Welcome to a Thursday afternoon in the heart of Btown (even though I errantly open my video with a “Happy Wednesday!” I scored some dope artwork, I think. It speaks to a certain mood I’m feeling.
I purchased the drawing on the left and he gifted the drawing on the right.
Here are so additional scenes from the day…
A month chills on the upstairs bathroom glass as I clean at Hash Road late one night. Nature has a way of taking the edge off Hash Road chores. (Looks like the glass needs some attention!)
(The abbreviated History of Hash Road will help orient the uninitiated.)
My summer job cleaning rental houses after the Indiana University students vacated Bloomington, Indiana, when classes released was THE WORST JOB!
I will always remember this one toilet …
Now that I have decades of experience and several degrees, one would think I would be smart enough to avoid property management duties. But no. My sense of duty and adventure keeps to traveling back to Bloomington, cleaning up after guests so that new people can arrive — an ever-continuing cycle.
The cycle was about to re-start. After a couple of long-term tenants (plus their twins and a big hairy dog) vacated the premises, it took a little more deep cleaning than I would face following the average weekending guests. It took a while to accomplish the necessary trips to the dump and squeeze in the several hours of scrubbing, sweeping, wiping, climbing, crawling needed to tame the amorphous beast that is the cabin at Hash Road, but finally, about two months after the past people were out, I was ready to take the plunge and re-open for short-term guests.
Providence would have it that, within days, an old friend of my mother’s who had spent many days at Hash Road back in the ’90s contacted me to say she’d found the listing on Air B&B and was going to be visiting from Germany with her two kids!
Great!
I purchased new linens and pillows, washed everything and (after working my massage job in Indy on Saturday night) proceeded to drive from Indy to Bloomington. Making beds and doing a final dust/mop before my guests arrived did not seem like such a daunting task. I had all day Sunday ahead of me and the guests were arriving on Monday. Maybe even enough time to shoot down to Louisville to watch Indy Eleven take on their nearest rivals to the south…
I proceeded to fall into a deep sleep. The kind I can only get at Hash Road, where nothing from the outside world disturbs me. I slept from 1 a.m. till 10:30.
In the morning, the first thing that became clear was that an absolutely foul smell was emanating from every pipe in the house. No escape to Louisville. Also not a situation to be solved with emergency plumbers: too big a task to have their hourly rate doubled.
So Monday morning, as I headed back up to Indy to do another massage shift, I called my plumber from the road. The guy who’d installed the most recent upgrades to the system (the guy on staff who best gets Hash Road) was not available until Tuesday morning, so we agreed to wait until the following morning so the best guy for the job would be available.
Dang it! The guests were set to arrive Monday evening. Just the next chapter in my ever-unfolding lessons in humility. I drove back down to B-town after work to greet them.
“Hi, guys! Welcome to Indiana! Sorry about the foul smell flowing from all the pipes…Don’t worry, though, you’ll find that we have plenty of clean, good drinking water in the cooler in the kitchen.
“I’ll be staying in Bloomington tonight and dealing the plumbers first thing in the morning. We think because the place has been unoccupied for a while — and the water is unchlorinated — that the microscopic organisms it contains die and degrade, leading to that awful smell.
“We’ll flush the intake and the filters and the hot water heater and get this all situated for you. It should not take much longer. Terribly sorry for the inconvenience.”
By the time I’m finished with my reassurances, it was nearly 11 p.m. on Monday night.
Thank God for Joan, a Btown friend since approximately 1985. The kind of friend I can call at the last minute and say, “Hey, can I crash at your place?”
She’s like, “Sure, I’m not there, so it’d be great if you can let my dog out!”
Peaceful but quick sleep before I arise at 7 a.m., ready to face MY BIG DAY.
Upon rising for a big day in B-town, fueling up at my local mainstay, the Uptown Cafe, is always a safe bet.
So I headed to the Square where I began slamming caffeine and trying to sketch out a battle plan in what were still somewhat unknown and unfolding circumstances. While waiting for Scott, the plumber, to call and tell me he was on his way, I went about making an appointment for technicians to re-establish the Hash Road wifi (still in dinosaur land) and catching up on news, messages and business.
That’s when I notice a text from my stepdad Jo Jo, a caregiver to a world-famous bird named Charlie.
