June 24

Our visit to the Bhavana Society started with George and ended with George. He drove us to Dulles Airport outside Washington, DC yesterday morning. Our flight to Indianapolis went smoothly. We actually arrived thirty minutes early.

My friend John picked us up and drove us to Crawfordsville where we had a nice visit with my parents. My sister even showed up and I got a treat by seeing my niece and nephew. They are growing up so quickly it seems. I’m grateful for each time I see them.

We made it safely to Lafayette, IN and are staying with Dr. Jerry. Today he took three vials of blood from me and is having various tests run to make sure my condition is ‘only’ mono. The traveling was exhausting for me, and all I had to do was basically sit the whole time.

Austin and I went to a diner just around the corner from Jerry’s apartment for the meal. I told Austin I felt very self conscious walking around town because when people were staring at us, “I know what they are thinking because I grew up twenty miles from here.”

When we got to the diner it felt like we walked into the 1950’s. I hear the new governor of Indiana finally got the state to introduce daylight saving’s time. This ruins my favorite Indiana joke. I used to say, “In indiana we don’t change the clocks it’s always 1959.”

This evening Austin and I decided to go for a short walk. It still must be in the 80’s even though the sun has set. Just as we started walking a young man named Jeff came up and asked if we were Buddhist. He asked if we knew any meditation groups in Lafayette as he had read a lot about Buddhism but was looking for a sitting group to help support his practice. Unfortunately there is nothing in this part of the state. After leaving Jeff, several pre-teenaged kids on skateboards came over and talked. They thought it was cool that we were monks, but even cooler that I lived in California. I think most Indiana boys would have this same view.

We crossed over the Wabash River and circled a shopping complex. As we were about to head back to Jerry’’s and were walking past an ice cream shop Dr. Jerry stuck his head out the shop and invited us in for a cold drink!

On the walk back we ran into a homeless man named John, whom we had met earlier and talked to for about fifteen minutes. We talked for another fifteen minutes and John introduced us to every homeless person who came by. Just as were about to leave a young man joined us, he looked a little strung out on drugs or was really tired. I heard John ask him as we were leaving if he was okay and if he had a place to sleep. It was very touching this community looked after each other.

When we started the walk Austin and I had the feeling once we got out of the south that people would be more receptive to our pilgrimage. We made almost as much contact with people walking around Lafayette for a hour than we did the entire time we were in Mississippi. As Austin said, “Our hourly rate of contact in Lafayette was pretty high.”

Tomorrow John will drive us to Chicago and we plan to get on yet another Amtrak train headed for Iowa.