On The Hunt

This is Troy. Well it started off as a pretty straight forward morning. Waking up in the Explorer... trying to stretch and get the kinks out of my neck, then realizing that I'm 6'1" and the Explorer is a foot and a half narrower than I am tall. Then you begin to notice the rain. Heavy rain, and of course we have the windows half down. So it dawns on you that you’re wet. The sun roof is leaking, despite the fact that we have a large silver boat strapped over it. Jed is sitting there wild haired, with my laptop checking game scores. It’s of course Saturday, game day, and he is all about the games.

Well I'm still sore and more than a little hungry. so of course I make the obvious suggestion, "lets find some sort of sports bar where we can eat some cheep wings {one of my favorite foods in the world} and drink free ice tea refills all day, and you can watch your games on the big screens. seemed very simple, but in the end it cost us nearly two hours of peoples misdirection’s, to places that had been closed for years to places that weren’t even wing joints.

Finally in the end I was so annoyed I said, "Frick it, I’m pulling in the next place and asking for better directions. The next road veered of to the left, I turned down it and was upset to see no store for a ways, and I considered turning back but kept forward. Pulling in I saw the sign. "Wow, World of wing! Cafe and wingery." Yeah it was a beautiful thing.

Hours and hours later, we headed out to find our couch surfers place. Whew that was fun; they live two blocks off Bourbon St... well if you know anything about Bourbon Street that means is a heck of a thing to get to it on a Saturday night at 9:00 pm thousands of drunk college girls wearing a speck of thread and a thought. Stumbling around running into an equal amount of completely smashed rednecks. Throw in a few hounded transvestites strutting around in about the same thing as the college girls. And even a few dozen midgets and some people that looked like they stepped of the set of Pirates of the Caribbean. Oh yeah, and cops... lots and lots and LOTS of cops.

Finally we were able to find a parking spot a mere 8 blocks from our destination. When we got to our home for the night, we were greeted by Heather and Casey, a couple of extremely friendly and happy hosts. Their house was full of their art, from paintings of Jafar and Cruela devil in the stairwell to many beautiful ceramics upstairs. Later we were lead down to a comedy club that performs freeform comedy, which was incredibly funny, I would recommend it to anyone. It’s called "Yo’ mamma’s." All in all a great night, and a nice break from the annoying life of a parking lot dweller.

We were sitting in the living room, and I was playing guitar, and singing into my amp like at the Drainage canal the night earlier, when it hit me. "We are two blocks from Bourbon Street! What am I doing here; I should go make some money! Well it was already 1:00 in the morning at this time, but I grabbed all my stuff, and of course at 1:00 there are still 20,000 people stumbling around. So I sat on the corner, and actually made 16 bucks.

But it was cool. I had a lot of people gathering around me and listening. Then after it was all over and I was walking home, I heard a familiar style of guitar slicing through the night, I turned to see Bill Gregory, a guitarist whom I had the honor of seeing three years earlier, playing on the stage of a club I was passing. I walked in and he saw me and smiled walked over to my corner of the stage and proceeded to pretty much show off, because he remembered me.

I personally think he's is one of the greatest guitarists out there…period. And as a semi-professional musician and a perfectionist, I don’t say it lightly. Here is a link to a video I found of him on YouTube...it really doesn’t do him justice, but it’s still pretty amazing. We walked home together and watched each others back from getting mugged, until we parted ways on St Louis Street. Wow another freaking cool night. And hey, now I can say I have been a street performer on Bourbon Street. Now that’s paying your dues! LOL!