Hats off to Keith Alicia Ben and Joel

Thursday August 13

Another day brings with it more opportunities for things to not go as planned. What good is planning? Our plans today were to have breakfast (which we did), visit the library, (which we did), visit the Lincoln museum, (which Donna and Lewis did), update the blog (which we didn’t) and locate the camera (which is now listed as missing in action). We did however end up riding a goodly amount and had an overall good day which was concluded by pedaling up to the house of Keith and Alicia and their 2 boys, Joel and Benjamin (5 and 3 respectively).

And now for the details. Our night in Hodgenville was uneventful which we like. No marauding gangs of raccoons or teenagers for that matter. We were awake and packing before 7:00 and hit McDonalds for breakfast by 8:00. By 8:30 we had managed to pedal back to town to the library where I sat down to see if I could get the blog caught up. Donna and Lewis walked over to the Lincoln museum while I spent quite a while taking care of the e-mail that piles up. Just when I was getting ready to work on the blog, Donna and Lewis return. The library was a flop so they’re ready to move on to whatever is next. And it won’t be sitting around the library while I painstakingly enter journal entries, and pictures. So instead an inquiry to warm showers was made and a host was located at about the right distance that we could probably ride there in a day. The last chore I managed to accomplish at the library in the time that was allotted me was call the Baptist Church in Sebree again to see if they had located our camera. This was our dose of bad news for the day. No camera. The lady who answered the phone had gotten the message that I’d left yesterday and had asked the youth minister if he’d seen the camera and he didn’t. After my phone call today, she did a little more searching where I thought it might be. No luck. No camera. There is a slim chance that it may still turn up somewhere but the chance is like I said, slim. So now we are operating on the premise that we have no camera.

Where could the camera have gotten to you ask. Or you might ask if you really cared. I’ll assume that you care so now you get to listen to where the camera might have gotten to. I don’t think the raccoons got it. Pretty sure of that. But someone else may have taken it while it spent the night in the bathroom because of the raccoons. Or someone could have taken it out of the bag during one of the many stops we took during the previous 2 days. I’ve gotten into the habit of grabbing my wallet and leaving everything else including the bike out side whenever I enter an establishment for food. Another possibility is that the cyclist we spent the night with at the church in Sebree has the camera and is planning on catching up with us to return it. There are other possibilities that I don’t want to consider as they shed bad light on people who are most likely undeserving of bad light. Won’t go there. Not prudent.

So we’re going to buy another camera today. In 25 miles we’ll be in Bardsville Kentucky, home of Stephen Foster and many other historical sites. They also have a population of over 10000 so will have a Walmart somewhere in the vicinity. We’re going to Walmart! A shortcut was taken this morning that shaves 10 miles off the distance of our ride so we were in fine shape. On the way to Bardstown we cycled through a couple small communties that I don’t know the name of as they are not on the maps that we normally refer to at the end of the day. I know that a Railroad Museum was in one of these towns as we stopped for a snack and also to walk around on some of the old locomotives and passenger cars. We would have taken some good pictures here if only we had a camera! A couple miles up the road Donna stopped at a Coopers. What is a cooper you might be asking? For those who are unwise in old professions that have almost gone extinct, a cooper is a person who makes barrels out of wood. This place made oak barrels that are used to age whisky. She was hoping for a tour but everyone was on break so we pedaled on.

Once we got to historic Bardsville, we stopped at the library to get directions to Walmart. Donna was keen on forcing Lewis to learn some history, but when given the chance to chose between visiting the civil war museum with her or going to Walmart with me, she lost out. So we all decided to go to Walmart and skip the history junk. With no camera to document the fact that we were there, it seems almost pointless. Gotta get the camera replaced.

Located the Walmart, found a cheap replacement camera ($120), split a couple of Subway subs and were ready for the final 35 miles of the day. It was 2:00 by the time we pedaled away. With only a couple stops for water, we completed the rest of our ride and pulled up to our host family's house after a ride of just over 63 miles. We were just in time to miss having dinner with them. I had talked to Keith earlier and hadn't expected to arrive in time for dinner but he reassured me that some food would be provided whenever we showed up. We were treated like family as Keith had prepared extra food for us which only needed to be popped into the microwave to heat up a bit. There were grilled pork chops, mashed potatoes with gravy, fried zuchini, and a green salad. We shared desert with them as well. Sweet potato pie and ice cream. This while we are still letting our heart rates return to a resting pulse rate. The showers to come later. Keith is a minister in training and his wife Alicia is a special ed teacher. Their boys were especially excited at having a cyclist stay with them who was a kid! We showered after dining and then got to visit with our hosts. Lewis played with the boys a bit before it was their bed time. Such well behaved children. When it was bedtime, the word was spoken and then the boys went upstairs to bed and went to sleep. How does that happen? We were given the option to sleep on the floor in the living room instead of setting up our tent which we decided to do. This saves so much time when you don't have to take care of a wet tent in the morning. While Keith and Alicia had hi-speed internet, they didn't have wireless so I wasn't able to download the blog entries. Our stories of the road were shared with our hosts who are just getting into bike touring. They had recently completed a week long ride but without the children. It's when you include the whole family that you find out what kind of material you are really made of!