A Break in Louisville

Alright, now where was I? I left off in Carollton, KY, desperate to get back to Indiana, away from unleashed dogs and the hills. Oh God the hills!
I’d spent all this time, nearly two weeks now, struggling to keep up with my daily journal entries. I stopped at a coffee shop in Madison, Indiana to crank out a few entries before I continued on to Louisville. As I sat outside at the cafe, a biking enthusiast chatted with me a bit about my trip, admiring my setup. I was set on getting to Louisville that night. Here I was on the other side of the river and there were still these gosh darn hills! What was more, twice my GPS caused me to take a road that was closed. It added another six miles to my already long ride. I finally crossed the Lewis and Clark Bridge as the sun was beginning to set and followed the riverside road to my hotel. I was going to do the day off thing right this time. I booked two days at a hotel so I could leave my gear behind while I got to play tourist.

Exhausted, I was thrilled to see that a Mexican restaurant adjoined my hotel. I had fajita tacos and a mango margarita. I was so tired I kept on falling asleep at the table. Fortunately once I’d paid I was only a few steps away from my room.

First thing the next morning, I brought my bike to a bike shop. I’d like to clarify, as “bike problems” seem to be a recurring theme of my trip thus far. Every bike shop visit up to this point has been a snowball effect of my actions before I left for my trip. If I hadn’t timed moving out of my apartment so tight to my departure date, I would have had time to stretch my cables while I was still in Massachusetts, which means I wouldn’t have had to go to a bike shop until my tuneup at my friend’s wedding in Iowa City. Because I didn’t have a chance to ride more than 10 miles on my freshly tuned bike before I left, I had bike troubles my first day on the trail, as I was shifting constantly. Dicks Sporting Goods did a poor job on tightening my cables, so they loosened again by the time I got to Marietta, where the bike technician discovered one of the cables was broken and needed to be replaced. That meant I had to go to a bike shop again in Louisville to get my cable tightened again. These are the lessons we learn on the road.

After a quick cable tightening I headed to a coffee shop to work on a blog post. I had taken off my panniers and attached my journal, my Bluetooth keyboard and Sea, my travel mascot to the back of my bike when I left the hotel. It was at the coffee shop that I realized my journal had slipped out without my knowing. With it went every journal entry I’d written so far, the journal entries I’d spent the previous morning catching up with. I told myself I wasn’t going to panic and I wasn’t going to spend my day off searching for the journal. Maybe it was in the hotel. It had to be at the hotel.

So I went to the Frazier History Museum. They had a gorgeous exhibit on Women’s Suffrage, with historic garments (my soft spot when it comes to history and art museums), an exhibit on Kentucky Bourbon, and, the piece de resistance! An engaging and interactive exhibit on the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I was in heaven! It told the story from beginning to end, included anecdotes I remembered reading in the Journals, and gave me the opportunity to take so many cute selfies with Sea.

It wasn’t there, so I began retracing my steps. I rented a lime scooter so I could search without exerting too much energy. I didn’t find it. At my mom’s recommendation, I decided to stay in Louisville another day. The bike shop wasn’t open again until Monday morning, maybe it was there, bit if not, at least I could buy a new journal and try my best to recover what I’d lost. So I went back to my hotel and reserved a spot on the Belle of Louisville, because if I was going to stay I was going to take a steamboat tour. I had a jumbo consolation margarita, and went to bed.

I went to an art store to buy a replacement journal, rushed to the river to hop on the Belle of Louisville, and spent two hours relaxing onboard a steamboat, writing journal entries about my first days on the road. I brought Sea with me and everyone thought he was a real dog. Children slowly approached me to try and pet him, one woman was horrified when she saw me holding him between my knees while I reapplied sunscreen. I went out for lunch after, and got another mint julep before crossing the river to Clarksville and exploring The Falls of the Ohio. A large portion of the museum was dedicated to fossils, something I hadn’t really expected, but a good deal of it talked about the Lewis and Clark Expedition. I took audio recordings of a few of the video clips I saw. They helped me visualize the humanity in some of the Corps members that had up to this point been a blur to me.

When I was back in Carollton, KY, while my campground friends were giving me a golf cart tour of the town, Gerda got a news alert that was eerily appropriate timing. The George Rogers Clark House had been burn down by an arsonist. When I went to Mulberry Hill, what I expected was the house that William Clark lived in with his brother, George Rogers Clark. There was meant to be a reproduction of the house. I realized that the house that had burnt down was the house Clark lived in when Lewis came to Clarksville. I decided, since I was there, and there seemed to be a paved bike path over the levees, to bike all the way to the site to see what I could see, despite the damage that had been done. I stopped for ice cream and headed back to my hotel room for the night.