Charlie rides a perch on the back of Jo Jo’s bike and goes kayaking and has entertained legions of people who he encounters at the farmer’s market, during school visits, and around town. A big-time Indy broadcast journalist put Charlie on the news! (https://www.wthr.com/article/only-in-indiana-ridin-with-charlie)
Charlie appears to have avian bornavirus. (Friends of Charlie are helping out here: https://www.gofundme.com/mpcne-charlie-needs-your-help.) He’s virtually stopped eating and drinking water. After breakfast, I go sit hospice for a while. Preparing to miss a friend is sad.
As we pondered the ways of life and death, I noticed that the day was beginning to drag on — that it was already 10 a.m. and I hadn’t yet heard from the plumbers that they were on their way to Hash Road. I called them for a status report. No room for any wasted time with guests currently enduring the hardship on the premises.
“We sent Scott out there this morning, but we haven’t heard from him since,” the receptionist says.
“He’s at Hash Road,” I reply. “It’s like a black hole. The Bermuda Triangle.”
I excuse myself from Jo Jo and Charlie, saying, “I gotta get out there!”
I turn onto Hash Road just as Scott was about to turn off. I give him the signal to stop and turn around. We convene at the mouth of the cistern (the strange pit-like structure pictured below) and he gives me the news.
“I flushed and changed the filter, the air tank and the hot water heater,” he says. “The smell in the air tank! Whoa!”
“Well?” I say?
“Smell’s still there,” he says. “And we don’t clean cisterns. We can give you the name of a company…”
I begin to use more “familiar” language with Scott the plumber. He was not offended.
As we talked, we began to realize that the smell coming out of the cistern was nothing like it was in the house. Why would it be God awful in the house but hardly nothing outside where there was a large tank of water sitting?
We posited bacterial deposits in the pipes. The system must be disinfected from its source: from the cistern to clear the remaining buildup that was tainting the otherwise glorious lake water.
“Should I shock the system with bleach?” I ask.
Scott nodded his assent and wished me luck.
So I drove back in to town, planning to find a disinfecting agent at Bloomington Hardware. After talking to a friend who’d dealt with a similar situation with his well, I settle on a gallon of bleach.
First mistake: Not scoping the job in advance and doing my calculations before driving to town.
But I’d decided on a course of action, at least. Back out to Hash Road with the bleach.
Finally, there I stood. Alone with the cistern. My guests had disappeared to town for the morning. Up until that point in my life, I’d done every dirty job at Hash Road, except one. I’d never gotten into the cistern. I’d put the hose into the cistern to feed the lake water in. I’d taken the hose out of the cistern to stop the inflow. Never, though, had I crawled into the cistern.
The time had come to venture into a place where not even the plumber would go.
First, this entailed the negotiation of a 20-foot extension ladder. Got that that bad boy dropped in pit and I began my first descent. Little by little I dropped through the cistern mouth. The hole I had to squeeze through reminded me of the tiny holes the tourist-welcoming Viet Cong showed me in 2002, the ones they used to escape the American war machine in the jungles of the Mekong Delta back in the day!
Since I hadn’t planned on this adventure, I hadn’t packed my work boots or overalls. I did have a pair of waterproof mary janes. Otherwise, I stripped to my bra and panties.
I penetrated the cistern mouth and hung on the ladder rungs a foot or so above the water level, which I’d drawn down as low as I could without burning out the pump. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I realized the need for a flashlight. So out I climbed to retrieve light. Then back in the tank. Siltation on the cistern bottom made the environment feel a bit like the trash compactor from Star Wars. Who knew what kind of serpentine creatures lurked beyond my sight. One creature was within my sight: a frog, surveying me from the water’s surface, at the edge of the tank about three feet out of my reach.
Then I notice a fish — a bitty bluegill, maybe three inches.
I’m about to go nuclear, but creatures need rescuing first! I’m not cleaning the pipes only to feed through bleached bluegill and frog!
So back up the ladder to retrieve some sort of container, I find a clear plastic container the perfect size holding a few clay shooting targets! Remove the clay pigeons. Return to the pit and enter.
“Okay, buddy,” I say to the frog. “Here we go!”
