Thunder Observations

This year's Thunder Over Louisville could not have been better.  The weather was gorgeous - low 70's and sunny, with a slight breeze all day long.  Traffic going home was way better than the last time I went - it took one-third the time to get home this year than in 2004; I got home just over an hour.  I'm sure that's a Derby Festival record.  There was no drama all day long - just fun and merriment and fireworks. 

As always, I was on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary to report to you, my faithful readers.  Unfortunately, I did not see any mullets.  Believe me - I was looking for them.  I saw some amusing sights during my 12 hours at Thunder Over Louisville, but the funniest thing I saw was on the way home.  As I was inching my way down Main Street, a group of young guys were crossing the street in front of me.  They were like the rest of the 800,000 people down there - carrying coolers, bags, plastic tarps and folding chairs.  One guy bringing up the rear of that group was their designated chair carrier.  When I say he was carrying folding chairs, I don't mean the kind that fold up and go in a nylon back with a shoulder strap; I mean the guy was carrying folding chairs - the metal kind like we have in the fellowship hall at church and at the VFW bingo hall.  The poor guy wasn't only carrying his own chair - he was toting three other ones, too.

As someone who's been in the Baptist church all their life, I've carried more than my fair share of these metal folding chairs.  But my carrying of the metal chairs has been from the chair rack to tables and back; I've never had to carry the chairs for blocks and blocks after partying out in the sun all day.  Nor have I carried four chairs at a time, either.  My hands are small and I can only safely hold one in each hand without dropping them.  I cannot imagine carrying two in each hand for goodness knows how many blocks.  I don't think I would have even carried one metal folding chair down there.  If that was my only alternative, I think I'd just sit on the ground.