Lexington,KY.

As far as I knew I didn't have to get up too early on Saturday morning. John would drop Fumiko home and then we would go to a local bar so he could watch the Ohio State / Michigan game. So I woke up without an alarm and then took the opportunity to talk to Darren. Public libraries are great for most of my computer needs but they generally don't have Skype so can't talk to Darren. I guess I should mention my parents in that sentence but I don't talk to them as often as I talk to Darren. I am a terrible daughter! However when I do talk to my mother we always end up talking about the weather. This is, not such an issues now that I call her on Skype but wasn't so great when I used to have to walk to the local train station and pay to call from a pay phone. International pay phone calls are not cheap! Anyway I was talking to Darren and suddenly John changes plans on me (in a good way) and I have to jump up and get dressed. We were off to see some horses and a racetrack.
The Kentucky Derby is held in Louisville, about eighty miles from Lexington but there are loads of house farms around the city. I don't know why they call them horse farms and not studs or racing stables as we do in the U.K.. So we were off to see a horse farm, we went to Keeneland, which is also a racing track. The farm is based among rolling green hills, it reminds me so much of the English countryside. We walked through the stables and then realised that the horse sales were going on. The horses were beautiful but apparently not the best of the bunch. The horse sales start at the end of October and the best horses are sold off first. Despite this a staff member told us that they had had a $3 million sales this week. We walked to the race track, which has a sand like base instead of grass like a lot of British race courses. In the stands they have a tape playing of a hawk to scare away the pigeons. I don't like pigeons.
We dropped Fumiko home and swapped her out for Aniru and went to watch the Ohio state (American) football game. They were playing Michigan State and this is apparently a big game. Like I know. Aniru wanted to watch a Manchester Utd game but the bar wasn't playing it and he went off to a British pub. John had decked me out in an OS sweatshirt so I fitted right in with the rest of the Alumni association we were going to watch the game with. We bought some raffle tickets and settled in to watch the game. Despite having watched a football game I don't know the rules and how it works so I was cheering in the wrong places. It was good fun, John was drinking Mimosas and handed over his car keys to me. Fool! Then the raffle started and it got embarrassing. John and I won at least four prizes, then Aniru returned,the game was not playing at the British pub and he was in a filthy mood, and won a prize as well. John was happy, Ohio State won. I still can't get used to that an hours worth of play will see you leaving a football game at least 2 1/2 hours after you arrived. We ended up in a pizza house for dinner. I say ended up as it took us a while to end up in the pizza house, a lot of walking when I was starving. We headed back to Johns and he fell asleep about 8pm. We were supposed to go to a Salsa dance party but I didn't really want to go. Then we found out that it didn't actually start until 10.30, I was definitely not up for that. I was in for the night. John woke up about 10pm but only Aniru went to the dance party. We wanted to be up early the next morning, John was taking me to the biggest cave in the world! I am such a sucker of an "est".
The drive to Mammoth took about three hours and involved a time change, which I hadn't realised. Lexington is on Eastern time and the west of Virginia state is on Central time. This explained a lot, I am still not used to being in a time zone behind the U.K.. And this will only get worse when Darren goes to Thailand, he will be even further ahead of me. Unfortunately despite getting to the caves visitor centre about an hour before the tour we wanted to take, it was sold out. we signed up for a shorter cave tour, only two hours instead of four hours. John and Aniru are talking about coming back and doing a six hour spelunking tour. I know I can't do that. Some of the caves are only nine inches wide and you have to crawl through them. Not for me. The tour we took was great, there were some narrow parts but at no time did I feel seriously freaked or scared. I always lie when people ask me if I am claustrophobic or afraid of heights. If possible I don't want my fears to limit what I do although it does happen sometimes. This is why I need to return to the Grand Canyon with friends. I wasn't brave enough to hike into the canyon by myself but I think I could do it as part of a group.
After our cave tour we hadn't had enough of being underground so we drove to Bowling Green and went to Lost River cave. Here the Green River goes underground into a series of caves and you can go and take a look. At the entrance of the cave there used to be a night club and they kept the drinks chilled by putting them into a small cave. The boat takes you in, the entrance is really low and we had to hunch over. After that the cave opens up. Billy the Kid is supposed to have hidden out here, but apparently he is supposed to have hidden out all over Kentucky. We did see a white squirrel before we went into the cave but couldn't tell if it was a true albino as it was too far away. We headed back to Lexington, making an after dark visit to Knob Creek, birthplace of Lincoln.On the intestate we saw this huge truck with two huge exhaust pipes going up the back of the cab, that's my dream truck!
My last day in Lexington saw me wandering around down town and then having to hurry back to Johns apartment to meet Chase and Aniru. We had sort of discussed doing something for lunch but hadn't realised that we actually had concrete plans. We met John and another friend Oki at an Indian restaurant with an all you can eat buffet. The vegetarian dishes were great, the meat ones not so good. John had to rush back to work but the four of us sat and chatted until the restaurant closed for the afternoon. I spent a couple of hours in the library trying to get stuff up to date. Yeah, not doing a really god job of that!!I did get to chat with Darren, always a pleasure. Dinner was at a sports bar, but only because they have a quiz on a Monday. I did not do well but I don't know what I expected from an American sports quiz. Not my area of expertise. John and I had an early night, I had an early flight the next morning.