Lightning

My colleague Gail (pictured below), her son Tugi, and I went to the inaugural game of Louisville's new professional indoor soccer team, the Lightning, at a soccer arena between home and work. I'd only been to one similar event - the final game of the ill-fated Tallahassee Scorpions at the Civic Center - although of course I'd been to half a dozen indoor soccer games that Vincent played in in St. Paul. Tugi had played soccer in a league here and so they recognized some people. One kid from church was also there. The Lightning led while I was there, but Cincinnati ended up rallying

-- Perry

Tough season

We've stuck with the Seminoles and embattled Coach Bobby Bowden throughout this difficult college football season (tough for University of Louisville fans) and have gone to several Kentucky Seminole Club events. Vincent of course missed the disappointing Clemson game this past Saturday night. Above our president, Mark, and we helped his girlfriend - they met on Facebook - celebrate her birthday. Below one of the more serious fans ponders the second half. Behind him is John, the former club president, who's active in local Republican party politics. I'm on afraid on this night - during a rare not close game - we drowned our sorrows in a little too much food.

-- Perry

Early October weekend

For the past three years, this was the weekend that the Danish exchange students arrived - and then there was a five-day weekend - but we're done with Danish exchange students, Vincent is not at Brown, and the exchange program is no longer. We've often gone to New Albany (IN)'s Harvest Homecoming Parade and Huber Farms on Saturday (and I've sometimes gone after work to Old Louisville's St. James Court Art Show Friday). We ended up not making it up for the parade but Stephanie and I did go to the art show Saturday afternoon. Stephanie asked me not to post the pictures of her eating, but there's a picture of the famous St. James Court fountain during our visit above and a scene of an artists' alley below. The art show was packed! I can see why I often go late Friday afternoon. Cool, fall weather has descended upon us. Although it rained some Friday morning - which no doubt complicated things - it's been clear since.

Next we picked up Vincent and headed to the KY Seminole Club viewing of the Florida State-Boston College game. With the recent losses, the crowds have dwindled - and some die hard members were actually in Boston for the game - but we hung around almost to the end, when a would-be turnover turned out to be for not and BC was able to run out the end of the game. A questionable call and a blown interception also punctuated the parts of the game we saw. We had too much food and Vincent took turns playing us in pool (where we meet for game viewing pictured below). The Buckeyes beat Indiana, which of course some of Stephanie's colleagues root for, but Louisville and Kentucky lost this weekend.

On the way home we stopped at Choi's Korean market (below) - in Linden, just a block from Pizza by the Guy, and some 3/4 of a mile from the Corner Cafe, where we celebrated Sarah's birthday the previous evening.

Stephanie - feeling somewhat better - and I - ailing - spent a decent amount of time at church today. I helped represent veteran members at a smallish potential new members' class - and then I said "Korea" in a World Communion Sunday opening celebration of where we're all from. This was a good service, complete with everyone in a circle at the end and cool music with Brad on percussion, Doug on the flute, and Kendra on the tambura) during the Lord's Supper: http://www.dougyeager.com/samples/DougYeagerCHPCWorldCommunion.mp3. Then at 4 p.m. Stephanie (for the first time this school year) and I were back - this time with Anna and Dawn - for Children's fellowship - sans "Debbie time" - the Children's choir part of it - because Lewis, Debbie, and Jessi went to Evansville after church. In the regime we've moved Children's Fellowship from Wednesday 6-8 to Sunday 4-5 and our seminary student intern, Rebecca (child of former Crescent Hill pastors) is leading it. Stephanie has been sick and two weeks ago we had just the two of us (Rebecca and I) and some 12-13 kids. This week we had nine kinds and four adults (much better)! After church I had noticed the church sign with a long-awaited new interior (below).

There's Rebecca, with Naomi (from New Albany) on her right, and Cara on her left.

Oden, Ethan, and Dawn attacked an art project.

I decided to skip a Southern Indiana United for Change gathering at 5 p.m. in Jeffersonville because I had started to feel sick (and now have a fever).