I made some noise and tipped my shoe to the tank bottom. I started to drag my feet, to give any subsurface creatures the head’s up. As the siltation crept up around the top of my foot, the nerve faded to drag the exposed tops of my feet and ankles to the unknown murk. (These are the kind of places young maidens get swept away to the nether realms. Good thing I’m no longer young!) I opted instead to tread lightly, with minimal, tip-toe steps.
The frog came along with relative ease. Maybe on the second scoop, he stayed put. Up the ladder, pushing the container up and out overhead before squeezing out behind, I carry the creature over to the marshland by the spillway and release him. Then I return to the tank for the bluegill, who proved a bit more challenging than the frog. My first capture was brief because he flipped out of the box. He swam in circles around the tank. I tried to find a balance between minimal movement standing in a central location and venturing into each corner when the fish would visit because the corners made controlling the fish’s direction easier.
Finally, I got him! Pushing the container up into the cistern’s surface housing, I lift my head back into the daylight — only to come face to face with a woman’s face! My guest along with her 13-year-old daughter and six-year-old son are peering down at me over the edge of housing. I wonder if in Germany these children have ever seen a half-naked lady emerging from a cistern with a fish in a box. On my way out of the tank, I encounter the most beautiful salamander, with blue and yellow and black and maybe even some red markings. I thought I had him nabbed in my rubber gloves, too, but when I opened my hands on the grass, the dude was gone. Hopefully, he found a safe spot.
“You’re not doing all this for us are you?” she asked.
“Oh, no!” I said, projecting my most confident countenance. “A lot of people depend on this water! I’ve got to take care of this. You are just like the fire under my ass. We’ve got the equipment in the house cleaned out. The smell is still there, but it will dissipate as we flush some disinfectant through the pipes, which is what I’m preparing to do.”
Of course, I reassured her, if she wanted to find a new place to stay, I’d totally understand. At the moment, she was cool to see how the situation evolved. The little boy took the fish back to the lake for me. (In the pressure of the spotlight, I forgot to take a picture of the fish before we released him!)
Gathering my wits and documenting what like what could possibly be my last moments on this earth … the last moments before I really got down in there.
I had to get down in there because I had to rescue this guy.
Emerging from the belly of the beast battle tested, marked as a cistern warrior! The rescue effort was successful — and the area was ready to be blasted with bleach.
We laughed about what the Air B&B review might look like. (I tried to stay focused on my response to the situation — something I could control — rather than the situation itself, which I could not control.)
The woman held me by the ankles as I leaned back over the pit and dumped in the gallon of bleach. Extra dramatic on my part, but I was beginning to feel a little wacky. The family walked up the dam to play by the water. I sat and began contemplating how long I should let the bleach sit — and if I should add more water before flushing — or more bleach!
The woman peered back down at me a little while later.
“Are you doing ok?” she asked. “You don’t look like it.”
“Don’t mind me,” I said. “I’ve got a lot of steps going on in my mind. I didn’t receive a manual for this job. I’ve got to figure it out on the fly. But I do have a plan and I’m thinking right now that I need to know the bleach disinfectant ratio to figure out if I’ve got a solution of the proper power. Because the wifi is not connected yet, I have to drive back to town to get a signal on my phone so I can Google it. And if I need more bleach, I’m gonna go and get that too. Hang tight. I’ll be back!”
It’s a good thing I’d spent so much time quality time down in the cistern. It is so much bigger than it looks from the outside. While down there, I’d estimated it was about five feet wide by maybe 12 feet long. And since I’d stood on the bottom and seen how far the water went up my leg, I could estimate that it was 2-feet deep.
In the parking lot of the state Fish and Wildlife Service, I sat and did a series of calculations and decided I needed 2.5-3gallons instead of the 1.
Second mistake: Stopping at Bloomingfoods, my favorite health food store — and the closest grocery to Hash Road. I’d forgotten that bleach is such an evil and toxic agent that Bloomingfoods did not appear to carry bleach. (You can’t even buy it in Germany, my mom’s friend later told me.) So onwards to Kroger, which had chemical agents in great supply.
With bleach in hand, I returned to Hash Road and added it to the cistern, allowing a few minutes, before firing up all the faucets in the house. Then I cranked everything on — hot and cold water in all the faucets — and let them run for hours. For a while, the putrid smell of decaying bacteria kept wafting through the air.
