Tuesday: exploring Louisville

We drove back out to Louisville and were completely awake by 1p.m. Upon severe recommendations from Margot's friends, we went

to Mark's Feed Store for lunch. We decided that the number of cop cars in the parking lot during lunchtime is a pretty good indicator of how good the meal will be. Mark's had 5, including a canine unit. It lived up to and may have exceeded

expectations. We have decided for the rest of the trip not to stop to eat until we find places with more than one cop car outside. For the one or two major robberies we may witness from here to Seattle, I bet we find 10-15 incredible meals. Policemen know how to eat, no denying that. Meal highlights: grilled corn on the cob, HoneyWings (which are trademarked, which kind of tipped us off at how chronic they would be), BBQ pulled pork sandwich and traffic-cone sized fountain drinks. As we were planning the trip, I started watching a little more Travel Channel than usual. The show Man vs. Food has been a real inspiration. I'm very competitive and the show is straight up my alley, traveling around different American cities, huge portions of great local flavors and competition. When I saw Mark's' "World's Biggest BBQ Pork Sandwich" it was game over.

It was 1lb. and after using a halftime walk around the block, I was a couple bites from finishing, but really didn't want to. The waitress saved me when she pulled Margot's plate and spilled green bean juice right on my sandwich. I pretended to be mad, but I was thankful for the excuse not to punish myself further.

After lunch, we went to the Lousville Slugger plant. I love baseball, but I wasn't about to pay for a tour of a baseball bat factory. It was really cool to peek in the windows and see some of the process. They make personalized bats for just about every major league hitter. Turner and Danny had the chance to try out some bats in the batting cage. Turner did alright with a Griffey replica. Danny chose Derek Jeter, foolishly started talking smack about that baseball team from New York and promptly failed to connect on any of the ten pitches. If Bruno hadn't taken the tramp tumble in the morning, this might have been the highlight of the day.

Matt got to pose for a picture with Jesus's bat the day before he retired.

Next, we went to a hotel/restaurant called 21c that had a real cool art gallery in it. I'm usually not a big fan of art galleries because my attention span is pretty short, but this one was modern and interactive and we all had a blast. Not sure how successful their business plan is because the gallery is free, hoping to draw people to stay/eat in their hotel. The modern/technological style of the gallery seems to draw a young crowd (example: us) that can't exactly afford to stay in a hotel with an art gallery (or in our case, even a working elevator). The highlights for me were:

1. Seeing how excited Danny got when he saw a painting by one of his art idols, Kehinde Wiley.

2. An interactive exhibit with a live video camera broadcasting images of people facing it with letters falling, making poems. Hard to explain, but we were intrigued enough that we sat there taking pictures for a solid ten minutes. Hopefully these are worth a couple words...

3. Smoke ring machine.

4. Portrait of Nikolas Sarkozy made by shooting different size bullets at a piece of black plywood.

Next up was the Muhammad Ali Center. I knew Ali (born in Louisville) was an incredible athlete, but I never really appreciated it because I didn't have much respect for boxing. That lasted a couple hours. Not only was I convinced of his place atop the world's greatest athletes, but I admired his dedication to social issues of freedom and equality. We were a little too tuckered out to fully appreciate the more traditional exhibits, but we had a blast watching some classic Ali-Frazier bouts and hitting the punching bags.

Sam