Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Kentucky is Awesome Again

So we left from my Aunts house and biked about 70 miles south to get back toward Lexington.  Our plan was to hit as many bourbon distilleries as we could before shooting west towards St. Louis.  The next few days would be a beautiful ride.  There were a ton of horse farms all over Kentucky with huge plantations and a bunch of old money.  We made it right outside of Lexington and stayed at the Kentucky Horse Park camping grounds, the absolute largest campground I've ever been to by far.  It had a pool, tennis courts, a huge bathhouse, the works.  We got in really late so we set up and passed out pretty quickly so we could get out early to go to Louisville that night.

We left the park toward the distilleries the next morning. We only had time to make one, the Buffalo Trace distillery, which turned out to be really good whiskey.  They used to be Ancient Age before getting bought out and upgraded.  So we got some free whiskey and decided to hurry and get to Frankfort, the capitol of Kentucky, to eat lunch.  We stopped by the best place we probably could have, Rick's White Light.  Rick has to be one of the coolest characters we've met so far.  This guy has been a chef for presidents, movie stars, a bunch of big people for a long time, but now owns a small corner burger joint that seats less than 20.  

Rick was outrageous.  We stayed and bullshitted with him for about 3 hours about politics, race, law, and a bunch of other shit.  He got sued by a copyright infringement lawyer for selling "Derby Pie," which the lawyer convinced the courts was an owned name when it actually has been around since Rick started cooking.  It is most definitely public domain, but Rick's lawyer really sucked and lost the case.  And then the lawyer told Rick he owed him about $12,000 for legal fees, so Rick was pretty screwed.  The most amazing part was his ability to laugh about it and to come up with a plan to get the money.  He has a styrofoam cup in the restaurant that says "Rick's Legal Fund" and he figures if someone gives him $7 each day in the cup, he can pay them off in like 30 years or something.  It's been working, the lady that sat next to me gave him his $7 for that day.  She also gave him a bottle of wine, which he poured for us a little bit later.  What a solid guy.  If anyone is ever in Frankfort, it is by far the best place to be, though it is a little hard to find.  Look for the sign that says "Ladies Welcome."  

So we leave Rick to close up and head on to Louisville with no plan of where to stay.  There really weren't any campgrounds close to where we were but we were pretty sure there was ultimate in town so we called King Kharl assuming that he would know most people in Louisville...  He told us where to go to find summer league games that night close to the river.  I left the girls to go find ultimate by the river, but didn't know exactly where it was at.  So it get to the river and start riding down the road as I pass soccer field after soccer field with no ultimate and am starting to lose hope.  It was getting late, after all.  I decided to ride until my odometer said 80 miles and then I would turn around and figure something else out.  My odometer reached 80.08 when I saw the first 7 on the line and it was like beacon of hope.

Their summer league was pretty good size with 12 teams and a cool director named Lumis (might be spelled wrong...) who I talked to at first about a spot to crash.  He offered his, although we ended up staying with another player after a full night of drinking and debauchery.  All you can eat pizza and all you can drink beer plus a facemelting band for $10 in Louisville on Wednesday nights, by the way.  We partied there for a while and met up with our future host, Evan, who was a very chill guy.  He was so chill that he convinced us to stay another day in town so he could show us around all the parks and the cool parts of town.  We ended up lounging by the pool for a while after working out a bit and then checking out the town, which was one of those towns like Austin or Fayetteville that just seems out of its element compared to the rest of the towns in that state.  It was a funky little place that was big on local business and had a nice little nightlife scene.  So we went out again that night and met up with Lumis again to have a few beers and a bite.  Thanks again Lumis and Evan!!!  Yall made Louisville very worth the trip!  We geared up to leave Louisville the next morning to take off for the plains of southern Illinois and Indiana on our way to St. Louis.