Here is Ken's write up of his visit with us in Kentucky.

(I know he sounds like a homophobic-Republican-chauvanist, but that is just the facade he created to survive his Georgia farmboy youth. He is really a very kind and funny homophobic republican chauvanist. Enjoy, Djina)

It was with some trepidation that I approached this trip to meet the
Biers-Ariels-Liberals-VillageHomers Family in Kentucky. They had been riding for quite
a while, all through Utah and Colorado and Kansas and Missouri and Illinois; they were
no doubt rangy, weather beaten, tough hombres. I thought of them as not unlike a cell
of hardened inmates, heartless and cliquish … they even all had nicknames:
“Biscuit” and “Sprite” and “Cpt. Hook” and ‘Pebbles”. I feared that the
first night my tender, professorial, relatively sedentary butt would be traded around
the camp for cigarettes and Advil. So I thought it best to arrive with plenty of
bribes to trade. Perhaps, I thought, if I could get into their good graces, I might
survive.

Kentucky is in the Smoking Section of the United States. I knew this but it was still a
shock to pick up the rental and find, instead of the usual, ominous “No Smoking or we
will max out your credit card, asshole” signs in the car and the circle red X’s on
the one hidden ashtray in the dashboard, that EXTRA ash trays had been added to the
car. Into the many cup holders, and Detroit thinks we need a lot of cupholders, were
stuffed these round plastic ash trays. When I had picked up the car, I asked the desk
dude about an upgrade and he looked stunned. Actually, he looked surprised by all my
questions but when I noticed his name was ‘Trainee”, I decided to not challenge him
further; he already had his hands full. Walking out into the sweltering rental lot, I
soon discovered that no upgrade was necessary, I had been issued an immense 4-wheel
drive Chevrolet Carbon Footprint. The vast expanses of interior plastic alone depleted
fossil fuels of equal value to the GNP of many African nations and the steaming interior
was a mixture of Amazon heat and toxic outgassing from the plastic. It was the perfect
vehicle for my mission and I was attached to it immediately.

My first stop was a truck stop where I wheeled the Footprint into the lot and deftly
parked it in two spaces. As I entered, I picked up a Styrofoam ice chest and two bags
of ice. The day was off to a wonderful start. Next: an armload of Gatorades, a large
piece of folded paper marked, “Rand McNally: Kentucky,” that I mistook for a road
map, some D-cells, a sausage-egg biscuit from one of those heat- lamp chambers that gas
stations use to maintain food at the optimal temperature for bacterial growth, a quart
of full fat milk and a cup of coffee to replace the one that flew from the ash tray in
the Footprint during my wrong, yet high G-load, turn while leaving the airport as I was
searching, unsuccessfully, for the local road map that Avis usually leaves in the car.

On the folded paper marked, ‘Rand McNally: Kentucky”, I plotted a direct course to
the last known location of the Biers-Ariels-Tofu- Recycle Family. Banking hard to exit
the Interstate, I set off cross country to find them. No further than a mile later, I
was confronted by an intersection unmarked on my “map” and with road numbers
appearing nowhere on the “map”. I turned toward the general direction of my target
and sped off, figuring I’d use my keen sense of direction to find them. A keen sense
of direction is a great navigational tool in vast expanses of the Central Valley where
roads follow the ordinal compass quadrants. However, in Kentucky, where roads follow
creeks, fence lines and the historical drunken ramblings of coon-skinned pioneers, there
is no correlation between the direction from which a road leaves an intersection and
where it intimately leads. In that way, Kentucky roads are a metaphor for life.

As Djina noted, the state pastime is mowing. Everyone, regardless of their position on
the socioeconomic scale, mows with reckless abandon. The default color is green and,
given the soils and rainfall, things grow with ambition. Lawns are expansive. It seems
as though everyone, whether they live in a single-wide or a two-story red brick with
white columns house, clears their land and plants a wide lawn – fence row to fence row
- to mow. It is Manifest Destiny right there in the front yard. I realized, after a
few miles, that the rural Kentucky of today is a lot like rural Georgia when I was
growing up. That was before Georgia became as BlockBusterVideoStarbuck’sSubwayWalMart
as everywhere else. I loved the country stores, the variety of mailboxes, the older
farm equipment, the roadside pickup trucks selling sweet corn, the smell of the mowing,
the ole time flowers planted in the yards, the barns, even, to a certain extent, the
smattering of garbage on the roadside.

However, my enchantment with Kentucky was soon buzzkilled by two brutal realizations:
first, that I was lost and second, that I needed to pee. My “map” was woefully
inadequate, I was not on the road I wanted and the twists of turns of the road were
random, as though the Footprint, like an old mule, was headed home to the Avis barn. I
gave up on the “map” and the compass and headed toward a water tower on the hazy
horizon, figuring there might be a town connected to it. There was, and I was soon on a
road that was more or less parallel to my original route, albeit not on the “map”.
I phoned Djina to get their coordinates and confess that my “shortcut” had cost 45
minutes or so. They couldn’t have cared less, “Just come on for lunch!” they said.

