Kentucky-fried Awesome

I planned that hairstyle so we'd match.

I just got back from visiting my buddy Morgan in Kentucky. This was my third time visiting the bluegrass (I never remember if that should be separate words, compound, or hyphenated and I'm too lazy to look it up right now) state and these last few days were full of activities both local - horseback riding, looking at horses, seeing the countryside full of horses - and surprisingly global - eating really amazing Jamaican food, stopping at the Mexican bakery to gaze at enormous pastries, and seeing yet more horses, but from faraway lands and being ridden by ethnic stereotypes. Morgan celebrated a birthday while I was there, and I had the privilege of hanging out and remembering what a terrible bowler I am with all her Kentucky homeboys and girls from the UK English department on Thursday evening. For 3 days we bopped around Lexington and the surrounding areas, taking in oddities like the Peddler's Mall, eating at rather awesomely inexpensive joints, and indulging in a time-honored Morgan-and-Rosie bonding activity: watching a lot of TV together. Usually, a visit to Morgan leaves me with a new TV interest/addiction/obsession. Last time it was Parks and Recreation, this time she got me slightly into Community.

She also took my to the Kentucky Horse Park where we took a trail ride (on actual HORSES!), toured the park in a horse-drawn trolley, and got to see the aforementioned horses from around the world and their accompanying ethnic stereotypes. It was a helluva lot of fun, and there are few people on the planet besides Morgan who will not only indulge me in my dork proclivities, but revel in them as well, and that's why she rules with an iron fist.

Here are some of the hi-lights. I flew out of NYC Tuesday morning, and felt like a super-deluxe big girl because I got there on my own without any help from anyone, so nyeh. Thinking I'd do some live blogging from LaGuardia, I brought my laptop, but was disappointed by the lack of free wireless (which by the way, Lexington Bluegrass airport DOES have. KY-1, NY-Zip, so far) and ended up typing the following:

***************************************************************************
Subject: Checking in?  What the HELL is all that?!

I have to PAY for wifi at Laguardia apparently, so this post is being written well in advance of its posting.  So right now, you’re taking a journey back through time to visit me at Gate 12, waiting to board my plane.  I’m going to Kentucky (say it with me:  I’m going to the fair…) but have a 2 hour layover in Charlotte.  I’m excited by this idea.  I wonder what adventures await me.  Like coffee and a newspaper.  I hope there’s no problems with my flight that leave me stranded in Charlotte, but who knows?  It could be the making of me…

Years from now I’ll look back and think, “It all began then.  Little did I know, while sitting at LaGuardia, mildly annoyed by yappy dogs in carry-on bags and screaming toddlers in Disney-Princess crocs that I’d be set on a path to my destiny.  The previous 30 years all meant nothing.  My life began the moment that plane took off in Charlotte without me and I was forced to…”

Ok, here’s the choose-your-own-adventure part:  What was I forced to do?

A)     Join a travelling circus as the impromptu ringmaster, where I’ll spend the rest of my days wearing a top hat and hot pants.

B)      Participate in a Hunger Games/Battle Royale death tournament where I’ll FINALLY be able to put my archery skills to good use

C)      Make use of my rusty Italian to help save the life of a gladiator re-enactor who doesn’t know how to say “I have gnocchi in my trachea” in English and thinks the universal sign for choking is a series of rude hand gestures. (I’ll actually save his life accidentally because I’ll punch him in the stomach, thinking he’s a big creep.  It’ll be HILARIOUS.)

Now that I’ve imagined all these cool scenarios (don’t worry, I’m actually a pretty good archer) I’ll probably get to Charlotte with very little fanfare,  have a cup of coffee and read the paper and get on my plane to Lexington and arrive in the city where they DON’T film Justified (but they do have final four riots) and take a break from my NYC-paced life for a few days.  Which I probably need more than scenarios A, B, or C.  Even if it is less exciting.  Exciting is sometimes way overrated.

Sometimes.

*******************************************************************************

Speaking of "sometimes," sometimes I really hate re-reading what I've written a few days earlier.  It's like confronting a younger and snottier version of myself.  P.S., None of that awesome or weird stuff happened at Charlotte.  I got there without any incident, although I did sit next a lady on the plane who kept opening and closing her mouth and I could hear the smacking and squishing going on in said mouth, and that was kind of gross.  Also, there was a lot of turbulence because it was really windy that day, so the guy on the other side of me (who was also on the plane to Lexington - instant travel buddy!) and I kept looking at each other and nervously laughing about how we pay for this on roller coasters, which was better than panicking and barfing all over one another.  The most exciting thing to happen at the Charlotte airport, which by the way is like 800 miles long, was that they changed my departure gate and it was fortunately way closer to the Burger King, so I got a Whopper while waiting.  Then I rejoined my travel buddy, boarded a teeny tiny plane, re-entered the turbulent troposphere and got to Lexington in time to join Morgan for dinner.  

So my early morning predictions didn't come true.  Oh well.  My legs are too pale for hot pants this time of year anyway.

