Louisville - Children & Health (Food Access)

Day 6: April 2nd

This has been an incredibly rewarding week. Everyone worked hard Monday thru Friday so we could play today. The crew loaded up bleary eyed at 7:30am to make the hour and a half trip to Lexington, Kentucky just in time to catch the last hour of morning workouts at Keeneland racetrack. Keeneland is known as one of the coldest places in Lexington and today was no different. Although we were given a warm, Kentucky greeting by our tour guide – Pete, who promptly showed us to the racetrack to watch the thoroughbreds in action. After everyone had been shivering for a good bit watching the horses we were ushered to the clubhouse, where less than 1% of the Lexington population has ever been - so we felt pretty special. Afterward we rounded all the troops and headed into town for pizza and calzones at one of my favorite restaurants, Pazzo's, just off the University of Kentucky's campus. We filled our bellies with delicious Italian treats as we watched UK fans file-in, in preparation for the BIG game tonight (UK vs. UCONN in the Final Four). We all agreed we (Mizzou) is black and gold….not blue and white.

            After lunch at Pazzo's, I proudly showed everyone around the University of Kentucky campus, where I began my life as a college student. It has been almost a year since I had been in Lexington, let alone on campus, so I was happy to see the hospital in its final phase of construction (considering it started over 2 years ago). Everyone seemed surprised at the quaintness of the campus in comparison to MU. It was much smaller than they seemed to expect.

            The Kentucky Horse Park was the next item on the list of things to see/catch before we headed back to Louisville for the night. At the Horse Park we all got to ride horses (some of us for the first time!).  We took a 40-minute ride around the paddocks and learned all about the Equestrian Games that were held on the farm last year. Some of us (myself included) had feistier horses than others, which made the trip all the more interesting. My horse, properly named Diesel, was quite cheeky and had a little attitude when he didn't want to follow the rest of the horses. After our ride we loaded up, once again, and took the vans full of tired participants back to Louisville.

            Our final (and nicest) dinner in Kentucky was at Bristol. We invited Mary Sullivan from the United Way to join us. She has been such an instrumental part of our trip we only felt it proper to treat her to dinner. Everyone chatted and noshed on delicious dishes like crab cakes, pork chops, and linguine with all the works. We presented Mary with a bouquet of flowers and a card, and she (surprised us) by giving us each a photo of the mural, a certificate, AND home-made treat bags for the ride home! Oh….and she hooked us up with some more United Way T-shirts, which was nice since most of us haven't done laundry and have been wearing the same clothes for a couple days. Now we won't stink up the vans on the ride home!! Yay!! Well, we decided to leave bright and early (7am EST) so I better be off to bed (it's 11:50pm), but as I said before. This week has been very successful, I speak for both Evan and I when I say, we couldn't be prouder of our participants and all the hard work and dedication they put in this week. The University of Missouri has officially left its mark on yet another great city. We hope to see you in years to come, Louisville!

 

-Madison