I topped a hill and there was Yonah, leading the way with Matt, Solomon, the Beast and
Djina in tow. They looked great- all lean and tanned and with such natural pedal
strokes and smooth confidence on the road. We exchanged broad, happy smiles while I
decelerated the Footprint and ruddered it into a nearby corn patch for lunch. We
laughed and ate lunch amongst the soon to be silage, catching up on the ole times (…a
relatively short conversation) while ticks started sucking my blood faster than a John
Edwards tax plan. While I whined like a teenager about the humidity and changed into
short sleeves and pants, the intrepid cyclists tossed their load into the Footprint;
Djina and Solly jumped in, Matt and Yonah, unladen, bolted off and we all headed toward
the threateningly named Falls of the Rough. Solomon settled into the Footprint
immediately, mainlining iPod and tearing into the Sunday New York Times I had brought
them. “Are there any comics in this paper?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “They
call it the editorial page, Solly.”

Falls of Rough turned out to be a complete misnomer. We saw no falls and the
state/federal campground (Your tax dollars at work!) was luxurious – each tentsite was
about a half acre, beautifully mowed, there were clean, hot showers and even an airport
where I gazed longingly at an old Cessna Cardinal in great condition. We set up camp
and hit the local store – another one with no vegetables, one kind of cheese, 3 kinds
of beer and 15 kinds of fish bait. As we were paying, I asked the Marlboro Woman at the
counter how she was doing and she replied in a startlingly but not surprisingly raspy
voice, “Don’t even ask, Suga..” Not a woman to be trifled with. As we walked
out, I told Djina that the gal was probably pretty nice once you got a Winston Menthol,
a couple of Bud Lights and a Snickers bar in her. Most women are.

We had a great meal that night. It has been well blogged by Matt, Djina and Stephanie
the bike chick so anything I might add would be overblogging. The highlight was having
beers with Matt. As the hoppy relaxation settled in, we chatted over the boys, the
ride, the landscape, the bike mechanics that admire the aging but serviceable Beast,
their month without hot meals at the campsite… we watched the fireflies emerge and
circle us lazily, those insects with no sense of urgency, proudly flaunting their gift
of bioluminescence.

The morning dawned as humid and sticky as the breakfast oatmeal. Our plan was for
Footprint, Djina and me to sag the gear to the next stop, Linclon’s Birthplace, then,
once there, I’d borrow Djina’s bike, ride out to hook up with the guys and get in a
good bike ride in Kentucky. As we nudged the Carbon Footprint toward the humble
beginnings of Lincoln, Djina took her solar charger and attached it to the windshield
and started charging her phone. The charger, like most electro-mechanical devices, took
an immediate and intense dislike to me, a relatively light, but nonetheless
unapologetic, consumer of fossil fuels. Each time I rounded a curve at my usual
carsickness-inducing groundspeed, the charger would release its tenuous grip on the
windshield, leap across the car and attack me from my blindside. Finally, Djina
suctioned gripped the little photoelectric bastard to the sunroof and we motored along,
happily harvesting the sun to charge the cellphone, all the while averaging about 14
miles per gallon.

We stopped once to feed and water the guys on bikes and then we whipped into yet another
country store. This one was probably my favorite. Instead of benches outside, there
were broken down Lazy Bubba chairs, ready to recline. Inside, it was one of those
great, family operations, not a trace of corporate commerce. No barcode scanners;
prices were written on things with Sharpie pens. Beer, cold drinks, ¼-20 machine
screws, WD-40, Bud Light in those easy to carry 30 packs, night crawlers, crickets, ice,
regular unleaded, one brand of tampons and 2 kinds of cheese – each one orange and
individually wrapped. Except for the beer and the cold drinks, everything was dusty.
They also had a rich selection of ammo and orange hunting vests (color only slightly
different from the cheese). As Djina was paying, I hollered across the store, “Hi we
set for ammo, suga?” I didn’t hear – I mean I didn’t listen to – her reply,
which was staccato and piercing and sounded like Morse Code. Leaving the store, I made
a wrong turn out of the driveway, and soon realized that once again I was lost and we
were off the roads deemed important enough to make the cut and appear on the “map”.
I was 0 for 2 on navigation. As I lamented the sick, bitter, emasculated feeling of
being unable, even with a “map”, to navigate, Djina reassured me, “Oh, you get
used to it…”

Eventually, we found the Lincoln birthplace - an absolutely beautiful place,
meticulously maintained and with the great ole Lincoln family Bible that Matt described
so well. I loved seeing how it was titled the Holy Bible “including Observations and
Arguments.” We ended up renting a small cabin, built in the style of Lincoln’s
time. I left Djina at the McDonald’s (no, damnit, I didn’t have the presence of
mind to take a photo!) to blog away with all the McInternet she could eat and I biked
off to meet the guys. It was a joy to be on a bike, cruising along the Kentucky farms.
It was nice to be out, alone, riding new roads and I was soon very envious of their
daily rides across new country every day. Not that far out of town, I met up with the
guys and we had a nice, rolling ride back into town where we applied ice cream and
French fries to our needs.