Then, hallelujah! Bleach water began running through and the stench of stagnancy flowed forever down the drain. The continued effort paid off and the promise of brighter days began to dawn.
“Do you need some babysitting with this project?” asked one of the woman’s male friends, who’d come over to hang with her.
“Nope!” I said with a smile. “I think we’re on the tail end of this deal.”
Additional silver lining: The hot bleach water running in the shower was able to blast through some black buildup on the tile grout that I’d had trouble dissolving.
From there on out, I began filling the cistern with fresh water and continued to run the water in the house so that we could flush the remaining bleach water. While waiting for the tank to fill, I busied myself cleaning the nastiness people had left behind on the grill.
Then I cut two long sheets of black plastic from a massive roll and laid them connecting for about 15 feet down the face of the dam. WATER SLIDE! What a perfect way to end the day. I dragged the hose from the cistern up the dam to see if I could muster a test run. The hose cinched up, though, and the flow stopped for a minute, causing me to panic and quickly get back to the business of the cistern filling.
The prospect was too brutal to me, of looking like a blitzed hippie who would sacrifice all the progress of a day’s hard work in exchange for a fancy-free moment of spontaneity on a redneck waterslide…
So I returned to the job at hand. I hope, though, there is a Hash Road Chronicle entry soon titled, “Slide On!” One with lots of pictures…
Parting shots: Most people may be leery of frogs, fish, and salamanders near their water source, but I was glad to see them because their existence is a positive sign that the water supported advanced life. Yes, it’s better if they stay in the lake, but they probably got swept up in the hose as babies. An ultraviolet sanitation light and filter treat the water in the house (and we use store-bought water for guests’ drinking), but we are so lucky not to have to have constant chlorination. Au naturale! L’eau naturale!
Water quality issues have always been of interest to me. I’ve written several stories on the topic over the years — even broken news that the television stations picked up
… Perhaps making a water-quality testing lab in mom’s old kitchen would be fun. I could study the changes in Hash Road hydrology over time — and help feed the information into the state’s volunteer-collected water quality database. That would truly be a solid contribution to my mom’s ecological legacy. (And help me atone for the sins of my bleach…)
We’ll see what the future brings … hopefully greater water quality awareness — and at least of one hedonistic afternoon of sliding down the dam without a single care in the world!
Until next time …
The original four-room log cabin (a notorious drug dealer’s hideaway in the ’70s) received a three-story addition built by JoJo (my stepfather/mom’s second husband) and his friends soon after we moved in around 1983.
In the ’80s, skinny-dipping hippies on the rope swing ruled — and the property’s reputation as a good place for a great time continued to build.
Clockwise from top left: Mom and Jo Jo on their wedding day; Mimi, Mom and me in the old upstairs bedroom; Ryan salting Mom’s split pea soup in the old kitchen; musicians jamming on the dam; and JoJo standing against the cabin’s old south wall, in the place where he would build the three-floor addition with mom’s kitchen.
This is the the south-facing exterior today. The ground floor (Mom’s kitchen) was the only part of the home damaged in the dam-crashing flash flood of 2012. The place is always a work in progress.
Here’s what that view looks like standing up on the dam (above) and from the vantage point of the rope swing.
The ‘80s addition included a summer kitchen (Mom’s kitchen) at the ground/basement level, a living room and bedroom (mom’s bedroom/living room) on the second level and a bedroom on the third level (where both my brother, Ryan, and cousin, Reuben, have lived over the years; now the “kid’s room”). Today, trees obstruct much of the home’s exterior when you look at the place from the rope swing. Compare that with this next photo, taken from almost the same vantage point, 35 years ago!
This picture was taken of the original cabin on the day Alison and Jo Jo were married. Though the tent obscures the south side of the house, one may be able to tell that Jo Jo’s addition was not yet built. Also, what is now “the door to nowhere” on the top level then had a lovely platform deck and stairs down to the dam. Finally, note our old-school air conditioning in the upstairs bedroom window: a box fan. Today, the wood stove and box fans are no longer the only climate controls at Hash Road.
Becca chilling lakeside in the grass on the dam. It’s a nice place to catch up on reading while soaking up some rays. Not everyone likes roaming in the buff, but those of us who grew up as products of the natural woodlands and the wild 1980s of Bloomington, Indiana, are accustomed to the luxury of total seclusion.
