DINNER 203: Saturday, July 22, 2006

We had quite a day planned today — Wendy & I, along with friends Mike & Angel, were going to see Vance Gilbert play at THE HOOD TOUR in Cincinnati’s Eden Park then go to dinner at the Iron Horse Inn. We were excited about both parts of the event — first, seeing Vance. He’s one of our favorites and we hadn’t seen him for some time, so were looking forward to it. Secondly, there are some new menu items we wanted to try at the Iron Horse Inn so this felt like an opportunity to do so.

The plan was this… Everyone would meet at Angel’s apartment at 4:30 and then drive down to the park in one car. When Wendy & I arrived at Angel’s, there was a very sick raccoon lying in the driveway. As Wendy stated, healthy raccoons don’t just lay around like that. Wendy called animal control to help him on his way. After Mike arrived, we headed to the park. When we got there and picked up a schedule of the acts, we saw something that caught our attention. Vance was scheduled to perform at 4:30 (it was nearly 5:00 at the time). However, Tracy Walker, a local singer/songwriter, was performing (and was very good). Worried that we’d missed him, we asked a staff member and found out that Vance’s flight had been delayed due to bad weather, so he wasn’t there. Undaunted, the four of us walked around the Mirror Lake at the park and had a nice time listening to music from some of the other, non-Vance, acts.

After a while, we decided to head toward dinner, so we dropped Mike & Angel at Angel’s apartment (so they could get their cars) and headed up to the Iron Horse Inn, where we had a very nice dinner and got to try several of the new menu items, including Stuffed Risotto which made for a great four-person appetizer. We hung out at the bar listening to Jeff play the piano. Wendy & I snuck off around 12:45 and came home!