The next day, Morgan and I went to Peddler's Mall, and HOLY CRAP this was a weird place.  We had an anthropological field day here, and I bought something truly ridiculous for my buddy Kristin.  (I don't know if she's gonna read this or not, but here it is: a pack of Menudo Trading Cards.  Yeah, that's right.)  Basically it's a ginormous (like the size of a square block in my neighborhood) warehouse: 2 floors of dozens of booths selling everything from antiques to collectibles to piles of crap.  And sometimes all of the above.  Seeing all the ridiculous stuff was initially wacky and entertaining, but after about an hour of poking around there with all that piped-in country music as a soundtrack the atmosphere in the place got kind of desperate and depressing. 

Here are some of the items we encountered.

Behold: the evil genetically engineered cousins of cabbage patch and strawberry shortcake.

What kinda dreams you gonna catch with that?  The dirty kind.

So many bottles.

So very many.

Hey look!  Prince Albert in a can! 

So eventually, we felt like getting lunch, and we went for some awesome curry at a Caribbean place in the part of town Morgan referred to as "Murder Central" because a mummified body was discovered in a garbage can not very long before my visit.  Food was great, and the atmosphere wasn't murderous at all.

The next day we went to the Kentucky Horse Park, which was very exciting because it was a beautiful day and horses are fantastic.  We saw a whole bunch of different breeds of horse in the 2 scheduled "Horses of the World" demonstrations (the 2:00 show is...sort of different from the 11:00...) We then got to pet a bunch of horses and giggled like little girls at how much fun this was.  We also took a trolley ride and were seated among a group of about 20 fifth grade boys from Harlan County (like on Justified!), and the trip mom with us admired us for our bravery.  I was like, yeah, we have brothers.  And Morgan was like, Also, we're teachers.  And you could hear the proverbial pin drop from these kids.  I was actually pretty impressed with how well-behaved they were for the ride.

Here are some pics from that day.

This is Morgan standing near a sign for obvious reasons.  

Mini-horse!  Like little Sebastian! He was so freaking cute, I wanted to scream.

I believe that's a saddlebred...? And I *know* that's a Morgan on the right, har har.

That Palomino didn't suffer fools (or little boys) gladly.

This horse was soooooo soft.  And very mellow.  And he and Morgan had very similarly-colored hair!

The next horse show had an actual Morgan horse, and an Appaloosa and a gypsy horse, as well as some culturally insensitive choices of narration and music, but, y'know, baby and bathwater, blah blah blah...

Morgan and the Morgan horse bonded.  Seriously, the horses LOVED her.

These were the horses that took us on our trail ride.  My mother was nervous that I'd be getting on a horse because a horse dropped me on my head when I was 7.  Please, that was so long ago.  And as Morgan pointed out, these horses were more like walking couches and behaved like they were under sedation.  And they were really sweet.  And peed a lot.

This was the horse they put me on because I had such miniscule riding experience (getting dropped on my head didn't actually require me to be on the horse when it happened.) They told me his name was Cisco, but I heard "Sisqo," and guess what has two thumbs and had The Thong Song stuck in her head the whole ride?  This girl.

That night we went bowling, and I was a jerk and didn't take pictures of Morgan's celebration.  I did, however, take a picture of the car wash next door to the bowling alley because it was called "Mr. Sparkle Car Wash" and I immediately thought of this:

One can only assume that this car wash banishes dirt to the land of wind and ghosts.

The next morning, I had to fly out of Lexington (and got a body scan in the process - hope you enjoyed the free show, mustachioed Kentucky TSA worker guy).  So Morgan and I went to the Waffle House for a birthday brunch, and also because the Waffle House is the most amazing place on the planet.  I wish they had them up here.  I'd be all up in that.  Their coffee is - no joke - the best coffee I have ever imbibed.  And I needed it, because after a few beers (actually, 2) at the bowling alley (the new miller-lite vortex neck? Overrated) and a big old mimosa at Morgan's after bowling (with the birthday girl and her rather delightful homegirl, Mary Clai), I woke up with the worst hangover and non-migraine headache I've had in quite. A. While.  I don't know what the hell happened to my tolerance level, but it seems to have left me along with my twenties and my faith in the Catholic Church.  

(Funny aside: Morgan made a joke about planes falling into the ocean before we left for brunch, and I was like, "Oh, THANKS for that, Morgan!" And she was like, "Really, you're worried about your plane falling into the ocean?  On the way home from Kentucky?" And I was like, "Oh, yeah, geography fail."  And I can't even blame that on booze.)

So yay to the Waffle House, and BOO to flying hungover.  I was already grouchy and dehydrated, and I had to schlep back home via Charlotte and its 672 gates in a row and suffer delays and cramped seating until I finally got home to LaGuardia and decided to splurge on a cab home.  That's right, I got myself home like a motherf*ckin champion.

And now I'm back home, and have to go back to work tomorrow. But I'm glad I spent my spring break visiting the south and my homegirl, and I liked horseback riding so much that I might splurge once in a while at Pelham Bay Stables for a lesson or trail ride.