Around 2000, my brother, Ryan, and Richie (Mom’s boyfriend between her second husband, Jo Jo, and her third husband, the musician Chris Little) removed two of the cabin’s original rooms. The tiny original kitchen became a suite for my grandmother, including a living room overlooking the lake, a bedroom (“Mimi’s room”), a kitchen and bathroom.
Mimi’s living room (above). This overexposed shot will soon be replaced. For now: Just imagine the lake right outside that window. You can vaguely make out the pine bench swing by the fire pit. Also, truth in advertising: that loveseat moved to Indy. We’ve opened up the space. Becca’s little A-frame bedroom became an open and airy space with exposed wooden beams, overlooking the lake (below left, facing lake) with another room tucked away behind it (below right, facing woods and spillway, which rushes into a waterfall during the rainy season).
Alison passed away on Valentine’s Day, 2010. She was 57. (Thank you so much to the Elenabella blog for providing a permanent online home for the obit I wrote and a piece of her music. Mom was a lovely fiddle player and singer.) Her mother, Ruth “Mimi” Cochran, also died in 2010 — on Labor Day.
Alison’s death left the family with the choice of what to do with the property: Sell out or try to protect a family legacy and one of the wildest spots left in Monroe County?
Keeping up with what grew from four rooms into quite a large house, plus the surrounding classified forestland (which insists on certain ecological protections), and the lake, creeks, and spillway involves a lot of cost and oversight. Still, the yoke of neverending responsibility presents what has thus far been an irresistible temptation. The pain is offset by the pleasure. I can’t not do my chores. The only constant in this nutty world seems to be chores at Hash Road!
What an honor to maintain the place as a natural memorial to my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, who all lived there over the years and who all sacrificed so much to allow family and friends to have such an amazing place to commune with nature — to take some time out to relax and enjoy life.
Thus, I welcome you, the greater public, to help me in my mission to preserve the property by experiencing Hash Road for yourselves!
The cabin is posted as “The Hash Road Hideway” at Air B&B.
MAJOR DISCLAIMER: HASH ROAD IS NOT FOR EVERYONE!!!! For instance, people who prefer their chillax spots to have granite countertops — or fancy finishings, in general — should probably look elsewhere. People who want cable television won’t have it unless they install it for themselves.
This is the country. The place is rustic. My mom, Alison Little Cochran, was an Earth mother, a wild, forest-loving creature. The home’s lines between wild and domesticated are sometimes blurred. Sometimes the power will go out and it takes a while for it to be restored. Sometimes the water feed to the cistern needs to be re-started. Sometimes people go skinny dipping or sunbathe naked.
There is a cat, Sophi, who lives on the premises. She has her claws. She kills things. This is necessary when one lives in the country if one prefers to live without mice. Sophi can be kept out of bedrooms if allergies are a problem — or if one is just not into cats.
If allergies are a problem, please bring appropriate medication because one is guaranteed to encounter dust, pollen, Sophi, nature.
Speaking of nature, nature can include spiders, snakes, turtles, frogs, toads, mosquitoes, ticks, fish, horse flies and dragonflies (lots of really cool dragonflies!). Also, amazing stars (we have a telescope) and geology (geodes) and hydrology with often dry creek beds that at times rage with rushing water … Future goals include installing a water quality testing lab in the basement.
When rainy season arrives, a lovely waterfall cascades in the spillway hugging the northeast corner of the cabin. Mimi’s kitchen and Becca’s bedroom overlook the spillway canyon.
Rushing water also led to a devastating flood of the property and partial dam collapse. It took 50 truckloads of dirt — $20,000 worth of work — to repair the issue. Because it was what they called an “act of God,” State Farm did not contribute a dime.
This is when it became clear that managing a constant flow of leaves, sticks and mud was the true legacy of Hash Road. That sometimes, the people who love the place and take care of it have to stand neck deep or even buried in nature to meet its management challenges.
God was good enough to get us through the very scary flood experience. The dam looks beautiful today.
Property management presents many unexpected responsibilities and expenses. This is why I encourage friends and family — old and new — to visit and introduce new generations and guests to Hash Road as a truly special spot in nature. That way, Hash Road lovers can contribute to its long-term preservation and sustainability.
