Ros & Steve's Awesome American Adventure 2012: 7 May Bowling Green

We got up a little early (7:30am on holidays is early isn’t it??), packed up and made our way to the NCM Motorsports park for Steve’s Corvette drive experience. There were a couple of other groups running cars (Mustangs) on the track so we waited and watched.

Steve was then taken to his Corvette for the Touring experience, a silver 2017 base model Stingray with a plentiful 460 Kentucky ponies under the hood. He was given 4 laps in a follow-the-pace-car scenario (so he couldn’t get too carried away) around the racetrack. He reported that it was a great experience and that the pace car driver allowed him to give the car a pretty good workout as he was the only one on the track with the pace car. He managed to get it to a little over 120mph (about 200kph) down the straight.

As soon as that was over, he was up for his hot laps in a 2007 model Stingray, riding shotgun with an experienced driver. This car had a bountiful 505 Kentucky stallions under the hood. These 2x laps were completed in a much quicker time and we couldn’t seem to get the smile off Steve’s face. He reported that the driver basically said ”you ok to go”….reply was “yes” and the car then launched at the first corner and proceeded to roar around the track wheels screeching the whole way. He clocked a bit over 140mph down the straight before entering the first corner for the second lap. There was an obvious difference between touring laps and the hotlaps. It was a great experience and 50^th birthday present for Steve.

After Steve had settled down and Ros felt that he wasn’t going to try and drive the RV like the Corvette, we dove on to the Shaker Settlement Museum a little to the east of Bowling Green. The Shakers were an innovative, hard-working religious group, dedicated to communal living and celibacy, and this community was established in 1807 and closed in 1922. The community was built to house, occupy and support hundreds of people, with 4 communal living houses each with space for 200 occupants. Despite the celibacy, the movement attracted people, with their innovation, and comfort (indoor plumbing, heating, ample food) during times when those things were a luxury for all but the very wealthy. Eventually though, celibacy proved to be their undoing, as without children, they relied on new members for growth. There is one community remaining in the US, with an 80-year-old woman and a man in his 60’s. The last of the Shakers.

The Shakers were governed by a man and a woman, known as the Ministry, so they were ahead of their time in equality of gender and (to a certain degree) race. Families joined the Shakers with slaves, and subsequently freed the slaves into the community, but when the family moved on, the slaves went too.