Maysville, KY Rat Gathering

Maysville, KY Rat Gathering
(There's A Story There!!!)
July 10th, 11th, and 12th, 1998

If you chat with people on the internet for any length of time, you will eventually want to meet some of them. Gemini and I have been chatting for awhile now in a place called The Rat's Tunnel of Love in Chatalot. We have become close friends with a few of the regulars there, you can see them on The Rat's Page. Yes, we are proud to be known as Tunnel Rat's!!

July 10th
We left our home at 2am and drove up to Kentucky to meet some of the Rat's in person!! If you are saying, "OH MY GAWD!!!" or "HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MIND?!?!", you have obviously never become a regular in a chat room!! Besides, they all promised not to kill us when we got there ... ~LOL~. We drove for about 10 and 1/2 hours through the stiffling heat of South Carolina (at 2am the temp was 86 with humidity at 90%), the cool mountains of North Carolina and Tennesee, and the lush greenness of Kentucky, arriving in Maysville at about 1pm. We were dead tired, but happy to be there and bearing gifts of grits and boiled peanuts for the Rat's!!! We weren't supposed to be able to check in our motel till 2pm, so we drove around Maysville, a small town on the Ohio River, and ended up in Ohio.... damn those right-turn-only lanes...~L~.

SweetSue and her sister, Janie, were already checked in. Janie isn't online yet... but watch out when she gets there!! (There's A Story There!!!) She has a great sense of humor!! Janie was very good to us at the gathering.... she works part time at a neighborhood pizzaria and got us discounts on the pizzas for Friday night, which we had (with beer, of course!) in the parking lot of the motel!!! Hypnoser and MarciaMarciaMarcia, and PoohButt made it there in time for the Friday Feast on the Curb Bumpers. Dreamer(m) and Trinky got in town from Ohio about 10pm just in time to turn around and go back to Ohio to do some bowling...~L~. Sue's husband Louie came to the bowling lanes after he got off work. It was female Rats against male Rats and the females took best 2 out of 3 games!! Go Frrls!!!!

l to r : ~Gemini, Janie, SweetSue, PoohButt

l to r : Hypnoser, Dreamer(m), Trinky

After bowling, we went back to the motel and sat on the patio outside the pool/hot tub room and chatted. It was just like being online!! I don't remember which one of the men noticed, but there was a woman in the hot tub that the men described as a little, old lady with grey hair!! "Little" was the only adjective that they used correctly!!!! Soon all the male Rat's were lined up even with the door to watch this 'little, old lady with grey hair" ...... ~LOL~(There's A Story There!!!)

July 11th
Saturday morning, Gemini and I got up early to use the hot tub and were enjoying a relaxing moment when a mother and her brood (5 kids, she was only 22, and wanted more!!) decided that they had to be in the 3x4 foot hot tub, too. So much for peace and quiet ..... and room to stretch out!!!. I won't quote what Gemini said.... suffice it to say, we left!! We changed clothes, joined the other Rats (except for MarciaMarciaMarcia who was still sleeping and Hypnoser who was trying to wake her up.... ~L~) and found that z28 had come to visit!!

l to r : z28 & SweetSue

She couldn't stay long as she had previous obligations but stayed long enough to trip over the curbs in the parking lot and skin up her knees and hands. I suppose you had to be there, but to hear her saying, "ooooohhhhhhh...... oooooohhhhhhh", and see her falling in slow motion was rather funny. I have to say though, that it was the most graceful fall I've ever seen!! After z28 left, the rest of us headed for Frisch's for brunch. For y'all Southerner's...Frisch's is the equivilent of our Shoney's.... Y'all in Illinois call it Marc's, and y'all on the west coast call it Bob's. The food was great, the company even better!! Frisch's even kept the breakfast bar open longer so that we Rat's could have our fill!!!! MissC had arrived, but promised her children lunch at Micky D's, so she didn't join us at Frisch's.

l to r : Dreamer(m), Trinky, SweetSue, Louie,
Hypnoser (standing), PoohButt (standing),
MarciaMarciaMarcia, Janie, ~Gemini

After brunch, we all met back at the motel and went to tour Old Washington, KY. This is one of the original settlements in the area. We toured several of the shops and then looked for the stocks to have our pictures taken, but couldn't find them.