After all, ownership of property is a fleeting and temporary prospect. Really, we are just taking care of it for a bit. This Hoosier child, born in the Year of the Tiger — 1974 — is just following in the footsteps of the three generations of Buzzerd-Gerwig-Cochran/Wilson women who lived on the land in “the days gone by.” I’m just clocking my hours and one day the good Lord will call me home, too.
This photo of a photo was taken at Alison and Jo Jo’s wedding. To the left, Jo Jo’s butt. To the right, great old friends Meredith Richmond and Chris Haak are on the scene as the wedding photographer snaps a group photo of (from left) Aunt Mary (the eldest Cochran sister), Ruth “Mimi” Cochran, Alison and Aunt Sarah Cochran “the Reverand” (who passed away on St. Patrick’s Day, 2018).
Because the world gets crazier by the day (and water becomes an ever-more precious resource), protecting this precious sanctuary to share with future generations becomes as urgent a call as ever. The grounding connections one finds at Hash Road are incredible, ever-changing yet always rooted in an ever-present vibe of nurturing support.
A friend felt sorry for me one day as she saw I had a mountain of work to do at the place. I felt kinda sorry for myself, to be honest, my eternal Cinderella complex.
“Why do you have this place?” she asked, as nicely as possible, maybe kind of gently asking, “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
Sometimes, when I have to clean up cat pee or battle a raccoon or face off with nature in some other crazy, unexpected way (a live, half snake, for example, or maybe …. DAM COLLAPSE!), for the ten millionth time in my life, I want to pull out my hair and run away to the beach forever. I’ll wonder why I remain tethered to the property. Then I’ll pause and look out over the lake. Look at the trees. Listen to nature. Wait for her to envelop me. And I feel better. In fact, I usually lose about 20 pounds of stress as soon as I hit Monroe County.
You can take this girl out of B-town, but you can’t take B-town out of this girl.
Me, shortly after moving into the cabin, standing in the original kitchen (now sacrificed to make way for Mim’s place) surrounded by some of my best Harmony School girlfriends during a slumber party in celebration of my 9th birthday. Closing in on 40 years ago!!! I’m still friends with these chicks! From left: Genne (now Genevieve) Pritchard, Karina Pritchett, Heather Schultz and Leah. Drayton
Ultimate goal: Sustainability. Roots.
After I’ve joined the heavenly choir with Granny, Mimi, Alison and the rest of my friends and ancestors who’ve worked to provide for me, may the fruits of those labors and that love continue to multiply for the generations to come.
***
I’m now working to formalize a timeline of Hash Road. So, if you’ve got an image you want to memorialize, send it my way!
We’ve had so much fun over the years …
In the ’80s …
Winter sports included clearing the ice and a toboggan run. Here you see people clearing the ice for skating (Mom, Ryan, Karina?) and Ryan heading down hill rapidly!
In the summers, sometimes the lake level can really drop. At this level, the drop from the rope swing is probably 20 feet! Swing at your own risk!!! (Ryan would probably still be doing flips!) But, seriously, this picture below is the lowest I can remember the lake. I bet it was taken during the ’88 drought.
Abbie, a great friend of the Hash Road family, paddling around the lake with her dogs, Stash and Janice. Recently she helped me with such adventures as “flush the cistern” and set up the wifi, and snap some new pics from the dam and rope swing!
Now for some classic Hash Road from over the years …
Welcome to my platform: Hoosier Shangrila.
Here we will journey through my life as Rebecca Townsend (aka Coach Willie Mack, aka The Pitch Bitch), an investigative, multimedia journalist and ag specialist, soccer coach/player, massage therapist, mother, wife, friend and sports nut. (My teams include Indy AlleyCats Ultimate Frisbee, Indiana Fever/Pacers, Indy Eleven, the Indianapolis Colts, Indiana University — especially soccer and basketball, Earlham College and Mizzou.) I’m currently writing “Becca’s Balls: A Hoosier reporter goes rogue during Brazil’s 2014 World Cup.”
Hoosier Shangrila represents many levels of experience.
