Louisville Luck

A followup story from yesterday...
Lee was retelling me a story of the discussion between he and his brother about how to handle a bear encounter. Apparently, the most effective personal protection when bicycle touring with a partner is a pipe. Lee asked his brother why. He responded that all Lee would have to do was stick the pipe in my wheel and pedal away. Clever. We were riding on a back road (well, it was actually the main hwy running through Liberty to Lebanon) when Lee was telling me this story with little to no traffic. He felt the need to demonstrate the placement of the pipe on his own front wheel with his left hand. I heard a "click, click claccccck!" Miracously, Lee's hand came out of his wheel that was spinning at least 15mph with all 5 fingers, no broken bones, and no open wounds. Not so clever. Lucky.

Speaking of luck, we have had so much. Our friends in London connected us with some more cycling fanatics in Louisville who just happened to live 2.5 miles from Sue Wulf, a relative of mine, whome we are staying with. We pedaled over to their house after arriving at Sue's and showering to get a new crankset and bottom bracket. What better luck could we have? Tim just happened to have a near new crankset and BB that fit. We had some bike talk for a while and walked away, pedaled rather, with one less problem. The final bike issue, rear brakes. We have a lot of miles till we get to our next mountains range so we're not too concerned. We're going to try in Bloomington or call ahead in St Louis for some wide-profile cantilevers.

We had a lovely ride for the most part. We were nearly run over by a woman backing out of her driveway on our way out of Lebanon though. I looked up and saw Lee braking so I braked and nearly hit him. Then I realized why he was breaking... she was oblivious. I yelled as loud as I could hoping that she'd hear me through her SUV windows. She didn't hear me but her husband sure did. I dodged around the tank only to look back at her husband who was stomping towards us yelling at us to get back there. You can bet that Lee and I both kept looking over our shoulder for the next few minutes. Happy Sunday morning. We had 3 exhilarating county line sprints. Lee: 1, Luke: 2. Of course this is the first day I have blogged about who won the most county line sprints... I am in the lead. You can conclude for yourself who usually wins those.

The road we took out of Lebanon was apparently a part of a century route that locals ride. We hit some grueling hills which taunted us with their spray painted messages such as "ARE YOU LAUGHING YET?"

Lee gets angsty about big cities. I get excited. I tried to assure him that Louisville wasn't that big (I had only seen it from the interstate, but trust me... I know what I'm talking about). We passed a sign at the bottom of a hill which read, "WELCOME TO LOUISVILLE, THE 16TH LARGEST CITY IN AMERICA." I explained to Lee that this meant that there were still 15 cities that were larger... this didn't seem to settle him much. Fortunately, we had no trouble. Apparently those stats reflect the inclusion of the surrounding county... I may be mistaken.

We had a lovely evening visiting with family. As I regretfully told them, I didn't know about their existence prior to this trip. What I didn't clarify is that my ignorance is no fault of my family! I am sure my Grandfather has told me numerous times about our family here. I blame my short term memory. Nonetheless, we had great conversation, good food, and a warming experience. Tomorrow morning, Sue will take me to the home that my grandfather lived in before our departure. I hope whoever lives there now won't mind me posing for a picture on their lawn at 6:30am because it's going to be an early riser!! On that note, it's nearly midnight. I need to cut this off to get 6 hours. Tomorrow, ~108 miles to Bloomington, Indiana! Hola mi hermana, vengo a usted!