Terry and Terrie and Lynn and I started out the day by going to breakfast at a local restaurant called Wild Eggs, following which we drove into downtown Louisville to visit the Thomas Edison House:

Of course, as we all know, Mr. Edison spent most of his adult life in Menlo Park, New Jersey, where he had his laboratory, and where he developed most of his inventions. But as a young man, before he started inventing, he spent two years in Louisville working as a telegraph operator, and the house where he rented a room has been made into a museum.

No actual artifacts remain from the time he spent there, but the room where he lived has been restored to show what it might have looked like:

The other rooms of the house contain displays of his inventions. There was a collection of early phonographs - the kind that played cylinders instead of disks - and the guide played us some excerpts from a few cylinders on actual working Edison phonographs. There was also a display of "recording phonographs" - predecessors of the dictaphone:

...as well as a display of (of course) light bulbs:

I also bought a CD of music from Edison cylinders, dating from 1912-1922. The sound quality is not too good, of course, and some of the music is incredibly cheesy, but it's still an interesting listen.

After the museum, we went back to the house. Terry and Terrie made a pecan pie, and I went out and bought some cans of Skyline Chili for a friend of ours who grew up in Cincinnati. Then for dinner, we all went out to:

The F.A.B.D (Frankfort Avenue Beer Depot) Smokehouse

...possibly one of the best barbecue restaurants I've ever been to. The name "Smokehouse" is well deserved. The ribs I had were well and truly SMOKED. They must smoke those things for hours.

And here's a picture of the whole gang - so you now can finally see what Lynn looks like:

...except the picture's a little out of focus... sorry, Lynn.

After dinner, we went back to the house and had our pecan pie, and then said our goodbyes. Since our flight back to LA left at six in the morning, we thought it would be a good idea to make the drive to Cincinnati the night before.

So we got up at four in the morning (!) and caught our flight home - with another two hour layover in Dallas. We then took Access back home, and had a very interesting driver. His name was Ahmed, born in Egypt and raised in Holland. He had just recently passed the test to get his green card, and he amused himself - and us - by firing questions from the test at us. I'm proud to say I got most of them right... but alas, not all of them.