Tuesday, September 28, 2004

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28 SEP 04: K-WHY?



With apologies to a TV station in Los Angeles for our title -- I head on vacation today. I timed this 11-day trip perfectly, to ignore at least two presidential debates.



The church denomination I attend has convention sites around the world. The Columbus congregation normally is assigned to Panama City Beach, Florida - but several months ago I applied to visit Lexington, Kentucky instead. After four Florida hurricanes in two months, I'm looking like a genius....



But it was not an inspired sense of meteorology sense that moved me to visit Kentucky. Lexington is a "designated singles site" for our denomination this year. For a guy like me, it's a bit like Alabama legalizing crossbow hunting a few weeks ago.



So admittedly, I'm going to Kentucky partially in hopes of meeting new single people - and whatever might (ahem) follow from that. That is, if the women ALLOW me to follow from that....



There's only one problem with my grand strategy. A friend of mine at church told me several weeks ago that many single women are avoiding Lexington, and heading for Panama City Beach instead. I hope they took toolboxes to help repair buildings.



There's one other challenge I face in taking a trip to Lexington. It's the home of the University of Kentucky, or U.K. My alma mater is Kansas, or K.U. For my own protection, I'm only taking one Kansas T-shirt with me....



(At least I'm going there at the end of September. Kentucky is a lot like Kansas in one way - when college football season starts, it means one thing for the fans. The college basketball season is only a couple of months away.)



My figuring shows it'll take about eight-and-a-half hours to drive from Columbus to Lexington. It's interstate highway all the way - and I'm renting a car, so I won't risk having to get out and push my humble Honda up the Smoky Mountains in
Tennessee.



Which reminds me: have you heard the new radio ads for Callaway Gardens? They praise the park's location "in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains." Is it really a good idea to connect the gardens with the Appalachians - and imply Harris County has all sorts of backwoods hicks?



So if you'll excuse me -- I'll post this, get some sleep, then finish packing and hit the road. I MIGHT be able to post blog entries from libraries in Kentucky. Presumably the public access computers are somewhere amid the stacks of books on
bourbon and racehorses....



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