Days 13 - 15: My Old Kentucky Home Away From Home

Berea KY is a college town. In fact, Berea College was the first racially integrated and coed college in the south, and today focuses on ensuring that ethnic minorities and low-income Appalachians are strongly represented among its student body. All this is great to know, but what i wanted from this college town was a health food store. Unfortunately for me, I arrived in Berea on Day 13 which was Sunday of Memorial Day weekend (Happy Meadows is closed on Sundays and was closed again for Memorial Day. So no fruit, veg or clif bars for me.)

Upon arrival in Berea, I did run into a woman, Peggy, who approached me with the common "East to West? Or West to East?" - guessing what i was up to from the fully loaded bike and the Adventure Cycling map on my handlebars. I was too sweaty to think straight, but Peggy understood and instead of bombarding me with questions, she revealed herself to be the first woman to approach June Curry's (who became "The Cookie Lady") home in Afton VA asking for water. Oh my god - I had just heard this story from Sherry at the campsite in Catawba! Peggy clarified that it was her and her dog - not 2 women as The Cookie Lady had recounted the story to Sherry a few days before. (Peggy's dog was female - of course i asked! Maybe this explains the error?) So Peggy turned out to be a cross-country cycling celebrity, more or less - and you know how we Los Angelenos love our famosas! Peggy took her cross-country tour in 1976 with a group of friends to celebrate the Bicentennial. And she brought her dog. I'm guessing the group probably veered more toward hippie than what we, in the early 21st century, would regard as typically patriotic. Peggy wasn't doing the trip again in its entirety but was supporting her daughter, Dolly (whom I've now encountered a few times in the last week).

As i said in the last post, there isn't much to report on about Berea, except that it was graduation day from the college, and lots of partiers were reveling in the Super 8. I did manage to find a few veggies after all at a Chinese buffet. The other great thing about Berea besides the Chinese buffet and the college (i'm sure there's more, but...) is that it marks the end of Eastern Kentucky and Appalachia. Finally, according to the elevation profile on the map, the hills were going to get shorter and be more rolling until the Ozarks in Missouri.

I had my longest ride to date on Day 14 (Berea to Bardstown) clocking in at 98.5 miles. Sadly for me, 8 of those were the result of a wrong turn. The day was mostly cloudy and I endured a few raindrops but nothing major enough for me to get out the jacket (aka "rain gear" - which makes the jacket sound more significant than it is. It's just a jacket for chrissakes, not a suit and boots and a rainhat!) Definitely this weather i could get used to. The part of Kentucky I was now in was decidedly more middle class. Farms were operational. The towns i passed were tidier, and the drivers more friendly.


Bardstown: at least it looks welcoming.

What surprised me about Bardstown, a perfectly coiffed little town with a majestic Catholic church, an old jail tranformed into a B & B, and some history (Civil War stuff), culture (the Stephen "My Old Kentucky Home" Foster musical) and tourist attractions (visit the bourbon distillery!), is that i found the people there to be more polite but, for the most part, not anymore friendly than they were in Appalachia. Now, i've checked myself on this (and spoken to other cyclists who have had a similar experience). I have been quite, er, edgy on this trip. And exhausted. Maybe not totally at my best. But i'm always super-polite, don't-want-to-be-a-bother, grateful, appreciative, the lot. And in Bardstown most people were curt, unhelpful, not accommodating. I stayed at a motel for my rest day that looked so nice as I grunted up the driveway after those 98.5 miles. But it was no better than the Super 8 - just wasn't alongside of the Interstate and had better landscaping due to the fact that there was a park across the street. I said to the stern lady who checked me in: "Oh this looks really nice!" and she actually said: "It's because of the golf course across the street." Oh. My mistake. Maybe I had been spoiled by Linda and David?

Fuck it. I'm here. I ain't going anywhere else (I didn't know about the jail B & B at that point; it's not on our map). I'll just stay in Bardstown and catch up on my blog at the Nelson County PUBLIC Library. I arrived there just after 9 the next morning (after consuming the worst free motel breakfast on the planet - white bread, margarine, grape jelly, stale cheerios and OJ to be poured from a container you couldn't shake to even out the pulp. I made the mistake of asking if there was any cup on the premises that i could use to heat up hot water in the microwave for tea and the front desk lady pinched out "No, just use a styrofoam cup. That's what they all do." I guess the message about putting plastic and styrofoam in the zapper hasn't made it this far into the center of the country. My 90-something year old grandfather emailed the whole family about the dangers of such practices back in the early oughts. Yikes, i sound so California oh-i'm-so-very-green. But seriously, styrofoam in the microwave??).

Ok, the library. So i go in and the 20 or so computers are all taken at 9:10am. I;m told that i have to wait 50 minutes or until someone is finished. Fine. Absolutely fine. I didn't get there at 9 on the dot and that's what happens. No problemo. I'll go look at a road atlas to see how i might go off-route to find David and Mary Ann's house in Marion, Illinois, where I might be staying on the way through there. So someone did finish, but the time limit is an hour - which goes by so quickly when you're trying to catch up on a week of Kentucky adventures. So i had to keep asking to re-sign in with my "guest" (read: outsider sucking up Nelson County resources) log-in. Now, again, i was apoplectically apologetic, each time saying thankyoutyhankyouthankyou for letting me use your stupid computer like everybody else. At some point, the shift changed, and short-sightedly i was relieved that i wouldn't have to bother the same stern overly made-up matron as before. However, the Assistant Director of the Nelson County PUBLIC Library would not give me another moment on the computer, a REFERENCE TOOL at a PUBLIC LIBRARY that NO ONE WAS WAITING FOR, because i had exceeded 2 hours (this rule was newly inserted at that moment). I offered (although no one was waiting at that particular moment): "Well, maybe i can come back later? When it's a little less busy? You're open til 8pm, right?" NO. This was not possible. I know this incident and the hotel breakfast aren't egregious enough for me to write off central Kentucky. But let's put it this way: no one's losing any sleep about whether I'm coming back or not for another visit.

I had a really good meal in Bardstown, at the restaurant connected to the hotel which boasted Kentucky recipes. Not only was there a decent amount of green (though cooked to the daylights) but they also served these deee-licious discs of goodness. "What are these?" I asked tentatively wincing for a possible upbraiding. The waitress smirked, told me "Well, that's fried cornbread." Mmmm, fried cornbread. Then she asked me: "Are you with the drama?" Not sure precisely what the question meant, my instinct was to come back with"Yes. But no."

BTW, Bardstown with your Stephen Foster greatAmericancomposer obsession i looked up the stupid song on Wikipedia and the lyrics of the first verse are truly as follows:

The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
'Tis summer, the darkies are gay;
The corn-top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom,
While the birds make music all the day.

You can run but you can't hide, Bardstown, from your shameful racist past by changing "darkies" to "people" in the local phone book. But ha ha you still got "gay" in there. I'd love to get a load of Kentuckian fathers squirm as their little boys chant this treasured song at school assembly.