winter, part II, in Louisville

I would like to write about the last few hours of our Louisville adventure.

Saturday night, I arrived back in Louisville following my Bourbon Trail adventure in the countryside. The air had grown progressively colder as the day wore on. Bourbon warehouses, stacked full of wooden barrels bursting with flammable liquid, employ no heat or electricity. Indeed, very little has changed over the last two hundred years in the way bourbon is made. As we shuffled through the distillery, our tour group buried our hands deep in our pockets and shrunk further into our hoods and coats. My toes were icy-cold by the time we finished the final tour! While I was gallivanting about rural Kentucky, Heather had been watching plays at the Humana Fest, so later in the evening I dashed back through downtown to pick her up. The streets were wet with what could have been rain, but as I navigated the one-way streets and multiple freeway cloverleafs, huge snowflakes began to fall, and literally within minutes snow was piled an inch high atop vehicles and yards. I got a little turned around in downtown Louisville, as snow pounded around me making it all the more difficult to discern the correct route. I remarked to Heather, only a bit tensely, "This is the sort of thing I will laugh about tomorrow."

When we awoke in the morning, that inch of snow still lingered around the neighborhood. The trim, brick house where we had been staying was picturesque. In the yard, a magnificent flowering tree bloomed the vibrant colors of spring, magenta, purple, fuschia. It was all the more stunning contrasted against the white carpet beneath and the crimson of the house.

We made a quick pancake breakfast for our hosts, bid hasty goodbyes, and hopped into my little car to make it back downtown for one final play that began at ten a.m. Sunday.

Called "The End," this play featured all of the apprentices in the company (many of whom Heather knew) in a series of quick vignettes detailing the end of the world. Set in Los Angeles, these generally lighthearted sketches poked fun at the disaster genre and actors themselves, and gave each apprentice an opportunity to shine. The sun, too, was shining by the time we emerged from the theater 90 minutes later. Heather and her friends exchanged many enthusiastic hugs, we retrieved the car from one of Louisville's many towering parking structures, and we were on the road.

Interstate 71 begins in downtown Louisville at the somewhat confusing Kennedy Interchange where I-64, I-65, and I-71 all wrap around each other. I really wanted to be able to take a route that would lead us through the bottom part of Indiana, just so we could say we went there on our trip too, but unfortunately the roads didn't go that way. So we were contented to simply follow I-71. It was a beautiful drive. The sun beamed down as we made our way toward Ohio in the hills of northern Kentucky.

Just across the Ohio border, we stopped for gas in Anderson Township, which is in the greater Cincinnati area. We hopped back on OH-32, which would take us east to Athens. I briefly considered finding alternate routes to take along our journey, based on standard adventure rules, but I realized that I had never taken I-71 heading north from Louisville-Cincinnati, or OH-32 east from Cincinnati-Athens, so my adventure spirit was held at bay.

As we drove through rural southern Ohio toward Athens, the hills welcomed us, increasing in number. We neared Athens and were able to pick up the Sunday afternoon bluegrass show on NPR, which is one of my favorite things ever and provided the perfect soundtrack for our return home.

This trip was wonderful for many reasons. It was interesting to spend three days in the same city, since in most of my adventures thus far I often find myself in a new place for only twelve hours or so at a time. I felt like I got to understand Louisville a bit, and it helped that I was able to meet some actual Louisvillians. Perhaps because of the timing of it in late March, I reminisced more than once about trips we would take in college band to NCAA tournament games. Traveling with a friend was a different experience; I don't remember the last time I went on a prolonged non-solo adventure. It was really nice to have somebody to share the adventure with (and to take more pictures!), and it forced me to loosen up a little bit. When in adventure-mode, I tend to very stubbornly pursue my specific ends.

Mostly, though, this sojourn to Louisville reminded me of how much I enjoy adventuring. This major Midwest city is a short four and a half hours from Athens, and I couldn't help but return to my mental list of other interesting locations that are only a hop, skip, and jump away from my home in southeast Ohio. I keep trying to stay in one place, but there is so much to see! The summer of adventures lives on...