A rainy day for a bike ride, but any ride you can walk away from is a good ride. I’d guess that at least two hundred riders showed up, but there may have been more registered, because they were very, very generous with the pulled pork at the end of the ride.
CVH and I both used to commute to jobs well to the east of Louisville. So we programmed our weather radio to alert us to severe weather in Shelbyville and Frankfort as well as Louisville.
However, now neither of us travels out that way on a regular basis, and we’re getting tired of being awakened by a screaming siren in the middle of the night announcing a thunderstorm that is fifty miles away from us.
I couldn’t immediately find the owner’s manual for the weather radio on the internet, so I started digging through my massive file folder of instruction booklets and manuals. I did not find the manual for the weather radio, but I did find the manuals for a couple of radios that I bought about forty years ago when I was regularly practicing the AM radio DX hobby. Nowadays you can dial in radio stations from all over the world through your web browser, but back then it was a challenge to pick up signals. I particularly enjoyed searching for little low-powered stations with daytime-only broadcasting licenses – they were allowed by the FCC to broadcast only from sun up to sun down. The trick was catching them just as the ionosphere was lifting…
OK, I see that I’m losing you. Anyway, here was my favorite little radio. It wasn’t the most advanced one that I owned, but it packed quite a punch.
This was back when what was eventually to be called “hacker culture” was expected, not something you had to do from scratch. It was generally accepted (by the radio community, if not Radio Shack’s lawyers) that you would open up this radio, modify the antenna connections, recalibrate the frequency dial, etc, and it was constructed to allow this.
Most nostalgically, the manual recalls a time when Radio Shack was actually a “radio shack”; the back of the manual shows the schematic diagram:
CVH informed me that today was “Eat Local” day, or something like that; I don’t know if this applied only to Louisville, or if it was part of a wider initiative, although it’s hard to see how a “Eat Local” initiative could spread very far and still remain relevant.
Anyway, we picked up mama and took her around the corner from her home to the Jeffersontown farmer’s market for some local food. The temperature was only in the mid 40’s, and a chilly wind was blowing (summer’s over already?), so we got some hot grits from one vendor and then bought a tomato and some local onions. This was followed by a visit to the Garden Gate, another local purveyor. There we purchased local pretzel bread and a couple of local pepper plant seedlings (on sale for 99¢!), as well as some bananas from Honduras (well, you certainly can’t grow bananas in Kentucky). CVH got a Boar’s Head pickle; I don’t know where it came from, and their website isn’t saying.
On the way home from the Garden Gate, we stopped at Dino’s, a new halal market and bakery in the neighborhood. There we picked up some fresh pita bread and coconut macaroons (I know coconuts don’t grow in Kentucky, but they were assembled locally). The bread was wonderfully fresh, and the macaroons the best I’ve had in twenty years. Most macaroons, you bite into them and they are gummy and doughy. These were light and fluffy and everything a macaroon is supposed to be.
Our local library was hosting a seminar on the Fundamentals of Beekeeping in the Louisville area, which did seem to fall within the parameters of “Eat Local” (bees can’t fly very far, after all), so I went there and was enlightened.
CVH had seen in the paper a small announcement about a church having a fundraising barbecue, and suggested we go there for lunch. The church was located in an old part of town where the streets are laid out along the original cow paths (or maybe even wooly mammoth paths for all I know), so it took some winding driving to find it. And when we got there, all I saw was a guy with a small barbecue grill standing on the sidewalk. There was no sign, no line of people, not even any cars parked on the street. CVH nonetheless said “this is the place”, so I pulled over and stopped.
Sure enough, it was indeed Miles Memorial CME, and they were selling rib plates out of a kitchen that was no bigger than ours. CVH asked them why they didn’t have a sign, and the cook replied that they were supposed to, but nobody remembered to get one, so they’d sent off a guy to get one, but he hadn’t come back yet. In any event, we got our ribs and homemade potato salad and baked beans. It was truly local.
Finally, for dinner, we picked a variety of lettuces and spinach out of our backyard garden to make a salad (with the tomato and onions we bought at the farmer’s market). I believe that we did our part for Eat Local day.
It’s always amazing to me how Louisville takes a two minute horse race and stretches it out into a week, sometimes two, of partying. Yes, Indianapolis extends the 500 for an entire month, but you can see the contenders at the track most any day during that period. Perhaps this is a Midwestern thing.
The festivities really start getting cranked up on the Thursday before Derby, known as Thurby in these parts. This has become the “locals day”, when hoi polloi can to to the track and take in some of the racing excitement and atmosphere without the crowds and expense of the big days. Friday is Oaks; they close the schools. Saturday is Derby, basically an official holiday in Louisville (we went to the library yesterday and there was a sign posted that it would be closed Saturday “for the holiday”).
