3 i’s in 3 days: Idaho, Indiana, Illinois

After leaving Portland last Monday, I drove straight to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, where I only had 3 days to see as many people as possible before leaving for Indianapolis. Sad to say, that didn’t work out very well, as I was poor when it came to mixing time with family and friends.
However, the culmination of those three days reared beautifully-smoked garlic- and beer-flavored results from my Grandpa’s smoker Wednesday night: four racks of perfectly smoked beef and pork ribs (See them hanging in Grandpa’s wholly customized Brinkman –-> ).
I loved them, my family loved them, but the true food critic of our family (Grandpa, himself) apparently loved them, also: “The best ribs I’ve ever had.”
Indeed, it was true last Wednesday night that perfection can often times be found on a plate.
We left for the airport Thursday morning at 4 a.m., my advisor from The Sentinel Nils Rosdahl along with the paper’s new managing editor, Eli Francovich. The reason for our journey was simple: The Sentinel had been named a finalist for the Society of Professional Journalists’ prestigious national award, The Mark of Excellence. We knew we weren’t winning first place, but the college still decided it would pay to send Nils, Eli and myself to pick up the award.

This is the three of us picking up our award at the conference in Indy. Eli and I were the only people in attendance not wearing a collar.

We spent just one night in the capital of Indiana. However, I did get to have a drink with fellow Poynter Alum Ashley Porter, who was at the convention to pick up her very own Mark of Excellence for Sports Video.
We left Friday afternoon; I mean, we tried to leave. But there was a major problem: Nils lost the keys to the rental car. An hour later, the bellboy saved us by checking his luggage room once more, and produced the keys from the floor where he stored our bags earlier. Alas, while we believed all to be well, we conversely spent the next hour covering two miles searching for the parking garage we parked in (at one point early on, we walked within a half-block of it).
Needless to say, we were exhausted as we left Indianapolis for Chicago, a trip that Nils thought would make a better two nights than Indianapolis.
Oh, how right he was!