City of... Humidity

Troy here...This morning found us... sleeping, imagine that. Casey our host said she had to bike uptown to meet with someone about buying her car, and she wanted to know if we wanted to bike with her. They have a pile of bikes on there back porch for couch surfers to use. Of course we said yes. We were sitting around waiting for a phone call to say that money had been wired to us so we could head out to Houston.

So we hopped onto our bikes, one which was referred to as "Deathtrap" and the other one had a seat which refused to stay in one place and continually flip straight up—pointing right at one’s rump... this of course made for awkward riding. We headed out for our leisurely 9 mile bike ride, much out of shape from a week of sitting around twiddling our thumbs, and sleeping in the car. Ridding through Downtown New Orleans was beautiful—an amazing city to be sure.

As my brother put it, "It’s not every day you get to ride on a bike that’s older than you are, through a city that’s older than your country." We rode to Tulane university, and rode around Audubon Park. While in the park we saw a gorgeous stone pavilion and headed for it. When we got there, we had to stop and watch the locals who were practicing what can only be described as some odd mixture of tai-chi, and 80's pop dance.

To top it off, at everyone’s feet was a nice warm can of Papst blue ribbon beer...mmmmmmm yummy! I can only imagine the taste, as it was close to 90 degrees. We finally got a phone call that we were not going to get any money, and we were pretty much stranded in New Orleans. So we headed “home”. Then Rachael called back, I tried to answer the call while ridding Deathtrap and nearly wiped out into a street car. She had called to tell me she had managed to borrow some more money, and we WOULD be able to get to Houston. Whew what a relief!

Hopping back on Deathtrap I caught back up to Jed and headed back to the apartment. After nine miles of no injuries, in the last half block I turned a corner and the peddles caught the ground…jumping and throwing my foot off, to be run over by said peddle and gouge my Achilles tendon. Not to complain, but…ok I will complain!!! Arrgh. Anyways, we decided to stay around and hang with our hosts for a while, there was no reason to leave so early and still get there late at night in the dark, with no idea where to go.

Later I walked the six blocks to find the closest Western Union, and found it in a literal hole in the wall convenience store called "Royal Convenience Store." Tucked in a nook in the base of a tall building down town, the inside was about the size of my living room, with a small glassed in booth for the Western Union guy. The man inside was…very unique. A small thin Jewish man, about my age, wearing both a Yarmulke and a pony tail.

He was dressed in a maroon polyester suit straight from the 70's. And had on a green and purple paisley shirt and a necklace with the symbol of the Klingon empire on it... Why I know the symbol for the Klingon Empire I refuse say, but other than that he was completely normal looking. I filled out my papers and slid them through, then as an afterthought I slid my passport through the slit as verification.

He thumbed through it and then asked "is this a new passport?" "Yes" I said laughing. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a worn-looking passport and slid it through the slot to me. "Man look at mine its so boring looking, these new ones are sweet.” Overlooking the absurdness of the fact that I now had his passport, I had to agree, the new ones are "way cooler." I slid his back through and remarked, "Yeah, I spent some time in Papua New Guinea earlier this year, so I had to get a new one." He stopped dead. "You've been to PNG?" he practically shouted.

Then he began to ask me a landslide of questions, "Did you fly into Port Moresby? Did you get to see the highlands? What were you doing?" I told him I was doing cultural and linguistics’ studies with New Tribes Mission. He was floored. Turns out he has been trying to go to PNG for five years. He is a philosophy major with a minor in cultural anthropology. And a special interest in PNG. A year ago he had written the embassy and asked them if they had any spare literature, so they sent him some flyers and a police manual in Pison {the trade language of PNG} and then he starts rattling of words and phrases in Pison, and asking me all these questions.

The clerk at the counter was staring at us like we were insane. We began discussing cargo cult, and cultural syncretism. In all, the whole thing lasted about 7 minutes but when I left, I was blown away at yet another odd "coincidence" in our journeys. Ahh, the life of a Bird! Oh yeah, when he asked me where I was from he was laughing when he said he girlfriend was from Roanoke as well. Yup, another good night. Later we rolled out of the “Big Easy” and headed to the “Lone Star”. Texas, here we come!!!

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!