-- Perry

Figure 8 racing

During the past week we've seen some publicity about a special event at the Sportsdrome speedway in Clarksville, IN, near the freeways we sometimes take to the mall, movie theater, or Target in Southern IN (and near another short freeway Stephanie takes to work). Weeks ago my co-worker Gail had mentioned she was interested in taking her son to the speedway. Somewhat like at the old Columbus (OH) motor speedway (and like the straightaway National Trails raceway where Stephanie used to race), cars race here all summer (essentially through baseball season). But this track is unusual - we learned - in that it has an optional Figure 8 part of the track. Many races involve cars racing around a short oval track. But other make use of the Figure 8 and go around the turns but also through the Figure 8 portion. This is much more dangerous and - as it turns out - entertaining but as cars become stragglers it's hard for them not to hit each other in the middle of the Figure 8. The special event Friday was not only eight school buses racing - but eight buses painted pink - with some of the proceeds going to fight breast cancer. Pictured above was the Speedrome speedway as I walked up from my camera. The image is kind of deceptive - it wasn't really that dark yet, at 7:20 (I missed the 7 p.m. race). The place was packed, with the corporate sponsors promoting the fund-raiser and people excited about the Figure 8 school bus races. Below is the black "pace bus" - with insignia from the Hooters restaurant chain, one of the corporate sponsors. At that point it was in the parking lot - later it was the real pace bus.

The place was packed - apparently even more so than usual - The food lines were terribly long - reminded me about what I'd heard about the beer lines at the first Churchill Downs night racing night. The souvenir and beer lines, ironically, were not too long. It looked like a third of the people had bought the cool black "Stop Cancer" and "Sportsdrome Blackout" on the back T-shirts (which raised more money). This was definitely a white working class crowd - that reminded me of the non-ESL families at Stephanie's school and of Hamas. Some of this Vincent would have loved when he was a kid. Lots of smokers (since it was basically all outdoors - although people smoked in the men's room with the one long latrine also - Clarksville has no smoking ban and it probably woudn't have been enforce here anyway). Except for the fact that it's private property: I wonder how I would have done trying to get pro-Obama health care reform signatures here. Pictured below are some Hooters staff members selling fund-raising raffle tickets.

I had gotten my colleague's cell phone number, but apparently written it down wrong (and got someone else twice - apparently in NYC - since she has a NYC cell phone number). So I looked for her and her son Tugi for a while. Meanwhile, the racing continued - conventional, stock-car oval racing - only there were a lot of wrecks - Lots of the cars were all beat up and there were lots of red and yellow flags. The announcer was omnipresent, and his trademark message when full-speed racing returned: "We go green! We go green! We go green!"

I was still hungry. There was a VIP area - corporate sponsors? where there was a wider selection of food and no lines, but it didn't look accessible. This was one side bleachers. There were two main sets of bleachers, one on each side.

With my poorly functioning camera and the sun starting to set, one can barely make out the racing cars below.

I was really missing the video feature on my lost camera, partly since much of the thrill of this is in the motion and the noise. The crowd loved the crashes - but not the clean-up wait in between crashes and full-speed racing resuming.

I took this picture below of the west bleachers while looking for Gail and Tugi. I was starting to lose faith that I would find them after I'd been through all of the bleachers two times.

But they yelled out at me - they were sitting in the front row of the east side bleachers. I crawled up there, taking a slightly better picture of the cars racing on my way up.

Even though I had not seen them on my own, Tugi did kind of stick out - He and I were the only Asians in the crowd of some 10,000? - there were a smatteirng of Latinos (any of Stephanie's ESL students?) and African Americans. He's also very outgoing. He appeared to bother an Anglo kid sitting behind us for an hour - talking, jabbing - until the kid finally relented and talked with him and let him sit next to him. He sat in Gail's lap part of the time before that. But still this wouldn't have been half as fun to watch without a family there to watch it with. Stephanie was out with her colleagues on a largely girls night out (partly - it turns out - at a bachelor's party with guys from Ohio!) evening at Fourth Street Live. I had dropped Vincent and Jessi off to see a movie at the Baxter Avenue movie theater. Otherwise, I might have persuaded one or more of them to go. Again, I still hadn't figured out how to get the flash on the camera not to work.

