back to the airport, whence I took the Green Line express
bus downtown ($7) - could have taken the #8 local (1.50),
but that would have taken 11 more minutes ... actually, the
Green Line was there, and people were waiting on an
obviously way late #8.

I had a couple hours to kill so took a tour of the
neighborhood - an interesting combo of vital rejuvenated
and down-and-out, the characteristics existing side by side
or sometimes in the same place. Lots of beautiful young
people; lots of derelicts. The monument at Monument Square
is kind of cool. I don't know if I like the atmosphere or
not. There's a bit of New Orleansishness about it, but it
doesn't seem so lighthearted somehow.

Saw some people (not derelicts) who recognized me from
somewhere else ... amusing, as I didn't recognize them at
all.

Got to Ruth's Chris a few minutes early and inquired for
the "FlyerTalk table," as instructed; the desk couldn't
find it and asked, uh, is there another name that the
reservation could have been made under, such as Carlson,
and I said, no, not Carlson, but JerseyJoe ... and there
it was. Table wasn't ready, so I got shunted off to the
bar and had a glass of Bourbon; I saw Pat (JerseyJoe's +1)
and hailed the two of them. Turns out the reservation had
been screwed up by the restaurant, and it should have been,
as all reservations should be, cross-referenced under the
FT name. We evened this out by being two short for the
reservation.

When bowdenj arrived, we asked for our table, which wasn't
ready. They offered us an outside table, which would have
been okay except that the rest of the customers out there
were smoking like chimneys, so we opted to continue to wait.
An excruciating little wait, during which bowdenj and I
complained that we were getting really, really hungry.