Fun Around Danville

When I arrived to America in April I was not expecting any excitement in my life. My job was crap and after work I was going nowhere. After first two miserable months, I managed to change the department. The fun started. Suddenly there were so many people around me and I started having normal social life.

I was very lucky all that this happened before the Independence Day. My "body" quality auditor is also an assistant chief in a fire department. And fire department is responsible for funny fireworks on 4th of July. Instead of spending that day on my own he invited me to watch the fireworks his fire brigade was making. Well, who would not agree to that?  I did not have to stay behind the barriers in the crowd of normal people. He took me straight where all the fire workers were shooting the fireworks.

I got my seat at the back of one of the trucks and with my camera ready I was waiting for the fun to start. It seamed to be ages before it got dark enough. But when the show started, it was amazing. I was sitting right under the fireworks. I was so closed that the fireworks hardly ever fitted in my camera screen. It was amazing, very loud and frightening. But to make the matters worse, the next round of the fireworks was shot from the boxes – even closer to me. All I could see were hot ashes falling on the ground all around me. I was expecting any of them to land on me and inflame my Indian shirt at any second. Fortunately, they all missed me. I even managed to keep my camera on, recording all the fire.

I have been in all sorts of troubles in my life, worse than this one of course, but still the combination of shooting, fire and darkness gave me a lesson. Next time I will not want to be "that" close to the action. I am sure from the distance the fireworks must have been a great fun.

As you see the photos of the fireworks, remember the fear I was in taking them to share them with you.

Ever since I changed the department, invitations for stuff to do after work were appearing frequently. The IT engineer-very good friend of mine and a private doctor for my personal computer gave me the leaflet advertising the Great American Brass Band Festival.

"Delight in the spectacular sounds of the Great American Brass Band Festival, an outstanding weekend of music and family fun…The weekend also includes a hot air balloon air race, parade and fireworks display." All that was free to everyone! So why not to go? And I went even if there were actually few reasons why not to. First it was too hot for wondering outside, second I did not have a clue what type of music this Brass is. I wanted to listen to the New Orleans jazz and see the race, but I got lost on the way and arrived when the Civil War soldiers were "playing" on authentic period instruments.

I can tell you one thing. If I was at the civil war and listen to this music I would go begging the enemy to shoot me. But that’s just a personal opinion. There were actually crowds of people enjoying themselves, having their little tables and chairs in the shade stalls swinging themselves to the rhythm.

For me the main reason to be there was to buy something from my IT friend’s stall, as he was rising money for his daughter school (or something like that). There were many stalls. Some of them were making funnel cakes, some selling rib eye steak sandwiches, ice cream sausages, roasted almonds, lemonades and pretzels, also burritos and enchiladas or even Jambalaya with shrimps. The selection was wide, prices high, and quality low.

Well, I got out of the house; I saw a bit of scary American culture. I have learnt something new - I don’t like Brass. So the day has been good. If you do like this style of music, the Festival takes place every year in mid June in Danville, Kentucky.

Most of the fun time needs to be planned and booked. But there is something to do around Danville that can be done on the spot. Do a little hike. There are many hiking trails around shaker town but just few have access to the place where you park your car. Holy Sinai's Plain Trail is one of them. To get here take US 68 pass by turning to the right to the Shaker town and keep going. Very soon the sign on your left indicates Dixie rides, take it and follow the paved River Road to the first white gate and leave your car in front of it. The gate ahead of you closes at 5pm! So make sure to park in front of it.

Follow the sign "Sinai", the path will take you over the fields and wild birds will be flying over your head. As you get lower and lower, you will hear the birds chirping in the bushes around you. Don’t miss a "special apple tree" whose name I forgot, on your right as its fruit is supposed to remove bugs from your cupboard. I cannot confirm that as there were no bugs in my cupboard before and there are no bugs now.

Anyway, back to the trail. Path ends at Shakers' secret outdoor worship site. The Holy Sinai’s Plain was constructed in 1840's, when a wave of spiritualism and renewed religious fervor coursed through all Shakers communities. In the 1850s the Shakers ceased to use their secret outdoor worship sites and removed the evidence of their location. Using a combination of maps, journal entries, and field archeology this elusive site was discovered in 1997 and is open to public daily all year round.

Round trip is only 1 mile so it is suitable even for little kids or physically less strong individuals.

Danville is not the most exiting place in the world but there are fun things that can be done. For example: bowling at Bowlarama Lanes.

This bowling site is at Greenleaf shopping Center and provides an inexpensive way how to spend an enjoyable evening. The food here is basic but then you came here to play not to eat.

The shoe rent is $3 and one game per person is $6. All very good here,  shoes are nice and comfortable and plenty of bowls to choose the right one from. All seems perfect before you start throwing the bowls.

The lanes for sure must be curved or something as no matter how hard I tried to do it right my bowls ended in gutter too often. Somehow these lanes have magic powers, they seem to straiten up when other people were playing and then curve again when it was my turn. It is unbelievable. You must come here on your own and try you luck. Will the lanes like you or not?

To Work in Project Management means working long hours any day of the week.

But once I got home at 3:30. Hurray. Lets do something with this great extra free time! I phoned a friend from work to see if we can go squirrel hunting. Great idea, so we went.
We got ready the rifles and started searching for the right trees. We found the trees but no squirrels on them. We really wanted to catch something to eat! We saw a little pond in the wood but there were no frogs to catch and eat either. We walked around the field but there were no rabbits to shoot.

Never mind lets try to catch a fish in the creek! Well we caught some crawfish but they were too tiny for dinner.

We were getting quite hungry and the only other animal we have not tried to hunt was a duck. Ducks are normally on the lake at the cemetery. Last try, the end of our hunting day was at cemetery. No duck- of course.

So we did not catch any meat for dinner but fortunately we found some good mushrooms.
When we got home we wrapped them in the breadcrumbs and stuffed some of them with cheese and ham. They tasted good.

Sounds like a happy ending of the unlucky day. Well, those mushrooms were poisoning which I noticed like half an hour after eating them. I have hurt stories about mushrooms poisoning whole my life so I knew what to do. I drunk milk and vomited as much as I could as quickly as I could. The vomiting was coming back in waves accompanied with heavy diarrhea and at some point it was nearly constant. I left the door from my house opened and packed stuff for the hospital in between waves but I survived without phoning an ambulance. The periods between waves started getting longer so I knew I am not going to end this day at the cemetery. My "friend" ended much worse then me. Even two days later he was seeing blue woman and flashes of lights flying around him but fortunately he did not end up at the cemetery either.

And what is the conclusion of the story? So many of you now say: Don’t eat mushrooms! But the conclusion is: Don’t go from work on time!