Lower Louisville

I had never intended for Louisville to be much of a stop. Mostly, I was going to drive all day, sleep on some guy’s floor, and go to St. Louis early the next morning. However, when I decided to leave Shenendoah a few hours early, things changed. Suddenly I had time to drive to Charleston, and add West Virginia to my list of states. Then, with the shorter drive to Louisville, I had time to go to a distillery, Buffalo Trace, and sample one of their 300,000+ barrels of whiskey, as well as see the world’s largest bat at the Louisville Slugger factory. But when I set off for my couchsurfing host’s place, I intended for a quiet restful evening.

The house was in an old slum just outside the city. A row of houses, paint flaking and wood rotting. Across the street, an aborted abandoned factory full of scrap. My host was sitting on his porch playing Magic with half a dozen of his closest friends. My host was shirtless, showing off his bowtie tattoo. His friends sported various odd piercings, shaved heads, mohawks, yellow teeth, and speedos. My host stood to greet me, 10 minutes later when the game ended; I pretty much hovered around until then, wondering if I was in the right place.

But I was, and my host was actually quite friendly. He gave me the short tour. Packrat garbage littered the entire house. The porch, their playing field, was sprinkled with empty beer cans and robitussin bottles. On the desk, amid the empty soymilk containers and marijuana paraphernalia was an Encyclopedia of Hallucinogenic Plants (a surprisingly thick tome). In one bathroom, the toilet was flanked by a sink spotted with pubic hair and blood on one side, and a clogged tub filled with turbid water, dead moths, and live mosquito larva on the other. The other bathroom, toilet only, sported glow in the dark psychedelic posters, a blacklight, and heavy metal music linked to the light switch. In the backyard, an industrial stove/oven combo and an oversized kiddy pool, ripped and drained. The front lawn was ornamented by stripped bicycle corpses surrounded a tree trimmed with white plastic chairs.

I sat around as a colorful cast of characters came and went. Conversations buzzed around me, history-laden and entirely separate from me. I was not unwelcome, but I was barely acknowledged. Only the dog seemed to realize I was there, and she was out for my blood.

I tried to make smalltalk, but ultimately threw in the towel, deciding to take a nap and study the GREs or something. Louisville was he bust I expected. I lay on the couch and close my eyes, for a few moments atleast. My host shook me awake. “Hey, we’re going to take our bikes and go exploring the sewer tunnels. You wanna come with?” He didn’t need to ask me twice.

Turns out in addition to being unemployed bums, my host and friends were talented bike repairers. They picked up and reanimated the corpses on the lawn, attaching wheels, chains, seats, and brakes. One was handed to me. It was small, pink, and its brakes were mostly decoration. We took off, but my broken gears wouldn’t let me go faster than a speedy jogging pace. I quickly fell behind.

At some point, one of them remembered I don’t live here, and came back to guide me. We arrived at the drainage ditch. The storm drain was basically a small canal, if a canal is a river of suspended shit. It smelled fecal and foul; mysterious slime and ambiguous mud coated the cracked concrete banks. We rode through the sludge, past the mundane graffiti, dodging overhanging tree branches and undercover rocks, ignoring the putrid splatter on our pants.

The canal was all well and good, but we came for the sewer tunnels. Our first attempt at underground penetration was a dank dripping set of stairs. We climbed about four steps before the group turned back, repelled by an overpowering stench. I didn’t mind, as I’m used to bad smells from my job in Vermont. Pussies.

Our second attempt was met by a dead-end wall. Third attempt by an opening that narrowed too soon. Fourth by flooding. Fifth time’s the charm. We decided to leave our bikes by the entrance and walk.
The tunnel was blissfully dry and relatively stench-free. Relatively. Between the 6 of us, we had one small flashlight and one headlamp. I carried neither but walked confidently in the dark, my fear killed long ago by the demands of my job. Somebody raced ahead, only to predictably jump out on us a few minutes later. Most of the group shrieked, except for myself who saw the whole thing coming, and the bald guy who didn’t seem to notice the world outside his head.

It seems if I knew about this trip in advance, I would’ve been more useful. I have a large flashlight. I have a compass. I have a streetmap of Louisville. I have small flags we could wave from under the manhole covers. I even have rat handling gloves. But I’m afraid I was left unequipped and only amble to tag along for the ride. Eventually, when they got bored, we turned around and left. I would’ve carried on.

The ride to our exit point was much like the ride in, only wetter and more booby trapped. Somehow my miraculous instinctual sense of balance, which never stops me from tripping but always stops me from falling over, saved me from being marinated in the hobo stew. We escaped the aqueduct to a large abandoned lot in midtown. Maybe there was a factory here once, or a warehouse, or slum. All that remains now is a seasonal hobo shanty. The site was littered with metal shrapnel and children’s toys, rusted machinery and ripped mattresses. Broken china littered the site, and any plate or cup that remained partially intact was soon fully fractured by us.

We had biked through a river of shit to get to a microcosm of the end of the world. Like “The Shawshank Redeption”, but replace the tropical heaven with a hobo hell. It was awesomely dystopian and full of tetanus.

Still, all good things must come to an end, and as the sun set, we biked home. I quickly remembered my bike had no breaks. Afterwards, we celebrated with drive-thru Mexican food. Frankly, I wanted to eat inside, but they were still wearing their speedos.