Kentuckiana

First of all, thanks to those of you who commented on my last post. It’s always really good to hear when people are feeling similar ways or have a different perspective on the situation.

And speaking of friends, I took a nice mini road trip with Adrienne and her boyfriend, Kyle, last weekend. I left Cadillac on Thursday after work, some frantic brownie-making and a meeting at the United Way, and headed down to Grand Rapids. Instead of going right to Adrienne’s, I dropped my car off at Bobby’s and got some dinner with him before heading down to Higher Ground for some badass climbing. Now, I don’t know if anyone reading this has ever been there, but Mitch and I fell in love with the place on Valentine’s Day 2004 when we joined AC3 for a climbing comp down there. There are three sweet rooms: one with some top roping and the other two strictly for bouldering. There are overhangs and features and all sorts of craziness, all packed into a pretty sketchy warehouse. The atmosphere at the comp was, of course, awesome, but it was just as good this time, just on a smaller scale. Miriam’s brother, Jesse, was working, and we convinced Miriam and her other brother to come down and climb with us. Anyway, we bouldered for about three hours, all the way ‘til close. Everyone else there was so friendly…such a contrast to Planet Rock in Ann Arbor, where you other climbers barely acknowledge your existence. At one point, everyone in the place was packed in the back room watching each other work on about three different routes. It was so much fun, but I killed my fingers, forearms, shoulders…you name it, it was sore! My fingers were so swollen I could barely put my rings on when we were done!

Now after climbing, I was somehow supposed to meet up with Jenn to get together for coffee or something, but the late climbing plus my lack of a car plus my brother’s desire to go party-hardy with his buddies meant that wouldn’t really work out. I did, however, go with Miriam and Jesse to a bar to meet Adrienne and her roommates who were out celebrating a birthday. All in all, the evening worked out well and I work up the next morning ready for more adventure. We drove about five and a half hours down to Nate and Amanda’s and as soon as we got there, they took us to this park in Louisville right along the river. It was kind of strange because there were roads and bridges and skyscrapers all around us, but we had fun throwing the Frisbee around. It made me miss my brief days on Ultimate Frisbee on the Chapel Lawn!

That night we went out to dinner at this pizza place called Wick’s, then went to an Irish pub called O’Shea’s to hear some cover band. Now, I’m not a bar person, as most of you know. I like going out every once in awhile and I like to dance if it’s a dancing-type place, but otherwise, I hate the smoke and the drunks and the obvious non-accidental body contact. Ew. Anyway, to make the situation better, I called my friend Kristen who is attending seminary down there. She’s the daughter of my parents’ friends and our families always cut Christmas trees together. So she and I sat in the back of the bar for most of the night, nursing drinks and chatting about all sorts of stuff. She took off around midnight and I was more than ready to go, too, but we probably didn’t leave for another 45 minutes or so.

The next day more than made up for the bar torture. We went into Kentucky and did some hiking in a really cool park. I was just a bit bummed that we didn’t play more on our hike. It seemed like everyone else was all into “how fast can we do this” and I was like, “Oh, look at the tree that’s fallen across that ravine! Opportunity for adventure and possible injury, let’s go!” I suppose that is partly Mitch’s influence on me, but partly a carry-over from my childhood, too. Oh well, it was nice to be out of the city and breathing the fresh air. I should note that it was really warm down there, compared to up in C-Town. It was probably about 40-45 degrees on Saturday and way warmer on Sunday, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

After our hike, we made some dinner. The whole food thing was annoying almost all weekend, because it was constantly, “Well, will Laurie like that?” They all thought I was weird because my tastes are simple and meaty amongst lactose intolerant vegetarians and their trained significant others. They spent a bit too much time teasing/lecturing me about my unwillingness to “branch out” and my minimal vegetable consumption. But I didn’t starve, nor did I cave. Beef…it’s what’s for dinner! Sorry for the tangent…anyway, much to my relief, we did not go barhopping Saturday night. Instead, we played games. My first experience with Trivial Pursuit was a hugely positive one and I think I might be hooked, as long as I have a partner. We also tried out This vs. That, a group game Santa got us for Christmas. It was pretty fun and so was another one called Would You Rather. Now, I remember Would You Rather as being something we did at sleepovers in elementary school: “Would you rather kiss so-and-so or what’s-his-nuts?” “Ewwwww, I don’t know, that’s gross!” Same idea here.

Sunday was probably my favorite day of all. The sun was shining, the sky was blue and we spent a good four hours in another Louisville park and walking around town. We also went to church in the evening, a community one for younger people called Sojourn. It was pretty much like Chapel, only the music was less acoustic (the only real strike against it, as I’m still pining for good ole’ Chapel Band). Afterwards we hit up this place called Café Lou-Lou’s for dinner, where we ended up entertaining the bartender all evening. He was a pretty cool guy, gave us some breaks on drinks and even turned on The Simpson’s at 8:00 pm. Needless to say, we gave him a monstrous tip.

And that was the end of my trip. We went to bed early on Sunday, got up at the butt crack of dawn on Monday, and drove back to Michigan. I had a lot of fun but I was way glad to get home and see Mitch and Chip. Yes, I missed them both a ton! Thankfully, we have no other plans to spend extended weekends apart for a long time!