Louisville, Kentucky

Before I go and update you on our trip to Louisville, Karl wanted to make sure that everyone saw that he and Cody finally finished the milk house painting. Well, Karl supervised and Cody sprayed and sprayed and sprayed! Not only do we have a white milk house, but we also have white grass, white weeds and white trees. We did have good time with Cody and it was a good time surprising him when his dad showed up for the weekend.

Now for Louisville (or as it is pronounced Lou-a-vul). We went to attend the Blue Knights Intenational convention where Karl is the West Coast chairman. For those who have no idea who the Blue Knights are, we are a Law Enforcement motorcycle club with world wide members. Every year there is an international convention held somewhere in the US that we usually ride our motorcycle to. This year we didn't have the time so we ended up flying. We arrived on July 19 at midnight after a 3 hour delay in St. Louis. When we arrived at our hotel we were informed that we didn't have a room reserved. Fortunately they weren't booked up and we got our room and crawled into bed around 1am. Karl had to be up to attend meetings starting at 9am for the whole day. Since most of the guys were in meetings that day the hosting chapter gave the women a pamper day including manis, pedis, massages, facials and make-overs. It was rather restful (for me at least!) Finally at 5:30 Karl is done with his meeetings. We end up going to dinner, a little social time and fall into bed around 10pm. The next morning we didn't wake up until 930am! I guess we were tired. Since Karl didn't have any more meetings we decided to do some sightseeing. But first we had to straighten out our room problem. Come to find out the hotel cancelled us since our reservations were made by International and they thought we were arriving on Sat instead of Sun. It was soon corrected.


Our first day we went to Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby. It was a very intersting 4 hours! Did you know that the Kentucky Derby has been running continuously at Churchill Downs for the last 135 years? There are only 6 horses actually buried on the grounds - the newest one is Barbaro where he is buried under his statue at the entrance of the park. When they are buried the only parts saved for burial are the head, heart and hooves. In 2009 there was $30 million spent on bets and it is a CASH ONLY wagering system. Can you imagine setting down $10,000 in cash for a wager? Think you would like to go to the Kentucky Derby one day? For hotel reservations think two years in advance. For seating think $40 for infield standing (bring your own chair). Want to spend a little more? Bleachers are $100 per seat. Want more? A box, which holds six seats are in a very nice location, but each seat costs $150 and you MUST buy all six seats. Want millionaire's row? Fuggetaboutit. If you have to ask you can't afford it. Last year over 120,ooo attended the races (13 in all, of which #12 is the Derby). When you take the tour of the facilities you see the 135 winners all posted around the paddocks and you see most are in white, but some are in gold - those are the Triple Crown winners. Another intersting fact - of the 135 winners of the KD, 122 were born in Kentucky (they think it's in the water). Even 2009 winner, Mine That Bird, who hails from New Mexico (Yay!) was born in Lexington, Kentucky. Now, the day before the derby they have another derby called The Kentucky Oaks that draws about 100,000 people. Then after that derby is run the grounds crew has only 11 hours to redo EVERYTHING before the KD. That means new landscaping, new flowers (from tulips to roses), seating cleaned, restocking concessions stands, grooming the track, etc.

For more photos click on link under PHOTOS.

Our next stop was the Louisville Slugger Museum. Later!

Louisville, Kentucky

We all know that bad things come in threes. I have finally hit the third in our series. First the motorhome steps, then the freeway cat, now my computer. I received a Trojan virus from somewhere and couldn't get rid of it. Thought I had a good virus protection, but found out that my Norton is rated #13 out of 20. So I take it into Best Buy to have the Geeks clean out the virus and clean up the machine. Two days later I get a call and their diagnosis is not only do I have a virus, but I also have a bad hard drive. I do have an extended warranty service with Dell, but we all know what fun it is to call their customer service in India. Well, I did call and they are sending out a new drive, but until it gets fixed I have to share Karl's computer.

We flew to Louisville, Kentucky on Sunday, July 19, after dropping off Karl's grandson Cody and his dad John. Gong back to Sacramento, John was leaving at 10am (no problem), Cody was leaving at 11:30am (big problem) and we were off to Louisville (really big problem). John was the only one that didn't have any problems with flights. Cody never left Seattle until 12:30pm and we left on time but got stuck in St. Louis for a 4 hour delay. We arrived in town at midnight instead of 9pm. So began our Blue Knight International Convention of 2009. Monday Karl was lodged in meetings all day while I got to play a little. Since most of the men were going to be in meetings all day the host chapter set up a pampering day for the ladies which included mani's, pedi's, facials, massages and make-overs. Because we don't have our bike here we will probably do our own sightseeing for the rest of the week. I will update our blog with tour details and pictures later. For the CA-1 Blue Knights, I'm sure Karl will update y'all (I'm in Kentucky, remember?) after his meetings.

