The Dark Side (OR: The magic of Thund...oh, dammit)

Bippity boppity BOOM!

Despite the lame headlines that preceded it, I thoroughly enjoyed my very first Thunder over Louisville. For those you in Columbus, it is comparable to Red, White & Boom! with a few things Boom does not have:

1) More fireworks
2) Tolerable weather (April in Kentucky beats July in Ohio, whether you like it or not)
3) A bridge

Adding to this was my brief experience with what I shall call..."The Dark Side."

The title of this blog stems not from the capital of Ireland, but the capital of...prep? I'm not sure what it is, but Dublin, Ohio, stands for a few things I tend to despise, such as arrogance and....uh, stuck-uppery...sounds good. The point is that they use their wealth and social standing to their utmost advantage, and rarely miss an opportunity to rub it in our faces. This applies mostly to the Coffman variety of Dublinite, as I know a good number of great people from Dublin Scioto High School. (Jerome? They don't count yet.)

This all is relevant because, well, I sorta got a taste of that life Saturday. I'm not saying my family is poor. We enjoy a fine life, and I have no qualms about it. But I'm talking about that little extra. I'm talking about spending a day on the balcony of an apartment in the Galt House one of Louisville's finest hotels.

It pretty much went like this: Rachel's mom is friends with a very successful oncologist. This lady, being an oncologist, makes lots of money. People who make lots of money get to rent apartments in the Galt House for Thunder. We got the wristband and went up to the 12 th floor, right over I-64 and the Ohio River. Admittedly, there was part of the building to the right, but to the left, we had the river, and on the other side, Indiana stretched on forever.

We're talking free food and free alcohol, but of course, that was only for legal adults. There was also the result of free alcohol later in the evening, but for their sakes, I won't name any names. And by my fifth whiskey and Coke, names didn't matter much, anyway.

I don't think I've consumed so much fried chicken and drank so many free drinks in my life (I'm actually talking about the non-alcoholic kind, mostly). And it struck me...so this is what's it's like. It's not about the most expensive things in the world, it's simply getting out of the crowd. We watched what we could underneath us, but most was covered by the interstate. A few of us ventured down, to find Mrs. Koontz an authentic corn dog (if there is one thing that most hotels can't do properly, it's carnival food) but we managed only a half-ass attempt at checking a few stands between the hotel, the Great Lawn and back.

So will I be able to wade through the crowds and Red, White and Boom! this year? Absolutely. That's part of the experience. We still had the drunken street encounters (one girl on Second Street explained, "We gotta get to Breckenridge!) and there was still the long, long, wait to get out of traffic. After all, no festival is truly complete without the hour-plus line to get out a parking lot.

All in all, it was a good time, and the four people I was with made it all even better. And I know that afternoon was an exception, and I'm definitely not expecting anytime soon.

But dammit, that was good chicken.