Hoosier Hysteria!

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This Blog is best read from Bottom to Top!

This journey just wouldn't be complete without a visit to the place where we met, and fell in love some 42 years ago.  Bloomington, Indiana.  Home of many memories for each of us.





Famous Woodlawn Ave. just off campus



This is the approach to the campus from the famed Woodlawn Ave., home to the off-campus bookstores, pubs, and coffee houses first made famous by the musicians and intellects of generations past.  It was in these pubs and coffee houses that the likes of Hogie Carmichael, Jane Pauley, Mark Cuban (RealAudioRealNetworks founder and owner of the Dallas Mavericks), the famous journalist Ernie Pyle, politicians Birch and Evan Bayh, John T. Thompson (inventor of the Thompson sub-machine gun), swimmer Mark Spitz, etc. fine tuned the life skills that made them successful.

Indiana University Student Union

Indiana University, founded in 1820 as a land grant school,  is a hallowed campus, rich with historic buildings built from the same beautiful natural limestone as many of our national buildings in Washington, DC.  The limestone is native to this area, mined from quarries just outside Bloomington.

Assembly Hall

But perhaps most widely-known about IU is it's rich record of success in athletics, with five National Championships in Basketball, six National Championships in Swimming, and seven National Championships in Soccer.




This is a photo of the famed Assembly Hall, where all of Indiana's home basketball games have been played starting with the arrival of Coach Bobby Knight in 1972.


Basketball banners in the hallowed hall!



These are the banners hung at the respective ends of Assembly Hall.  Quite a reverant site to us Hysteric Indiana basketball fans!

Wouldn't you just know it?  Luck would have it that our trip east brought us to Bloomington and IU on a night when there was a home basketball game, and coincidently just after final exams, when many students had already headed home for the holidays.  What luck!  In town at the right time, and tickets were available.  What an experience.  Beth and I were both gone from this campus before Assembly Hall opened, and this night marked the first time either of us had taken in a game in this arena.



24 - 0 Start?  Come on Man!

 Check out this scoreboard!  Believe your eyes.  IU started the game with a 24 - 0 run against opponent Southern Illinois University.  I don't think I have ever watched a college basketball game, live or on TV, that started off with 24 straight points by any team.  IU went on to an 88 - 54 victory in an early round game of the 2010 Las Vegas Classic tournament.  Now the team is headed west to Las Vegas while Beth and I continue our trip east.