400 More Miles

It's a holiday weekend, so masochist that I am, obviously I'm travelling.

I flew into Louisville, Kentucky (also known as Luhh-vuhl), on Saturday and picked up my rental car for what will likely be my last multi-state road trip.

Most of my knowledge of Luhh-vuhl comes from the movie Elizabethtown. The flick is often dismissed, but if you can get past Kirsten Dunst's generic-quirky-but-lovable-girl character and Orlando Bloom's weird American accent, it's a great Cameron Crowe film in which Susan Sarandon always makes me cry. And which is the reason I kept saying Don't miss 60B! while driving around last night. In the end, though, I didn't see too much of Louisville except from the road. It seems  a cool town, but I had much mileage to cover and no time to waste.

So today I woke up as early as the time change would let me and headed for my one tourist stop in Kentucky: a distillery tour. Of the many bourbon makers available, I chose the one that was the least out of my way and open on Sundays: the Bulleit Frontier Whiskey Experience. As I turned onto its street, I saw a big sign that said Diageo International and hoped it was just another nearby company, because, well, Diageo is what's wrong with the spirit industry. After seeing several industrial-looking buildings, I came to the gate, complete with a fake rustic wall and a security guard checking every car in and out. Well. I wasn't paying $10 for that corporate nonsense, so I skipped it and turned north toward Ohio.

My next planned stop was the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park... which was really just a visitor's centre and a few signs in the  middle of a downtown area, nothing much to see. Based on the signage, I went from there to Carillon Memorial Park. It was big and green, but again, there wasn't much to it. I went into the supposed brewing museum, which was just a brewpub with some old school 1800s equipment on display. I wasn't interested in eating or drinking, and it was way too hot to wander the park, so back on I-75 North.

Ohio must have a very large infrastructure budget, since there was major highway construction going on for about half of my drive up its length today. Also, they have these morbid signs that tell the number of traffic fatalities this year, to remind you to drive carefully. And maybe it works; the only dangerous moment of a full day's driving there wasn't caused by a driver, but by a tree. It fell suddenly from the shoulder to block 3 of the 4 lanes of the freeway, including the one I was in. Luckily traffic was light and everyone responded appropriately, so it wasn't the disaster it could have been.

Because I was on my way to Ann Arbor for the night, I spent a couple hours of the drive listening to Henry Rollins' Spoken Word Guy 2, which was recorded here. For probably 25 years I've been a fan of that guy, and maybe he's my hero. I don't know of anyone besides me and Hank who will pick up and go a random place alone, just because they've never been there and want to know what it's about. Sure, he goes to Iran and Syria where I visit Sweden and New Zealand, but he's been at it longer... I might still get to that level of road warrior. At any rate, I also live by his motto Knowledge without mileage is bullshit.

So I guess tonight, sitting in my third state of the day, I'm 400 more miles away from Bullshit. But there are always so many more to go...