Taking a ride around Indianapolis on the Cultural Trail...

My Indianapolis bike – perfect in every way.

Yours truly on a bridge over a canal in Indianapolis.

As the day drew to close as far as the convention was concerned and all the work was done, I decided to check out Indianapolis' new bike share scheme. It costs $8 for a 24-hour pass but you have to put the bikes back into a docking station after 30 minutes. There are plenty of docking stations dotted around the city and every docking station offers maps showing exactly where they (and you) are.

Informative signs like this one are dotted around the route.

The bikes are bright yellow and have panniers at the rear and a basket at the front. As I had my laptop and a few other things, I used both the panniers and the basket, unhooked a bike and then headed off on the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, a kind of cycle path around the city that takes riders through what can only be described as some of the nicest parts of this city I've seen. The weather was good too: sunny, blue skies, very summery, and as soon as I'd mounted the bike I felt good about life.

Plenty of helpful signage lines the route of the Cultural Trail

It was around 1715 when I set off and, theoretically, I should have returned the bike to a docking station after 30 minutes had elapsed, but I was uncertain what happened after that; would I be able to take out another bike in order to reach home again? Eventually, I had to ask and was told that you simply re-dock the bike and then re-insert your credit card and you can take it out again. I was also told that if you go over they charge you something like $2.00, which is a fair cop. I'd been riding for about 50 minutes, but I wanted to dock my bike back in the docking station from where I'd taken it, so I've taken the excess fee on the chin as I didn't really want to mess about too much.

And some intriguing works of art too...

The trail was fantastic. First of all, it was safe. Second, being a lovely day, and given that there was plenty of green space around, I loved every minute of it. The bikes, incidentally, were easy to ride. They had three gears, controlled on the handlebars, and they were very stable too. If there was a problem it was the constant stopping and starting as the trail crossed busy roads like Washington, New York and Michigan. The problem here was that the lights never seemed to change or they would take an age and I found myself edging out on to the tarmac when I saw a break in the traffic rather than wait, which was a little frustrating.

Bike number 5 – back in its dock, albeit a bit later than expected...

The trail took me past museums and an interesting sculpture – or possibly it was an art 'installation', although I'd rather call it sculpture – of some caribou crossing a stream and then onwards, past university buildings hemmed in by green space and then some pleasant-looking houses and a canal on which pedalos could be hired. I eventually turned back on myself and followed the road back to my original docking station where, 50 minutes or so later, I re-docked the bike. It was almost 6pm.

Indianapolis' bike share scheme offers a different perspective of the city.

Having riden bike share schemes in Montreal (twice) and in Essen in Germany, not forgetting San Antonio in Texas, I think it would be fair to say that the best ride (and possibly the best bikes) award goes to Indianapolis. It was a real pleasure cycling around the city on a pleasant and safe cycle path and hopefully I'll get the chance to have another go tomorrow prior to my 24-hour pass running out around 5pm.

Not so many fat Americans...

Perhaps the Americans are getting the message and possibly they're feeling a little dumbfounded at people poking fun at them all the time because they're overweight. I'm not sure what it is, but while I saw a fair few fat Americans at Chicago O'Hare airport – where they are strapped into extra-wide wheelchairs and pushed around from one gate to another – I've not seen that many morbidly obese Americans here in Indianapolis and this might (just might) be because there are more healthier options on restaurant menus and the city now has a bike share scheme – albeit just a week old – but which I tried out today, and, well, that's it.

Lunch at McCormick & Schmick's, the Hilton, Indianapolis, USA

I have always remarked in conversation about food that the Americans are the only people I know who can take something essentially healthy and then smother it in crap to make it unhealthy, either by deep-frying their vegetables or throwing a load of cheese sauce over a perfectly decent chicken breast. It used to be very difficult to escape this culinary trick of theirs, but then, about a year ago, I was in Los Angeles, or rather I was in Irvine, Ca. in the Hyatt Regency (check out the side panel on the right of this blog and you'll find a post about it) and the food was fantastic. And by 'fantastic' I mean it was light, even the dessert!

Now, in Indianapolis, I've managed to enjoy decent food, mainly seafood, without getting a load of unhealthy rubbish as accompaniments. So, just now, I enjoyed some halibut with a couple of new potatoes and some green beans; yesterday I had trout fillets with kale; last night I had Alaska salmon with brocolli and jasmine rice, at lunch time I had Atlantic salmon with vegetables and asparagus and I've managed to avoid eating red meat. In fact, today, somebody I met at the Indiana Convention Centre told me that the Americans inject growth hormones into their beef and it should be avoided at all costs. Fortunately, the very idea of a burger is completely off my radar at the moment and I've found myself relying entirely on seafood and fish (today I had a rather retro prawn cocktail, although it was called something else, probably a shrimp cocktail, and it was served on a bed of ice).

Since Sunday, my colleague and I have been eating together, apart from on Sunday evening when I crashed early as a result of jet lag and today he wasn't feeling too good so I ate alone in the Capital Grille attached to the Conrad Hotel. I had the prawn, sorry, 'shrimp', cocktail followed by the halibut and a glass of red wine and then I headed back to my hotel on the outskirts of the city and was advised, once again, by a taxi driver. not to venture out on foot. He told me that where there are poor people there are drugs and where there are drugs there are gangs. He said he'd never pick anybody up from this part of town so I've been warned. Once again, he said it was fine downtown, but that on the outskirts of town it was dodgy. Very dodgy.

Getting back to food and drink, while I haven't over done things, I have been enjoying a couple glasses of Cabernet with every meal, which has been very pleasant, but when I return home I'll be giving it a long rest.

For more details on McCormick & Schmick's, click here.