Cincy

From the wonderful retreat in the woods, we drove west through the southern portion of Ohio towards our final destination of Cincinnati. The landscape really flattens out in Ohio & there isn't much to see. One interesting phenomena we noticed were small groups of teenagers hanging out on overpasses in the middle of nowhere, waving at interstate traffic. One look around, and we realized that there must not be much else to do in the farmlands of Ohio.

We made it to Dave & Kristen's house in the late afternoon. They live in a very quaint little neighborhood & they have an adorable house. While waiting for Bobby to meet us there, we caught up in the kitchen. Kristen was finishing up prep of stuffed pasta for dinner and we put together a batch of Sangria (for Saturday). It was such a beautiful day that we elected to hang out on the porch. Bobby made it in just in time for dinner, and we all ate out on the porch together. After dinner settled, we walked over to a few of the neighborhood bars. They were mostly quiet, but had a great beer selection & we had lots of fun. We stayed out until around 1:30 enjoying the company of friends.

Saturday morning we got an early start - Kru was really excited to bring us to a local market where they prepare amazing waffles. This was a really great treat for breakfast. We also shopped around for lunch supplies - including fresh sausage from one of the largest cased selections I have ever seen. The picture below shows about 1/4 of the total selection to choose from.

  

Most of us were unable to settle on any 1 particular variety of sausage because there were so many that sounded amazing - so almost everyone picked out 2 or 3 to try.  Due to the size & variation of our order, David typed up the order on his phone and nervously handed it over to be filled.  We walked away from the meat counter with 15 different pieces of sausage, each wrapped & labeled for its type.

Once we got to the park, Brandon took the lead on mapping out which sausage varieties were in what spot on the grill. This is his sausage-mapping pose:

Kru was working the grill and I helped out with a map accuracy audit.

After stuffing ourselves with way too much delicious food, we decided to play a few games of cornhole.

All-in-all, it was an amazing day at the park. We stuck around there until mid-afternoon & then retreated back to the Kruminaker household to regroup for our evening activities. Dave & Kristen were doing a great job of keeping our schedule full of fun activities around Cincy, and they didn't let us down with their selection for Saturday evening. They took us down to an event called the Hyde Park Blast - where there were hundreds of people and lots of street vendors set up. Everyone was watching a circuit cycling race that was taking place. I looked up a few of the details on the website for descriptive purposes...basically, the race we were watching is a Pro Men's race where something like 50 cyclists raced on a circuit course for 90 minutes. Below is a map of the course - you will notice the relatively short distance and the extremely tight turns.

Needless to say, the cyclists ride VERY fast (maybe 35-40 mph) and just mere inches from one another when they are in the pack.

 

The turns were absolutely nerve wracking - these guys look like they'd lay their bikes down at any second...

After all of the excitement at the races, we decided to head across the state border into Kentucky for some good German fun at Hofbrahaus. Great authentic food & beer mugs the size of my head!

We cabbed home after dinner & drinks with the most fascinating cabbie - he had one of those old fashioned handlebar mustaches that easily protruded further than his ears on each side of his face. He & Kru had a long discussion about their deep love for Aamurikah =)

We woke in the morning to say our goodbyes and take off for the long drive home.