Hoosier Shangrila at the Hash Road Hideaway is a rustic retreat near the Monroe/Brown County line. Magnificent Indiana hardwoods line the hills encircling Lake Alison, a small spring-fed lake. A funky old cabin in which each wing represents a separate era of the property’s history sits at the lake’s edge. I grew up there. It’s not for the faint of heart. But to some, it is paradise.
People seeking solace from the everyday rat race have sought refuge at Hash Road for generations. Folks interested in camping, renting rooms (or the whole place) may email me at hoosierchild at gmail for details. The average rental fee is $100 per person per night.
Hoosier Shangrila also captures the vibe of my massage practice, focused on relaxation, deep tissue, sports massage, trigger point work and stretching to help clients obtain their body work goals and improve their overall quality of life.
Hoosier Shangrila began as a riff on the “Shangrila” literally embedded by the previous owners in a plaque at the property gates of my Midtown Indianapolis estate.
Ultimately, Shangrila represents belief in an idea more wonderful than one can conceive of on one’s own — enlightenment, heaven on earth — a connection to something timeless and eternal. Something I’m looking to achieve here in my home state: Indiana.
Welcome to the journey.
The Hustlin’ Hoosiers of the Indiana University Men’s Soccer Team warm up ahead of a Feb. 26, 2016 exhibition match against the North American Soccer League’s Indy Eleven at the John Mellencamp Sport Pavilion in Bloomington, Indiana.
The annual tradition that pits Indy Eleven against Indiana University Men’s Soccer, now in its third year, is an excellent opportunity for a group of pros just beginning to coalesce and find their chemistry at the beginning of their preseason to test their collective skills against the products of one of the nation’s strongest collegiate programs.
But it’s more than just a pro versus the varsity starters exhibition, it’s an opportunity for players new to the state of Indiana to learn what it means to be a Hoosier.
When the pros stepped onto the turf at the John Mellencamp Sports Pavilion last night, they saw the words writ large on the walls behind the goals: “Play Hard … Play Smart … Play Physical…” When the whistle blew to start the game, they learned how it felt to see that philosophy in action. The Hoosiers came out hard.
Indy managed to score the first goal, thanks to the hustle of Brad Ring, an Eleven player who played college ball at IU from 2005-2008. As the team’s Tweeted recap explained:
“33′ GOAL INDY! Ring’s stinger from 30 blocked right into path of Smart, whose far post cross is nodded home by Zayed.”
IU continued its aggressive press, however, and managed to score and equalizer within 5 minutes. The first period concluded without any additional goals. The second period ended scoreless, as well. So the series no stands at 1-1-1, with Indy taking the first win in 2014, IU winning last year and the two settling for a tie on Friday.
What can be learned from the experience and put to use for Indy as the team continues in 2016, working though its preseason toward its home opener against the Ottawa Fury on April 9 at Michael Carroll Stadium in Downtown Indianapolis?
Here’s a word they can meditate upon moving forward: Finesse.
The word came to mind Friday as a solid Indy scoring opportunity sailed high and wide of the Hoosier net, the result of a ball blasted that could have used instead finesse.
The word applied to other instances, namely on a couple occasions where players employed showier techniques when simplicity would have work just as well. For instance, why opt for an outside-of-the-foot pass, flicked over a defender’s head with the hope it would be controlled by a rushing attacker when an simple inside-of-the-foot pass delivered with finesse to feet would have been more effective — and included the benefit of maintaining possession? The hopeful flicking (as well as hopeful blasting from deeper) often resulted in the ball stuffed right back down on Indy’s defense.
In a brief exchange after the game, when asked his thoughts about the frantic pace which Indy exhibited in the opening minutes of the match, the Hoosiers’ head coach, Todd Yeagley, said he thought the long ball blasts spoke well of his team’s aggressive efforts to step up.
Paraphrasing Yeagley here: “Most college teams would hold a compact back, trying to absorb what the [more experienced team] brings. But the Hoosiers are fit, we’ve been working out together for two months, while Indy has been back in training for just a few days. Rather than hold back, we decided to press. I don’t think they were anticipating that much pressure.”
In an interview with Greg Rakestraw’s Soccer Saturday, Indy midfielder Dylan Mares offered his post-game analysis. He noted that the 9v9 indoor format was challenging for his squad, the field smaller dimensions presented a different dynamic with two fewer players on the field.
