Finding True North #9: The Monon

When I was 12, I wrecked my bike. It was my fault, and I unsuccessfully lied about how it happened (I am notoriously bad at lying), so my parents told me that if I wanted to replace my bike, I'd have to pay for it myself. At 12, I didn't exactly have the money for a new bike, so I just went without one until the summer before my senior year of college. I went to Back Alley Bikes in Chapel Hill and brought home a Schwinn that had been fixed up and was a slightly unpleasant dark pink color. Her name is PB&J, which stands for Pepto Bismol and Joy. I quickly fell in love with the American Tobacco Trail, a rails-to-trails project in Durham.

Needless to say, I was thrilled to learn that Indianapolis has several such trails, the main one being the Monon. I decided to explore it today, and I ended up biking for an hour and 45 minutes. I went a little further than I intended/realized and ended up in Carmel, a suburb just north of Indy. The trail provided a pretty interesting cross-section of the city (which, thankfully for my abysmal sense of direction, is a grid).

I started in the middle of this first map, by Broad Ripple near the Indianapolis Art Center. This trail entrance is really near the house where I'm staying—it only took a few minutes to get to the trail. I crossed the White River and Williams Creek as well as the Indiana School for the Blind. I ogled the loft apartments springing up along the Monon as I went.

Of course, where the map ends is not where I stopped. Here's another map to show where I kept going into Carmel. You see how the first map ends at 96th Street? That's where this one picks up. And can you make out the uppermost horizontal line on this second map? That's 146th Street, where I finally turned around. Whew. Oh and Carmel has this massive new community center (Monon Community Center) right on the trail, complete with a performing arts center, civic center and water park (which just opened this past Saturday). Wow.

Probably the best thing about the ride was the middle aged couple I met when I stopped to drink some water and study a trail map during my first leg of the ride. They asked for me to take their picture, then we started chatting. Their names are Barb and Ken ("Barbie and Ken," they joked) and they're from the south side of town. I had been basically ordered to go north on the Monon, and I had no intention of obeying that directive forever, so I saw this as an easy opportunity to ask about the south half of the Indy Monon. Barb and Ken assured me it was safe, plus there is apparently a really beautiful trail that breaks off from it further down. I'm interested to learn more about what parts of the city are considered "good" or "bad"—apparently NUMC is on the cusp of both. Barb's brief assessment was that the south side of town is more laid back and less economically advantaged. Anyway, they learned I was in seminary and welcomed me to the city, and Barb said she would pray for me. Amazing. This place gets better every day.

When I started out this morning, I was feeling ambitious and thought I could tackle the entire trail today. But I haven't exercised in a while, and as the morning went on, it got hotter and more crowded (thanks, Memorial Day holiday). I can already tell that my legs are going to be really sore tomorrow. But the next time I bike, I'm going to take the Monon south and see what I can find.