CVH went to Thurby this year; it was her first visit inside of the Downs. She got to see Millionaire’s Row, the huge new JumboTron (the largest in the world – or western hemisphere – or something), and the horses galloping down the track right in front of her. She got a big kick out of it and wants to go back next year.
There’s a highly regarded Indian restaurant in our neighborhood, Dak Shin, and we headed there after the library. It is said that if you know your way around South Indian food, you can order anything and the chef will make it for you. However, we were starving so we opted for the lunch buffet.
The only thing that I sometimes find annoying about Dak Shin is the constant, and rather loud, use of televisions in their dining area. If you simply cannot stand Indian music videos or Bollywood musicals, this is not the place for you. However, they had something different on today that we hadn’t seen before – sports. No, not horse racing, but cricket. As we entered the buffet line, the score was announced as fifty-nine to one. “Fifty-nine to one,” I repeated aloud. “I don’t know anything about cricket, but that can’t be good.” The woman next to me chuckled. By the time we left, the score was one hundred and fifteen to three. Yes, that’s 115 to 3. The amazing thing was that the stadium was still packed with thousands of spectators and they were still cheering. There must be something about scoring cricket that I just don’t know.
The weather is warming, the sun is shining, and after a long winter, CVH was itching to take a “road trip”. Since we couldn’t leave until after nine a.m., and had to be home by dark, it was going to be an day road trip. She wanted to see some of French Lick, I wanted to see some hiking trails in the Hoosier National Forest. Fortunately, there’s a road that runs right from one to the other. Sort of.
In the excellent book Five Star Trails: Louisville and Southern Indiana, I found a glowing review of Hemlock Cliffs. It’s only a short trail, about two kilometers, but it’s the best two kilometer trail I’ve found so far around here for spring time scenery. The cliffs, rocks, and waterfalls are beautiful and easily seen through the just budding out trees. Any earlier, and the landscape would have been too dead; any later, and the leaves would block too much cliff. The book does warn, and I believe it, that the trail fills up quickly on spring weekends for this very reason. In the middle of the week, though, it was a great visit. Note that to get to the trailhead, where there is not a lot of parking, you have to go down a one lane gravel road. I’m not sure how the weekend traffic ever gets in and out of there.
If you go, note that there are a couple of places around the cliffs which would be pretty dicey in wet weather. But if you are careful, as CVH is here, you will get to see and hear the echoing bubbling of the falling waters.
Treat for Euwell?
After visiting Hemlock Cliffs, we headed up toward French Lick. There are not a lot of eating options in the forest proper (unless you choose the Euwell Gibbons route), so when we saw the Schwartz Family Restaurant was open, we swung in. Although this Schwartz Family cafeteria is unlikely to be awarded a Michelin star, it does have a lot going for it: you can come in wearing your hiking clothes, the food is all made on site, mostly from their own farm, the chickens are hormone- and antibiotic-free, and the portions are very generous. Just be careful if you pull into the parking lot right after a large bus of seniors, as you will be in for a wait.
Me, my flash, and a statue
We filled our tummies at Schwartz’s, and CVH even got the recipe for their raisin pie. A few more minutes up the road, and we were at French Lick/West Baden. We skipped the casino and went to tour the grand old West Baden resort. It’s a beautiful building from outside, and the big lobby inside feels like the Astrodome.
We drove around the grounds, looked at the old train, and went back to the forest to take a look at Patoka Lake. We saw the houseboats that you can rent (two days, thirteen hundred dollars; the luxury West Baden is a real bargain by comparison). The raptors at the nature center were not on display, but as we walked from the building to the trail, we could hear the little eeso (Eastern Screech Owl) that they had there hooting and there was another one in the woods hooting back. I don’t know what all they were saying, but I suspect there was enough meaning in there for a sonnet or two.
I took CVH below the nature center to see some more big rocks. Here she pensively studies a large outcrop that I asked her to stand underneath.
I am still, and always have been, Conrad Reynolds, however that other guy who shows up when you google me is apparently continuing to have problems with his name.
According to CNN, he was born Conald Reynolds, and took up Conrad when he didn’t like being called Connie – sounded like a girl, he thought – and now has legally changed his name to Colonel Conrad.
This may be because he wanted to buy my conradreynolds.com domain name and I wouldn’t sell it to him; I don’t know. But I do think he needs to get a grip.
The Shen Yun dancers came to Louisville this weekend, and we attended the matinee show this afternoon. While at a home show a couple of months ago, we were approached by some Shen Yun volunteers selling tickets. They had the best available tickets right there in their hands. “Such a deal”, I thought, because the tickets are not cheap, and this way we got the best possible seats.