After another great meal with the Biers-Ariels-Prius-ClothDiaper Family, another hoppy
and all too brief conversation with Matt, warm showers and a night in the cabin, I hit
the road the next morning on Djina’s bike with Matt and Yonah while Djina and Solomon
stayed back and blogged, downloaded and organized photos and read Harry Potter. It was
once again great to be out riding with the boys. I quickly realized, riding along with
Matt and Yonah, that not only did I lack the athletic skills to ride with them, I was
also sorely lacking in intellectual prowess. The conversation ranged from the
constitutional details of confirmation of Supreme Court justices to the Biblical
foundations for US. government to Dick Chaney’s career path from the Ford
administration up to and including attempted murder. And that was only the first 20
miles of the day. The level and depth of debate and discussion on this bike ride far
exceeds that in Congress. If you want to train to ride with the Biers-Ariels-
Solar-Democrats, you must not only beef up your legs and lungs, but you are going to
need to review all your political science, theology, literature and sociology from
undergraduate school. Actually, I’d recommend at least a year of graduate coursework
along with your rigorous abdominal workouts. At one point we were riding along and
Matt and Yonah were discussing the Federalist Papers, in Latin, as I recall, while I was
looking at a crushed mailbox and wondering how many 30 packs of Bud Light the driver had
before impact.

It was another beautiful ride, past the mowed lawns, old barns, corn, sorghum, tobacco,
soybeans, vegetable gardens and little towns. It was a blast to bike with Matt and
Yonah and tie into the conversation, all the while improving my vocabulary. About
halfway to the next town, I bid the boys goodbye and backtracked to rejoin Solomon and
Djina. I had another great ride, quiet and alone, happy but missing the banter with
Matt and Yonah, cruising through the foothills of Appalachia. There was one nice hill
and as I slowed while climbing it, the humidity took that opportunity to brutally
attack. Soon, I was dripping with sweat, unable to see anything ahead of me, attempting
to breathe through lungs rather than gills and remembering with every labored breath why
I moved to California. But it was still a delight to have the ride and I was a bit
disappointed when I rode back into town.

I found Djina and Solomon at the McDonald’s again. Solly was deep into Harry Potter
and surrounded by empty, greasy French fry envelopes. Djina was writing away, oblivious
to the McScene around her. We packed up and pointed the Footprint toward the next town.
We had planned to meet at the public library there, located, as Yonah had announced
the night before, at 90 Court Square.

We found 90 Court Square and the building looked just like a library should. Except it
wasn’t the library. It was the “old” library. I sat in the Footprint, ashamed and
forlorn, realizing that my record was 0 for 3 in successfully finding my way.

A man sitting on a bench chimed up that the library moved. We played 20 questions with
him until he won… “Is the building bigger than a breadbox?” “Do we go toward the
sun?” … Djina asked another pedestrian who offered that we needed to back track and
head back toward the Catholic church and that was right next to the library. Djina,
showing off those crack navigational and diagnostic skills of hers, then asked, “Is
that the building with the big steeple?”

So we headed back toward the house of God and circled it a few times, burning about a
quart of Exxon Unleaded while finding no purchase on the house of Book. We stopped
once again and asked yet another pedestrian about the whereabouts of the library. This
man, I could tell right away, was successful, knowledgeable and well bred. First, he
was no stranger to dental floss and second, he removed his sunglasses when he spoke to
Djina. I could imagine his momma telling him, an unlit Virginia Slim dangling from her
lips, “Luther, iffan I have to tell ya one mo time to take off dem Got-damn sunglasses
when you talk to me, I’ma gonna slap dem off yo hiad, boy.” Luther clarified for
us that indeed the library was right next to the church, all we needed to do was turn
left at the church and go down the street about a half mile and through a couple of
traffic lights. Simple. “It’s the old hospital,” Luther said. I wanted to
remind him we were from out of town and we didn’t know where the old hospital was, we
only knew where the old library was.

We backtracked, right down the road on which we had entered town and there we found the
giant, shiny and well-marked library we had zipped by on our way to 90 Court Square.
Inside we found Matt and Yonah, the only boys wearing bright yellow in the library. We
shared a last lunch and I bid them the best of luck and safety and I drove away to the
airport, allowing plenty of time to get lost. My last sight of them was as they were
eating lunch on the lawn of the library…. Solomon was practicing his batting swing,
Yonah was studying the map and Matt and Djina were moving around in that aimless, jerky
way, gazing down and picking up bike bags and things, then dropping them disgustedly,
so obviously “looking for something…”

Approaching the airport and my way home to Davis, I stopped to fuel the thirsty
Footprint, repair the worse of the damage to the interior and breathe the last bit of
sauna called Kentucky summertime air.