March 18

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Yesterday I walked in downtown Louisville again.

A bunch of brave souls are working at reviving several blocks of Main and Market streets, not quite a mile east of our hotel.  There are a number of art galleries, and a number of restaurants in that area, and it is clear that a great deal of effort is going into restoring the buildings, and building the businesses.

A number of the restaurants have been very well reviewed.

I had lunch at the Mayan Cafe.  The man who started it is from the Yucatan peninsula, and is part of the "local/regional/seasonal" food movement.  I had a vegetable plate, including the restaurant's signature lima bean dish (with toasted chopped pumpkin seeds and lime juice).  Tasty.

I had thought I'd make another try at finding and walking on the pedestrian bridge over the Ohio.  It is east about as far as I went.  After lunch I headed north toward the river. 

I happened across Washington Street, which has a few residential blocks undergoing heavy-duty renovation.  There are some cute houses and nice trees and gardens along those blocks.  There are also ADT security signs in most yards.........  Not a secure location, I'm concluding.....  And the residential area was just a couple of blocks of Washington, and a couple of blocks of Franklin.  The rest of those streets was commercial, at least the parts I saw.

I kept walking north, and the area got more and more deserted-looking.  In addition, the sky was getting darker and darker.  I decided to head west back toward the hotel, and scratch the bridge.

I walked along close to the river.  It's clear that a LOT of cleanup work is being done, as the water recedes.  There were BIG piles of tree trunks, branches, etc.  It takes a lot of energy to move things of that size!  I saw one dumpster full of large pieces of trees.  I saw front-end loaders and dump trucks in use......

The river has gone down a lot.  Many feet.  River Road was impassable, at the hotel, and yesterday it was wet and covered with silt, but could have been driven on by cars if they weren't still working on cleanup down and around that area.  We did get some rain last evening; I hope it wasn't enough to make too much difference to the recession of the flood.

We ate in the revolving restaurant at the top of the hotel.  It was pretty good (and they gave a discount to people who are staying in the hotel, which brought it down from $$$ to $$).

We have seen barges being pushed by boats.  It seems that they chain a number of barges (nine, say) together.  The barges are long and skinny, so that even when they are three abreast, the width of the group is much less than the length of one barge.  Then the boat is fastened to the back of the group. 

I wonder what they are carrying!  I have seen what I bet is coal, but many of the barges are covered.

Most of the ones I've seen have been going downstream, so the boat's primary function (I think) is to steer.  And some pretty heavy-duty steering it is -- going around Louisville there are a lot of bends in the river, and steering something as long and unbending as that set of barges.....  Non-trivial!

There was a much smaller boat waiting near the railroad bridge.  It escorted the barges through, and seemed to be giving info the the pilot of the boat pushing the barges as to exactly where it needed  to be, to safely get around the curves and under the bridge.

Seeing all the Very Large pieces of wood that have ended up on the shore as a result of the flood, and watching other such things speeding downstream with the current, really brings home the extent to which navigating a river is NOT like driving on a road.  It changes from moment to moment, and you can't see what lurks beneath the surface.......

Speaking of things lurking beneath the surface, I saw something pretty big jump out of the water yesterday.  It was 4-5' long, and it was high enough that most if not all of it was clear of the surface for a moment. 



In order to facilitate reading the Louisville posts in chronological order, I have put a link at the end of each post to the next one. The post after this one is here.

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