The program consisted of a number of very short pieces, each containing a large number of dancers. The format was referred to as “classical Chinese dance”, although I think most of us Westerners would call it folk dancing. They do not go en pointe. The orchestra, though small, was excellent.
The Masters of Ceremonies point out that for followers of Falun Dafa performing these dances is prohibited in China, and a couple of the dances demonstrated this oppression.
During intermission, while his wife was off at the restroom, a man behind me was asking his seat neighbors for news on the University of Kentucky basketball game this afternoon. “I’m guessing this performance was not your idea,” one of them said, and he replied “No, today is my forty-fifth wedding anniversary, so I couldn’t get out of this, but I didn’t know when I bought the tickets that UK would be playing this afternoon.”
My favorite piece was “Ladies of the Tang Palace”, which featured dancers attired like the one in the picture above. There was a selection from “Journey to the West”, featuring the Monkey King, Sand Monk, Pigsy, a Toad Monster, the Goddess of the Moon, and the Jade Rabbit pounding with its mortar and pestle. (The Jade Rabbit, shown at right, was also the name of the recent Chinese lunar rover).
I got a Tibetan Prayer Wheel for Christmas (we promote an interfaith dialogue at our house during the holiday season). It only had one mantra on it, however, which means it wasn’t terribly efficient (some wheels are loaded with mantras on microfilm and contain literally billions). I was able to find the appropriate font on my computer for Pali and printed out tens of thousands of copies of the mantra and carefully wound them inside the wheel. There are very helpful websites to show you how to do this correctly.
Charlaine’s mother and I actually did quite well this year in the materialistic category of the season.
I got a helicopter.
I was very surprised.
A holiday tradition for me and my three cats.
Woke up to massive amounts of snow falling on downtown. Fortunately, the free breakfast at the hotel included biscuits and gravy so I was able to steel myself for the ordeal.
We took the brown train and rode around town a little, looking out at all the snow falling. At one stop, there was a herd of young people dressed up in various holiday costumes, apparently going to a party or theatrical event; one woman had a huge polar bear head hat on, and I’m sorry I do not have a picture, as it was rather impressive.
The train eventually brought us back into town and we visited Marshall Fields (Macy’s) to see the big tree in the Walnut Room.
For lunch, we went to Watertower Place, which was packed to the gills with people. Nasty weather does not deter Chicagoans from their Xmas shopping, which I suppose makes sense, as otherwise they probably would never get any Xmas shopping done. Me, I’d get mine done by September.
On the way back to our hotel, we passed the Hershey’s store and decided to drop in. Oh, what a wonderful aroma. We stayed for chocolate cake and chocolate coffee and still had trouble tearing ourselves away.
Trilobytes at the Park Hyatt
We also passed the Hyatt Park Chicago, and decided to see if there were any Christmas displays there. Whoa! No, not even a tree in this extreme minimalist lobby. But off to the side, in a reading area, was a display of some obviously very expensive trilobites. What a trilobyte-crazy town this is!
Another classic Chicago museum, built on the grounds of the 1893 Colombian exposition. They had put their WW II submarine in a new exhibit since I was last there as a kid, so we decided to see that first, before the crowds show up. This exhibit knocks it out of the park, and is a must-see if you get to Chicago.
You’re first led through a brief introduction of the start of the war and the build up of the Battle of the Atlantic. This is followed by a recreation of the capture of the submarine. Then you walk into the giant auditorium and are confronted by the huge nose of the sub right in your face. It makes quite an impression. The walkway leads you away from the nose down the side and underneath the boat. It looks much larger than I expected, based on all the movies I’d seen of men crowded together in a tiny little metal box. Sure enough, though, once you enter the sub, unlike the Tardis, it is not larger on the inside, but much, much smaller. Turns out that all those ballast tanks take up most of the volume.
This is the galley that cooked all the meals for the crew of sixty for the three months they were scheduled to be at sea.
And here are the “hot bunks” in the torpedo room. Few of the men on board ever saw the sun during their tour.
Other cool exhibits included a huge model train layout (CVH:boring), several real trains, a robot cow milker (CVH comes from a family of dairy farmers), a baby chick pecking its way out of its shell, and for the season, dozens of Christmas trees decorated in various national styles from around the world.
That evening we walked around the corner from our hotel to get some Chicago-style pizza, and finally took the subway down to the giant two-story-over-twenty-five-hundred-square-meters Walgreens inside the Loop at State & Randolph. CVH has always maintained that if you can’t find it at Walgreens, you don’t need it, and this store certainly seems to prove that maxim (they have a sushi chef).
