Friday, September 21, 2007

Indiana feels like home

We are currently camped out in Denver, Indiana at the public park. As usual, someone has left their wireless network open for us to use.

The last couple days have been incredibly interesting. We had a nice lunch yesterday with Mary Beth and Darlene in Rensselaer, IN. We contacted them through an MS chat forum and they drove down to meet us...and buy us lunch - that's not how this is supposed to work! But thank you very much Mary Beth and Darlene, we had a great time. Keep an eye out for the tshirts!



After lunch we began the daily discussion regarding where to camp for the night. We were sitting on the sidewalk outside the restaurant when a friendly, burly man walks up and starts talking to us. His name is Dr. Neal Haskel, a professor at St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer. He invited us to his 800 acre farm down the road to camp for the night. We had no idea what was ahead of us.



It turns out Dr. Haskel is the foremost expert on Forensic Entomology in North America. Have you even wondered how people determine time of death in murder cases? Well me neither really...but it's based on the growth and development of maggots inhabiting the rotting corpse. As a human body decomposes, different species of flies inhabit the body in stages. These stages allow Dr. Haskel to determine how long a person has been dead. He showed us around his lab, farm and let Karl take a ride in the giant combine as it chopped down corn. If you're into CSI, try googling "Neal Haskel". We can't thank Neal enough - we had a great time.


"Maggot Power"

There is much more to tell about this adventure, but it's getting late and we're hoping for an 80 miler tomorrow. Be sure to check out Devin's blog below about our nice visit in Odell, Illinios. Thanks for checking in - have a great weekend!

Don

5 comments:

Michelle said...

Maggot power, HooWaa! The grandparents sound great, too.

Lifetime memories in the making!

Michelle said...

Oh yeah, I got my shirt! Thanks! I wore it to work and got a few comments on it. :)

Karl said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bike the US for MS said...

Thanks to wonderful Leanna Pugliese for sending out the tshirts!

jim said...

I like the new webisode. Did you see that webisode 4 (I think that was the one) had 123,000 hits! wow.