1999-10-20 Met an older gentlemen by the name of Wild Bill Carter while doing laundry this afternoon in Owensburo. Bill was interested in my bicycle trailer. He told me about his own bike he still has from when he was 8 that he earned the money for selling magazines. It has 28 inch tubeless tires. He's 80 now. "I just got new teeth; that's why I'm talkin' funny. Lost my teeth in World War II, all but six of 'em, and I've been waiting for new teeth for three months and just got them today." He also wanted me to visit a lady with grandchildren older than me because she was from Wisconsin way back when. Her name was Nevel York but he called her Frosty because of the way she kept her hair. For some reason I had it in my head that I had to live on a tight budget. Don't ask me why. I know I can't afford hotel rooms every night, but I can afford decent meals. I had been buying groceries as I went along; all healthy stuff, but you just can't take a chicken dinner along with you on a bike. So I think I'm going to try to hit restaurants for breakfast and early dinner and use the stores for the rest of my meals. I'll see how that works. I ate at The Meridian in Hartford, KY. Excellent food. My body thanked me. Speaking of food, down the road in the City of Beaver Dam, just about everybody I saw was very "healthy." I find myself now camping in a meadow near the town of Cromwell. I've been following 231 since entering Kentucky. I hit the little big hills today. I'll likely be hitting the big big hills in the next day or so. That should be interesting. Somebody should pay somebody else to scrape dead animals off the road. I actually haven't seen a lot of LIVING wildlife, but I've seen just about every critter out there dead. It's sad, really. But it does serve to remind me of how much grace people are given by God. Can you imagine what the world would be like if we got offed (killed) as often as some of the other animals out there? I'm sure if a racoon attempted to retrace my steps so far, it would be flat within the first half mile, yet I've been narrowly escaping tragidy since I began. Grace. Uh-oh, I think I left my mittens at last night's campsite. Well, I'm not going back for them! That was a nasty route through Indiana. The scenery just keeps getting better and better. As long as you look past the garbage spilled all alongside the road. Very pretty country. Some rednecks drove by in a big pickup and yelled something at me. It sounded much the same as the people in Chicago were yelling at me, as it was incomprehensible. You know who I feel like? Did any of you ever watch Fraggle Rock on HBO? Remember the old Fraggle who traveled the world and sent letters back to the rest of the Fraggles?

Kentucky