Enjoying the evening and the whole scene with Tugi and Gail was fun - although the whole scene was kind of incongruous - the only two Asians in this white working-class racing crowd with the woman who still has a NYC cell phone number.

The other folks behind us - perhaps after some beers - became impatieht with all of the crashes and long yellow and red (yes - they really came to a complete stop - though I couldn't always understand how the jockeying for places during yellow flags - or whatever color they were - was allowed) flags with no racing - and became rather profance in expressing their dipleasure. Still, none of the three of us could have predicted the thrill when the car Figure 8 racing began - with a really incredible driver who - after the first few of 30 laps - continually daringly threaded the needle so that he got way ahead (with just one other driver, car near him - conceptually - in actuality, they were always "lapping" other cars - so there were cars - and, sometimes, conventional crashes everywhere - amazingly, while I was there, there were no figure 8 crashes - but plenty of very close calls. From this YouTube video, it's clear that there are sometimes such crashes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9v8bYXqlGI

This more like what I saw - plus without the distracting music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbXbPr6D94

And, then, finally, the pink school buses emerged. There was a lot of excitment and hoopla - but I needed to go pick up Vincent from Jessie's - and - while it was cool - frankly, ti was a little anticlimatic because it was very hard to beat the cars Figure 8 racing and that daring lead driver. The buses did not go as fast, there were no wrecks of any kind while I was still there, and that daring driver's bus conked out after not very long. Clearly, there are sometimes wrecks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv8nqzqlZPs

I continued to watch some as I walked towards my car and headed out into the night, past Slugger Field where the Louisville Bats had just lost a Game 3 International League playoff game to the Durham Bulls, and ontowards the Highlands.

-- Perry

Rivalry night

Friday night was - I believe - the third Louisville Bats minor league baseball game we've been to this season. And - overall- the third Louisville Bats-Columbus Clippers game we've been to at Slugger Field. I've included some mediocre pictures here because last weekend - for a variety of reasons - I was uncharacterically without a functioning camera and I missed taking pictures of our second trip to the annual Kentucky Seminole Club picnic (and I'm not sure I've ever taken pictures at a Seminole Club event - certainly, not going back to the Central Ohio Seminole Club or the Minnesota or Sarasota-Manatee Buckeye clubs). Most years several different non-local university clubs converge for a Bats game - most folks wear shirts for their school. This year we had several dozen folks there and the club president and historian threw out the first pitch (though we missed seeing this, as I had us filling out door prize forms in line). Above I was waiting for a non-Weight Watcher item (a Philly cheese steak). Below are mediocre pictures of the hosts of the picnic (Gary and Susan) and further below just Susan (the spirit-ual leader of the club).

Below are two of my Republican contacts in the club: John, who works for a Republican metro Council person, and Sarah, his friend, who is going back home to Oklahoma in between campaigns. She worked in the Bush White House, and John confided in me at the pool party that although his formerly Republican father is very concerned about health care reform - he's not excited about it or some other issues that rile up Republicans: abortion and gun rights. John and Sarah felt Obama's popularity ratings might come back up when the economy rebounds and joblessness ebbs - which they expect will happen - if not in time for House Democrats - certainly in time for the 2012 presidential election.

Stephanie and I tried to get a little exercise by walking clear around the stadium a couple of times. At times in the past we've sat a little closer to the action. Twice Friday night we sat down just a little on top of the bench of the visiting team (the Clippers) and cheered a little more loudly. Below a Clipper player returns to the bench. We've cheered the Clippers in the past to two close games (one victory and one defeat), but Friday night this was to no avail. The Clippers ended up losing badly. The Major League Baseball Cincinnati Reds, the Bats' MLB sponsor - have since our last game - called up a bunch of the Bats to play in the majors. But the Bats are still atop their International League division, while the Clippers are fourth and last. Still, it was a little disappointing that the game wasn't close. There was still at least one home run and one double play, which were fun to watch.

