A weekend in Louisville

12 hours! Can you believe that we drove 920km and it took us 12 hours from start to finish, including stops for lunch and bathroom visits. Longest distance travelled since we landed in New York, but it probably wont be the shortest. I've already mentioned HolidayPhone, the company that fuels our internet access and how important it is for us. It definitely made the 12h drive from DC to Louisville manageable.
Nothing of interest really happened during the drive, but I will mention two things. While it might not be that clear on the map, we actually took a detour just so that we could reach Ohio. I'm keeping tabs on the amount of states that we've entered, and Ohio was the 9th on this trip! That number will only increase as we go ^_^ (duuh), The other mentionable event was when I just simply _had_ to go to the bathroom. Wait (!), it's not what you think!! I'm just setting up the story! So I had to go to the bathroom, and we left the highway in search of just about anything with a toilet. We kept driving through the Virginian countryside, but not a single gas station in sight. I was panicking to say the least. Finally we came upon a Dunkin' Donuts in the middle of nowhere. I told them to enter the parkinglot and I actually jumped out of the car while in motion (it was coming to a close, nothing more exciting than that, although Tomasz the driver sure shrieked like a little girl). What I didn't know was that they all entered the DD to pick up a dozen doughnuts to fiest on.

Yeah baby!

I of course took my time, not knowing the culinary event taking place outside, and by the time I was done, so were they =/

Noooooooo!!

After all those long hours we finally reached Louisville. It felt like it took for ever, and considering it was our first real long distance drive, I'm not surprised it took its toll on us. Among other things, I seriously started to question our decision to drive for 28h from Dallas, Texas to Cody, Wyoming in one week. Will my knee hold up to that kind of strain? Is it safe enough, even if we try to get some sleep in the car while one of us is driving? I feel more and more like we should skip Yellowstone. I guess we'll see what happens...

Our weekend in Kentucky was fantastic...I'm..I'm actually at a loss for words, but I'll try anyway. The shock for a Swede to come to the US and experience such incredible amounts of hospitality is almost difficult to accept. I'm of course talking about my friends who haven't had this experience before. I know full well what kind of warmth and kindness I receive when I'm in Louisville, but even I was touched once more.

We stayed with the Zilichs (Nick, Cindy and their beautiful, bouncing boys Jedediah and Micah) in their wonderful home with a great game room for entertaining guests. I've been there once before, so I knew what to expect, but my friends were blown away! The next day Cindy had prepared pancakes for us and Tomasz happily exclaimed (afterwards, remember that swedes are a bit shy)

"These pancakes were fantastic, they were soo healthy". 

The surprises kept on coming. I had asked for instructions on how to use their washing machine the night before. Well after breakfast, Nick asked me about the laundry, and I got the boys to collect everything in one bin. I was so focused on writing on the blog that I didn't think about why Nick took our basket of dirty laundry. I just knew that I had to finish writing the blog and then hurry on out to show Louisville to the Swedes. Well, what I didn't realize at the time was that cindy had taken our laundry and washed it all for us. When we got back home after our adventures, they were all there, washed, dried and folded. Again, we were all taken back with how well taken care of we were, and all I could do was bask in the awe that my friends showed when talking about what kind of friends I have that do so much for strangers. 

We took a photo of the lovely host family,

but not with my camera, which means 

it's not easily accessible atm =/

During our day in Louisville, we were planning on visiting the Ali center, the Slugger museum and these underground caves Nick told us about, to try out some ziplining. However, those plans got slightly altered because of something I did 2 days earlier. After casually bringing it up in conversation with Dan and Pontus and afterwards being forced to do so, I sent an email to a certain donald duck artist who happens to live in Louisville. I am of course talking about Don Rosa!

Via email, I asked him if we could meet up since I was about to spend 2 nights in his hometown, and the fact that I'm a huge fan of his work. He responded, we exchanged numbers, and that led to me shaking hands with arguably the best donald duck comic book writer ever to have graced Kalle Ankas pages. I know Don himself feel that a comment like that is incorrect, since to him, Carl Barks is number one...but to this comic book nerd, the Don is just simply the greatest!

We all sat down with Don (and his lovely wife) and had a beer (mine happened to be of the root variety). It was an incredible dream come true and writing this, I still can't completely believe that it happened. At least I have this photo to prove to myself that it did indeed happen.

We took about 10 different photos, sadly from 3 different cameras in 3 different angles. 

Hence me looking somewhere else...

We finished off a wonderful day with a visit to another fantastic family! We drove over to Stu to have dinner with him, his wife Teri and their 3 wonderful kids, Elizabeth, Catherine and Peter. We had a blast talking about our trip, what we will get to see as well as talking about what we do back home. We also got a tour of Stu's DIY-project in his basement, modeled after a certain wellknown home cinema! The difference between my movieplace and his is that his will be amazing when it's done. Mine isn't done either, but won't come anywhere near the setup he's building. "Trés Cool" as no french person would say, ever! 

After Stu's son Peter shoved the awesomeness of his future play den in our faces, it was time to say goodbye to our friends. Sometimes parting feels like nothing but sorrow =(

Church time! South East Christian Church is such a fantastic church, I really want everyone to experience it. Not just the fact that it's a large church with a lot of modern technical equipment, but just how normal it is to go to church in the Louisville community (and at large, the whole country I guess). 

The atmosphere is so different at home, where going to church on a Sunday morning is considered weird and always comes along with incorrect assumptions next day at work when you talk about how the weekend was and mention a church visit. I wish that I could say "I went to church yesterday" and the next comment would be "oh nice, was the sermon good?" or something to that effect. Oh well, there are downsides to all cultures and nations I guess, including Sweden.

Our weekend in Louisville was far better than I could have asked for, even though I didn't get to meet all my friends there (how dare you be out of town Mr Gossett!??). It's difficult looking back now, because I wonder if we'll be able to match the past weekend during our trip with other experiences or if it's all downhill from here. I'm sure we'll have many amazing experiences during the rest of our trip, but just to reiterate, I had a great time and feel sad to leave it behind.