OK, so I’ve never blogged before. Or have I? I write a lot, and I speak my mind and I once published a website called nicksbytes.com where I shared my thoughts and asked others for the feedback. So maybe I have blogged. Of course, it wasn’t called blogging then.
Thus I shall begin this something new!
Tomorrow the Kentucky Derby is run here in Louisville. I really don’t know if I shall pay attention to it. Several years ago I found myself standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon in Arizona on the first Saturday of May. Another resident of Louisville spotted my license plate and asked me what I was doing on Arizona on Derby Day? I began giving him an explanation of my trip when I stopped and asked, “Well, what are you doing here on Derby Day?”
He smiled and said, “I find being anywhere but Louisville the best place to be on Derby Day!”
I agree with him.
Last night I was driving home from a visit to Pennsylvania. It was almost midnight when I turned west from Cincinnati for the last leg of the trip. I was surprised by the large amount of traffic on the Interstate, but mostly surprised by all of the stretch limos that passed me. I had completely forgotten about the Derby until then. And, with it being brought to my attention, I had to fight the urge to drive back to Pennsylvania.
Yes, I like horses. I have even enjoyed watching and betting on a horse race. But there is something about the hoopla that takes over this town in the last weeks of April through the first Saturday of May that turns me off. It is as if the city goes crazy.
It isn’t that I don’t like crazy, but I rather prefer my own insanity to the insanity of others. In that respect I suppose that I am like another man born in Louisville: the recently deceased Hunter S. Thompson. When you read Thompson, you just feel his madness! But it is a craziness that was purely him and it was within him and generally wasn’t the result of others or situations created by others. Hunter’s craziness came completely from within Hunter.
That’s the way I like to be crazy. I don’t need it coming at me from around me and I certainly don’t want to join in the madness of the Derby hoopla. All of that tires me and even this writing about it wears me out.
Speaking of which, I had best end this blog and get ready for tomorrow. I have a Kentucky Derby party to attend.
