While in Lexington, we visited Keeneland; which we have been told is the highest grossing horse track in the world. We bought a ticket for the cheap seats, so we stood in a cluster of large hats and dress coats as everyone crowded around the fence. Personally, I don’t see why you would pay anymore for a stadium seat. All of the fun seemed to be in the chaos on the ground and you could feel the excitement building among your fellow herdsmen. It all starts as the workers, who I am sure have a technical name unknown to the novice, pull the gates around and begin lining up the numbers. Then, a few minutes before the race begins, a bugler plays the well known tune as the hustle and bustle continues around the track. A bit of time elapses, gamblers talk excitedly about their bets, then the second bugle song sounds to announce that the race is about to begin. The announcer introduces the horses, a gun is shot, and they’re off! All of the excitement explodes as the horses shoot out! Cheers, gasps, sighs, and explicative shouts fill the air while the horses make their way around. Then, in what seems to be a millisecond, it’s over.
This week, the excitement has built for your favorite Bauers, as we began the race toward the finish line—hitting the road. Do you remember the mounds of stuff that we moved last week? Well, we went home to pack up the scraps left behind, and they ended up being much more than scraps. The entire first floor of our house was turned into a collection site of clothing, electronics, camping supplies, and more, all thrown helter-skelter into a disaster zone. It looked like we never moved anything out in the first place. As I continued to work a full-time job, Bilbo worked at the house. When I came home, we both continued to work. Monday passed, with a nice farewell outing for me and my Bible study girls. Tuesday passed. Wednesday passed, topped of by a farewell cookout with our Bible study group. At this point we realized that, despite our non-stop efforts, we were in over our heads. There was no possible way for us to be ready to leave by Saturday, so the reinforcements were called in. My parents and brother, aka “The Vance Brigade”, came to our rescue. Thursday night, we finished boxing up all of these “scraps”. Friday night, Bilbo and I took the cats to the Vance residence and stayed the night to help them acclimate. Saturday morning, the Vance Brigade returned to the Ramblin’ Bauers house, along with Miss Kitty (the RV). All of our remaining belongings were loaded up, and Miss Kitty took on her new role as a storage unit. Finally, we were moved out and the house was ready for our renter to move in! By that point, we were all exhausted!
But, we had to return to the Vance residence, unload the items needed for the first month of our trip, reorganize them, and pack them up into our little Honda. That’s right, folks! We are living out of our itsy-bitsy little Honda Civic for the first month of our adventure. It is a daunting task to try to pack enough clothing, toiletries, medications, and camping gear for a whole month and then fit them in to a 10x5 space, while leaving enough room for two adults to sit. YIKES! We managed, though! So, with the car packed, we went to bed to rest up for the take off—only one day later than planned! Next morning, we got up, loaded into the car, said our goodbyes, and set off of Asheville, NC!
Now we are chilling with our friends, the Dutchie and the Duchess, and their new little bundle of joy, Baby Van Acht the Grey.
After our a month full of craziness, it has been completely WONDERFUL to just relax! We have ventured into town a few times. First, we went out to Neo Burrito for lunch. Coincidentally, there was a clinic beside of the restaurant advertising colon cleansings. That gave us all a chuckle, except Baby V…he didn’t get it.
The burrito place was set up like a Qudoba; pick a general type of burrito then dress it up the way you like. It was much much better than Qudoba, though! The atmosphere was nice with very friendly service and an industrial themed decor with mostly recycled building materials. The food was all bought local and fresh and was high quality for a good price. They also give you a mound of chips on the side and offer a free salsa bar with a variety of fresh made salsas. My favorite was the sweet and tangy pineapple and Biblo’s the cilantro bean salsa. With our bellies full, we returned to the van Acht’s to catch up and digest.
Later that evening, we went on a driving tour of the super hippy downtown and shopped at the nice hippy grocery store with all local and organic foods. Since we were full on burritos, but skipped the colon cleansing, snack foods were on the menu for the evening. We got a variety of snack mixes with fun names like “Mocha Nut Crunch” and a mystery “Oriental Rice Snack Mix”. Then we returned to the house and broke out, what else, a board game. You see, the Dutchie and the Duchess are our favorite board game companions because they are just as geeky as us. The game of the evening, which we just opened last night, was “Le Havre”. It is the sequel, you may say, to our favorite board game “Agricola”. “Le Havre” is a turn based game revolving around the buying and selling of good in a harbor (which is what havre translates to) all for the purpose of gaining wealth. This game is greatly influenced by another classic “Caylus” and made by the same designer of the aforementioned Agricola. As I mentioned before, the game is brand new so we had to learn the set up and the rules. The inaugural game took us only 6 hours and went as most do. We left out rules until we discovered them half-way through, we inadvertently cheated, and we forgot some main steps. All in all…it was great! Now that we know how to play, we are going to have a real fight to the death tonight. As a side note, Bilbo won the first game by a small margin, but unsurprisingly was also the player that cheated the most. A final point of importance to our gaming with the van Achts is the fact that we don’t really care who wins as long as Bilbo loses. So, wish the three of us luck as we take him down.
That’s all for now, folks! There is more to come in a few days as we set our sights towards Raleigh to visit another friend, the Barefoot Physicist.
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