Earth Day

This afternoon we went to the Earth Day festival in downtown Indianapolis. (Yes, I know it's a week late. I don't know why.)

There were five large tents with many exhibitors in each. I declined many, many brochures because I already knew the information on them, but we picked up quite a few with new information. Specifically, we're going to look into a solar attic fan.

We brought Spike because it was such a nice day and he likes festivals. He got a little overwhelmed in the tents because there were so many people, but he enjoyed himself anyway and got lots of compliments.

After we visited all the exhibitors, we stopped by the row of food vendors for a snack. Steph had a bowl of red beans and rice and I had an alligator sandwich. Yes, it was real alligator. It resembled bratwurst and tasted fairly similar to it.

I was disappointed in some of the displays because they didn't teach me anything new. I know that I'm pretty well informed, but I wanted more. I was very disturbed to hear the Toyota representative giving a couple blatant misinformation about the Prius. I didn't interrupt her, but I should have said something. She told the couple that the Prius runs on electric power up to 50 mph and only turns on its gas engine on the highway. In simple terms, the Prius only has enough battery capacity to run about three miles on electric alone, and the speed cutoff is 42 mph. The gas engine will run whenever the battery needs to be charged and whenever the car needs it to provide extra heat to warm the cabin or the batteries. (Learn more from expert Prius owners at any of the Prius-related Yahoo! groups.)

Now we're heading to Good Earth, the natural food store in Broad Ripple, to go get some natural and organic food.