Sharktrip 6-2-05
Kicked off right at noon. Made a brief stop at Wendy's for lunch and hit the highway by 1.
Talk about last minute prep. Changed to the summer tires on the shark yesterday. Dan was saying it felt a little spongy so we checked them before hitting the highway. Good thing... Right rear was at 18.5lbs. (should've been 44).
I was up till 8am this morning trying to get all my crap into one bag and finish my driving music mix. Crashed for a couple hours and finally got wrapped. Of course not before Dan rang the doorbell ready to roll.
Traffic getting out of the city was pretty crappy. Took us about an hour to get past all the construction around the Indiana border. Of course I loved it, getting to tweak the hair trigger on my masochistic bent. We'll see what Indy looks like...

Unfortunately, we weren't hungry about an hour out when we found the shiny orange billboard for our favorite chain-restaurant haunts. I thought it said there were two in Merriville/Sherville but could be wrong. We'll have to hit them on the way back. One for lunch one for dessert :-)

I took over driving the second leg about an hour before Indy, destination Louisville or Lexington, KY. Fairly uneventful aside from light drizzle most of the way. I don't know what it is but people just seem to pace you when you're in the shark driving at a 'reasonable' limit for them. Luckily it's easy to shake em' when you have to. Seemed like we came up on a nest of troopers at some point and saw a bunch headed in the opposite direction. Of course I got the pit in my stomach as one cruised up on me outta nowhere as I was leading the pack then flew right by. Made an excellent rabbit until he disappeared.

Once we stopped waffling about which town we thought might have better entertainment for the evening we opted for Louisville (Two years ago we did Louisville, last year Lexington). Dan used Microsoft MapPoint (shameless Mickeysoft plug for this really useful utility) on his laptop to check for hotels and came up with a Holiday Inn Express on the outskirts of the city. I just want to side note that this hotel was excellent. Nice room, with fridge, microwave, and most important, high speed internet. Free no less. Very good. Took a nice dip in the pool, got a free shower and fell asleep in the tub. Of course I forgot about the time change and we wound up doing dinner after 10. That was AFTER I told Dan we should not take a nap because we might not get food in time. My bad!
Well we did manage to get food in time. Remember that billboard we saw earlier... Well the call was too much once we had little orange owls floating around in our heads... Dan plotted our course for the evening using trusty MapPoint again which just happened to have all of our evening destinations available for waypoints.
So we did wind up at Hooters and have to say that I guess we have (in my opinion) been spoiled by our favorites in Janesville, Wisconsin and Downers Grove, Il. Maybe it was because it was so late, I donnow, but the service sucked. Laura our waitress was very uninterested in taking good care of us and we pretty much got passed off. Her loss (for those that know how well we reward good service). Anyway, I do have to say that aside from that, my BBQ pork sammich was fantastic. It also seemed like they took the meat and threw it on the grill which added some bonus flavor. Oh, and I just love those fried pickles. They need those up by us more often :-)

After that went out and found a few ways to get in trouble. Found the really bad part of town too when we got lost (WAY too many memories of the old hood). Headed back at 4a, checked mail and crashed hard, despite the adrenaline rush and lil nap. Nice capper for our first day.
 

Mike