MarciaMarciaMarcia

l to r : Janie & MarciaMarciaMarcia
MarciaMarciaMarcia, aka Miss Shop-Till-You-Drop (There's A Story There!!!)did find a sterling silver four-leaf clover brooch that she bought and I heard it through the RatVine that she made Hypnoser take her back on Sunday to buy her another little bauble...~LOL~ Dreamer(m) had found some candy buckeyes for us to try, they were really good, too!!! Kinda like little bitty Reese's Cups! We all trooped back to the motel to rest, well, some of us hit the pool and some hit the patio ...~L~ ... before dinner at Laredo's that evening.

~Gemini was tired of
following me around!!

Janie had ordered a cake from Kroger's because it was MissC's 36th birthday. Janie took the cake up to Laredo's and asked them if they would sing "Happy Birthday" to MissC after dinner and bring the cake out! They agreed and we were set. Hypnoser got MarciaMarciaMarcia up and we all arrived at Laredo's at about 7:30 and were seated upstairs.

l to r : Trinky, MissC, Louie, SweetSue, Janie,
Cuppy, ~Gemini, Hypnoser, MarciaMarciaMarcia,
Dreamer(m), PoohButt
For those of you who have never been to a Laredo's, there are buckets

of roasted peanuts on the tables and you throw the peanut shells on the floor! What fun!! We all ordered entrees and passed them around and by the time the main course arrived, it was hard to finish eating!! After that, the staff brought the cake up and sang to a very surprised MissC! Dreamer(m) had to help get the trick candles out before the cake caught fire!!! It was getting close to 10:30 when we finally asked for the checks. You can imagine our surprise when the waitress told us that the checks had been taken care of by an anonymous benefactor and that we weren't to ask her who it was! I still don't know who it was, but it was greatly appreciated and from the rest of us:

Thank You From The Bottom of Our Hearts!!

We returned to the motel and met on the patio (this was the men's idea, I'm sure they thought the little, old grey haired lady would be there.....~L~). We swapped jokes and most-embarassing-moment stories. (BOY, Is There A Story There!!!) I got the feeling that none of us wanted the weekend to end!! We all trooped into Hypnoser's and MarciaMarciaMarcia's room for the traditional "Rat's Gathering All-In-The-Bed Picture!!!

l to r : ~Gemini, SweetSue, Cuppy, MarciaMarciaMarcia,
Hypnoser, MissC, Janie, PoohButt, Dreamer(m)

July 12th
With check out time being 11am, we all decided to go back to Frisch's for brunch after we checked out. MarciaMarciaMarcia and Hypnoser missed the next picture because he was trying to wake her up before check out time.... ~L~.

l to r : SweetSue, MissC, Trinky,
Dreamer(m), Cuppy, ~Gemini
Once again, the food was wonderful, but the company was even better. I got the chance to see Hypnoser's x-rays from his parachuting accident in April 1997 in Las Vegas. It was totally amazing to see that much hardware in someone's leg and to see them actually walking now!! Once again, I got the feeling that no one wanted this time together to end. We asked for our checks and.... you guessed it!! Our anonymous benefactor had followed us from Laredo's to Frisch's or had they??? In case we have more than one anonymous benefactor, we would like to say:

Thank You From The Bottom of Our Hearts!!

We want to take a minute to thank SweetSue for all the hard work she put into making this weekend wonderful!!! The motel (Best Western Maysville Inn) was a great choice, reasonably priced and very clean and comfortable. The weather was made-to-order: sunshine and mid 80's with no humidity during the days, high 50's-low 60's at night. The choices of restaurants were excellent!!

Thank You From The Maysville Gathering!!!!!

You've Got a Friend

Please take a minute to Sign!

Or a minute to Look!

You are visitor #

to read about the Kentucky Gathering.

This page hosted by

Get your own Free Home Page