For some reason Louisville has the St. Patrick’s Day Parade eight days before the actual holiday. I’d never attended before, but Timothy told me the Pedal de Ville team needed some help. He wanted to, but he was busy racing Death March with Asher.
I didn’t want to leave a bike locked at the parade staging area so I walked the two miles there. It was a nice day. I took the shortest route which took me through a bad neighborhood, but it was the middle of the day and I had no issues.
I knew nobody there. I was introduced to Scott, the Schlafly representative. Schlafly was sponsoring this “float”. It’s not really a float. It was a decorated, pedal-powered, bar. It could hold over a dozen people.
They were still in the process of decorating the “float” for quite a while after I arrived. Some stuff was St Patrick’s-themed, other stuff was Schlafly-themed.
This was Lilly. Poor dog.
We eventually got underway. We began with a minor hill, but this thing weighed 2500 lbs. I think a few people didn’t pedal. There was no shifting, and the first few feet were difficult. After that we had to be careful to not run over children.
We cruised slowly along Baxter Ave and Bardstown Rd. The spectators were pretty crazy. Everybody wanted hand-outs, but I had little to give. It felt wrong to give green plastic bead necklaces to children.
We were egged on at the end to go faster, so we spun like crazy, taking our speed from 2-3 mph to probably 5 mph. That thing is heavy!
We parked at the end, and I walked down with a few of the others to the Schlafly event at River City Drafthouse. I had three beers and some food. I paid for the food, Schlafly covered the beer. That was very kind of them.
I walked three miles home. This was not in a bad neighborhood, nor was I the only walker out and about. I stopped again at Four Pegs for a few more beers.
At this point I stumbled home and went to bed. It wasn’t a bad way to spend a Saturday. Five miles, too many beers, too many calories, and a whole lotta fun.