On our way back to the Seminole area, we spied Stephanie's colleague Angie, who has periodically let us use her front-row seats. They talked shop for a while.

We had gotten four tickets and Vincent's friend Jessi came with us. it turns out she likes baseball- which was a good thing because they sat for a while away from us, Vincent spent a lot of time getting food, and the Seminole Club people didn't talk with her that much (you can see some of the garnet shirts in the background).

Below is Vincent in between Stephanie and Jessi, in his new orange Halloween Express uniform shirt.

I went ahead and included the mediocre picture below because you can see Vincent standing, next to Jessi, in the new shirt (which we're going to have to wash daily, since he only has one).

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Below is an OK picture from Stephanie and my second walk around the stadium, where you have a different view of the action and the stadium.

I guess every night the Bats win at home there are fireworks, and so that there would be fireworks this night was not long in doubt. Using the "Fireworks" macro on my camera still did not produce a perfect picture (you have to hold the camera awfuly still for a long time).

On our way out - just as we had seen our friends Sarah and Dean at the movies the night before - Stephanie and Vincent saw our friend Jamie.

Downs after Dark

For the first time this year Churchill Downs - whose attendance has been lagging - staged races at night, even after it got dark. This took place in the context of KY Democrats trying to introduce slot machines at race tracks as the state faces massive budget deficits and Kentuckians abandon the state's race tracks and stream across the Ohio River to go to casinos in IN (see "The Money Man" and "Heart"). The first night of night racing was a mess, with way more people than the track was prepared for. By night three - last Thursday night - with just three more days of racing left for the season - things were just right - although there were still a lot of people, a lot of drinks, a lot of well dressed but somewhat racily dressed young women, a lot of trash - and some malfunctioning equipment that added to the excitement. Pictured above and below is the scene from our cart as we get transported from the parking lot (free parking!) to the track just minutes before the first race (6:00 p.m.) long before dark.



My friend Jamie had e-mailed Thursday morning about three free tickets and she dropped them by at lunch. A notice on Facebook turned up our church friend Paul, who had been at the "Belle of Louisville" activity the previous Thursday night and it turns out had been to the track a lot in earlier days and so was pretty familiar with the drill and gave us some tips. Stephanie, you'll recall, had also been to the Downs with her colleagues for a day of racing last June. Paul and Stephanie showed me the "paddock," where - between races - horses prepared for races and promenaded in front of fans and would-be bettors - and MCs interviewed people as broadcast on Churchill Downs TV.

Below I start to take it all in.

And Stephanie looks out with part of the Downs edifice (and a bluer sky) in the background.

Below are published programs - with detailed info - one page per race for the 10 or 11 races - and on each horse. Stephanie pored over these to come up with picks. Paul suggested we pick not always the horse who oddsmakers said would win nor the biggest long shots - but horses somewhere in between. Stephanie went little according to details such as horse's name or birthplace but instead focused on the horse's racing records and odds (all numerical information). Another factor Stephanie occasionally looked at was the identity of the jockey. Kentucky Derby- and Preakness-winning (and local) jockey Calvin Borel rode horses in several of the races (and rode winning horses once or twice).

We missed the first race but soon got a look at the track (and it turns out horses run on both the dirt track and the interior grass lane - and start all over the place depending on the length of each race).

This is a TV screen (below) back at the paddock showing a horse being equpped I think somewhere near by in the paddock.

Paul, Stephanie, and I found our seats in a season-ticket box in the grandstand area. It was much cooler than a week before, when we were suffering in the heat on the "Belle of Louisville," and so Stephanie didn't miss too much the inside air-conditioned area with the lunch buffet.

On our way up to our seat we happened across fellow church member Marcus (or Marc Daniels - his stage name) who was there working as a juggler and entertainer at the track - for the second time during the three-night Downs after Dark series.