Okay, here is the ongoing saga of the freeway cat. Some of you already know about our motorhome steps not working before we left on our trip. Well, when we got to Ferndale we called a few Camping Worlds (which had no motors for our steps) and a few RV sales and service stores and they were any where from 2-4 days out. So Karl tried his standard RV parts stores in Bellingham. At first they were only going to diagnosis the problem and see what parts were needed to fix the steps and the fog light. Surprise!!!!! They were able to find a motor in another package and asked if we wanted to hang around for a few hours and they could fix everything. So did we want to wait a few hours or come back later in the week and get it fixed then? Well, duh! So off they went to find out what had to be fixed. After about 30 minutes the tech came back and wanted to verify what we really hit to knock out the fog light because not only did the cat tear the light completely off the frame but it also kicked back up and actually broke off the entire frame made of hard plastic that the fog light was attached to! Now they had to fix that with fiberglass. So our little kitty cost us about $500!!!!!!! But, hey, our steps are fixed!



We finally have Cody (Karl's grandson who is with us for a few weeks) getting ready to paint the milk house. It's not very big, but it will give him something to do. Unfortunately the weather hasn't been very helpful in painting. On Saturday the temperature was in the low 80's. For the last two days it dropped to the low 60's. Welcome to the Pacific Northwest. Today they are both off playing golf. Or I should say Karl is golfing, Cody is driving the golf cart (heaven help everyone!). And I am REALLY enjoying a QUIET time in the motorhome without a chattering 13-year-old. He's like the Energizer Bunny - keeps on going and going and going. He should calm down by Thursday since we are surprising him and not telling him his dad is coming up for the weekend.

Monday, July 6, 2009

I hope everyone had a great holiday. I wish I had a picture, (I didn't think of it until after we were on the road), but you would have gotten a great laugh at seeing how we put a 38' motorhome in between two lake cottages and a bunch of trees. It was the highlight of the day for most of the neighbors who watched Karl manuver the beast in it's spot. We spent the holiday weekend up at Donner Lake with some friends, eating and drinking like it was a holiday! On the night of the 4th we went down to the lakefront and watched a fantastic fireworks show! They were so close it was like being in the middle of them. In fact, a few cinders actually fell down very close to us. But that's what made it so special I guess.

Now we have started out on our summer travel up to Ferndale, Washinton for two months. Karl's grandson has joined us for a few weeks and we will be spending the time up there working on Karl's family farm and taking his 96-year-old aunt out on day car trips. She was moved to an assisted living facility last September (which she now loves), but still has the farm. Eventually it will be sold, but right now the time isn't great for selling. Until then, we go up and keep the creek mowed and the house somewhat cleaned up. We are still moving out some of Aunt Myrne's clothes that will be donated to the Goodwill since she doesn't want them and relocating the upstairs furniture to the downstairs. Plus Karl has his school reunion in July and a planned motorcycle trip with the grandson up to Canada for the day.

But no motorhome trip is done without some kind of kinks in the system. Ours started out with our steps not working at all. It seems the motor may have decided to commit suicide. We were planning on stopping at our dealer in McMinnville, Oregon where we bought it to see if they would take "walk-ins" and fix it. As we were leaving Citrus Heights and not more than 10 miles from home on I-80, a van in front of us hit a cat on the freeway, but didn't kill it. So it was flopping around in front of us, but Karl did a good job of driving over it and not hitting it. Unfortuately the cat had other plans and as it was trying to stand up it got caught in our fog light wiring and pulled a fog light completely out of the frame. Of course we didn't know this until after driving for a few minutes we heard a bumping noise coming from the coach. I first thought was that part of the cat was caught under the coach and I was not about to go check it out! Karl comes back in holding the fog light in his hands (but no cat, thank God). So now I really had to call our dealer to see if they could fix our steps AND replace the fog light. (What did we do before cell phones?) So I call the dealer only to find out that they closed up in November of last year! Then after calling the Fleetwood custome service number and getting a dealer close to where we were heading we call them only to find out that they are about two days out in service. So Camping World here we come. We should be in Washington by tomottow night barring any other problems.