“It’s definitely fun playing those guys (Indiana) because they work hard, they’re athletic — and it makes it challenging for us,” Mares said. “It’s not necessarily a walk in the park just because they’re a college team. And you can’t go in there thinking that. I don’t think we did.. I don’t think we came off on the right foot. But, again, it’s preseason. We’ve only been at it a week and half, two weeks now. It helps us learn a little more about ourselves going forward.”
First half notes from the sideline:
Opening minutes, Indy pacing seems rushed. They crashed many long balls.
The first scoring opportunity worth noting: an Indy forward stumbled in front of goal, leaving Brad Ring with what seemed like a good scoring opportunity. Alas, it wasn’t to be.
Then came an Indiana onslaught, a couple Hoosiers succeed in working to the far right corner of the field, bringing a mess of Indy defenders with them, they quickly dropped to a teammate rushing the right corner of the 18. As Indy Coach Tim Hankinson is screaming “Step to the ball!” a Hoosier shot forces keeper Jon Busch into action.
Indy counters, but IU is right back on the attack, forcing another Busch save. Then comes another excellent attack in which a player whose name we should know (Help Me Out Here IU Soccer Media), weaves through what seems like three Indy guys and should have scored. Alas.
Then, yet another potent fast attack from IU.
At least one Indy dude begins grumbling and Hankinson encourages him to “stay in the game (and) not loose cool.”
Don Smart enters, Siniša takes a break.
Brad Ring springs an attack from the right and Don Smart and Eamon Zayed finish the kill from the left. Goal!!!
Ring and Smart have been leaders from the team’s inaugural season in 2014. Zayed, the League of Ireland’s 2011 Player of the Year, is new to Indy this year. (Among his attacking accolades are many noted hat tricks.)
IU responds with a immediate counter from the left flank, but the shot flies wide.
Then Indiana’s Phil Fives finds a pocket — sensed by Yeagley, who screams, “There it is!” — as the kid presses from the center, then pulls wide and rips a shot from around the right corner of the 18. Scored equalized within five minutes!
Maybe three minutes later, IU shoots again, only denied the inner net because Busch threw himself in harm’s way. The resulting corner results in IU forcing Busch into action yet again. At the 1-minute-mark, IU unleashed another decent shot that sailed wide of the goal.
The second half brought a whole new starting lineup for Indy. [How many changes did the Hoosiers make? We’ll have to wait for IU to fill in the blank on that one.] The Eleven fielded many familiar Indy faces in the second half, just one new team member, Neil Shaffer.
“Possession!” Hankinson instructs.
“Why let him have it?” the coach asks a player he wished stepped up to shut down an IU possession more quickly in the midfield. “Walk forward and keep him to one side!”
To the team he advised, “Hold the ball up, building deeper and moving forward!” Also on several occasions, “Shape! On your block!”
Assistant Indy Coach Tim Regan informed the frontline, “Don’t always be looking to turn by yourself. Trap it and pass it … if it takes you more than two touches, it’s not good enough!”
Aside from IU forcing one last Busch save, Indy pressed hard enough to cause Coach Yeagley to yell at his defenders not to attempt anything fancy when the Eleven’s frontline were swarming the goal like sharks smelling blood in the water. When the pressure gets dangerous on D, Yeagley said, “it’s up and out, there’s no touch!”
His father, also the father of the IU Soccer program, former head coach Jerry Yeagley watched quietly from the sidelines, a subtle grin of what appeared to be satisfaction often spread across this lips.
Scoring Summary and lineups courtesy of the great John Koluder, Indy Eleven’s communications captain:
INDY – Eamon Zayed (Don Smart) 33’
IU – 38’
Indy Eleven 1st Half IX (3-1-3-1): Jon Busch; Lovel Palmer, Colin Falvey, Nemanja Vukovic; Nicki Paterson; Brad Ring, Sinisa Ubiparipovic (Don Smart 30’), Justin Braun; Eamon Zayed
Indy Eleven 2nd Half IX (3-1-3-1): Keith Cardona; Marco Franco (Don Smart 77’), Cory Miller, Neil Shaffer; Daniel Keller; Dragan Stojkov, Dylan Mares, Duke Lacroix; Wojciech Wojcik (Greg Janicki 67’)
Hoosier Shangrila 