Paul only bet a couple of times. Stephanie generally had me do $2 bets fro two, three, of our horses - usually just picking which one would win or which one would be in the top three. Once Stephanie picked the top three all corrrectly. Had she picked them in the right order, she would have made a lot more money, which Paul encouraged her to try. Generally, her strategy allowed her to break even. One time she made some $14, after spending $6. She usually made at least one correct pick.

I eventually bought two hot dogs, a slice of pizza, and popcorn (and lots of water). Below is the Derby dog all the way I got - with chili, cheese, onions, jalapeno peppers, pickles, tomatoes, and otehr things I don't remember or probably didn't recognize.

On one of my walking around betting/food trips I went back towards the paddock and took a picture of an interview simultaneously while it was being beamed up onto the TV screen. Between about the fifth and eighth race it was completely packed down there.

In front of the paddock area was a statue of (and I believe the grave) of Barbaro, the horse who I believe won two years ago and then got injured and was nursed for almost a whole year before succumbing to an injury. As you can see, at this point, it's still pretty light out.

A cover band - with goofy, red, white, and blue outfits - following the pre-July 4 patriotic theme that spilled over into several honors to troops and veterans - played for most of the first half of our night there. What I remember was walking next to the dance floor as the band - which would obviously play anything - segue from the Commodores' disco hit "Brick House" to 80s big rock banc Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar (on Me)." The crowd particularly liked the latter.

Stephanie peered out at the races all the more closely when we had preferences and a couple of dollars were involved.

My friend Jamie, who you'll recall brought me the tickets, had told us in advance she wouldn't get there with her kids until around 8 p.m. Below is Jamie's son, Grant, whose bid to Vincent's old school as a 6th grader I had discussed with her.

Jamie and daughter Grace peered at their program, betting on several of the races.

Belos is the starting gates - mobile - for a start that was unusally right in front of us.

Stephanie and Paul enjoyed talking about racing and other things in the box as the sky darkened.

Below the horses moved towards the start.

Below I've included the start of this race in front of us - even though the picture is blurry - as it's a rare time see the start of a race so close.

There are parts of the race during which you just can't see the horses that great from the stands and you're more likely to be watching on the TV screens. As the horses come around the final turn you can see them directly. But I love the time when the TV goes from the split screen - half a screen showing all the horses and the other half showing just the leaders - to one screen just as they come around that turn. In soem fo the best races, all the horses are bunched together at this point. Watching a great finish - all the more so when your horse is in the middle of things - is great.

Jamie and Grace watched more races even as the night grew later and they contemplated leaving before it was all over. It turns out that Paul was ready to leave when the most acclaimed race - like the Derby, on Derby day - two races from the end. But Stephanie and the kids (and I) wanted to keep going, staying for - and betting on - all the races.

On my last food foray I went into an area inside that I hadn't seen before - where people could bet on horses, self-serve (I always went to a window and dealt with the same real person - usually collecting any winnings and placing a bet on the next horse at the same time - and also could bet, self-serve, on races at other tracks. It's in this room that I could imagine Churchill Downs adding slot machines - if and when the legislature and perhaps voters go for it. So far- like in Ohio - the Republican-controlled Senate - where the KY Baptist Assembly is powerful - have prevented that. Our friend Marian Taylor - the new KY Council of Churches director - will no doubt work with the Baptists and the Cathoblic bishops in opposition to expanded gambling - even though in very tight budget times like these the possibilities for saving cuts in social services or schools through taxes and fees from expanded gambling seem somewhat attractive.

As we left I took a picture of the track awash in lights in the 11:30 P.M. darkness.

One of the cool things about the night - the great weather, the winning races, the company, the Downs after Dark craziness - was the outcome of two races. We learned later in the paper that the Downs photo-finish equipment had broken down. And so there were two races that were so close that we couldn't tell from the replay who won - but that in fact was all the race officials had to go on, since that automated photo-finish equipment was not working. And so - not once - but twice - the officials had to call "dead heat." This excited us fans - on top of the exiciting waiting period before they called the races - partly because it meant that two groups of people - who had picked two different horses - could both say they won and both claim victory winnings. Click on the button on the screen below to watch one of these super close races.

-- Perry