9th Ward Second Line parade....
Yes...Austin. We spent 10 hours in a car yesterday with two girls we found on Craig's list rideshare. I guess we were both just ready to be done with the cycle-touring part of this adventure and wanted to be moving at a faster pace. To be honest I think we've been done with that since Memphis.
Although it was great to have our bikes in that city. We ended up hooking up with the local bike crew for their weekly night ride. They took us all through the crazy Memphis streets, down through trails and alleys and finally to a park by the river where we locked up our bikes off the path in the bushes and continued on foot down these stone steps and over rocks and vines down to the rocky, misty shore of the Mississippi. It was a foggy night and some of the kids had made a fire pit earlier, so we had a lovely bonfire and drank beer and ate smores as the cars and trains rode past on the old bridge overhead and a huge barge floated past in the water below. It was such a magical night with so many great folks.
Afterwards we rode back, passing the Vegas-like Beale St. strip where the flashy lights are the only sign of it's former musical glory. Apparently Blues is dead in Memphis, and these days you'd have more luck catching stunning sounds at an open-mic night than some Beale St. club. Which we did - the intense and political young piano-hammering dude, the older, folksy, guitar-playing blind woman with an eerie voice and honest words, and the 4 piece 20-something band rockin out in this little coffee shop. Amazing.
We caught a ride out of Memphis with Ashley, one of our couch-surfing hosts there. She took us the 5-hour drive to Hattiesburg, munching on the southern, delicious roadside snack of boiled peanuts along the way. She was going there to hang out with friends at an art party and took us along. So we partied with the art-school kids of MS getting tips on what to do and eat once we got to NOLA.
It was about a 3 day ride from there to NOLA. We spent a night in the old slave quarter house in the yard of "Two-Bits", Lumberton, MS's methodist preacher. A cold night in Jan's trailer park beside an abandoned trailer in Bogalusa MS. And when we got to Slidell, LA and the banks of the Ponchartrain, we strangers were not exactly turned away, but 'put up' in our tent behind Peggy's financial business. We didn't meet any swamp-folks but we did see lots of houses up on stilts.
We had to hitch a ride over the bridge to New Orleans because it was too narrow. We got picked up by Rennie who not only took us over the bridge but also gave us the grand tour of the city. Showing us still-abandoned areas that had been hit hard by katrina, the beautiful mansions of the garden district, the river-side walkway and the quaint, winding, european streets of the French quarter. He also took us out for a balcony lunch of gumbo and crawfish bisque and to the apparently infamous Cafe du Monde for beignets, a doughy roll covered in icing sugar.
Our first two nights in NOLA we stayed with Saleem Kareem a high-school English teacher who was too into partying for our tastes. But we did enjoy checking out the Bourbon St. night life with him one night - it had to be done. We had gotten a contact from a girl we met in Memphis which brought us to this huge mansion full of young artists. We were met at the door by Dave who asked few questions and led us to one of 3 empty rooms in the basement with a big matress on the floor. Despite the cockroaches it was comfy and warm for the rest of our nights in NOLA. We slowly met the other residents, all very humble, unpretentious kids just doing their thing. They had this huge tree fort and other crazy scavenged goods throughout their backyard.
A photographer who lives there, Jeremy took us out on Sunday to a "Second Line" parade in the notorious 9th ward, a poorer. less developed area of the city where people know how to party and celebrate life. Second-Lines happen every Sunday somewhere in the city and are put on by various community social-organizing clubs. There were 2 brass bands with dancers who marched and danced through the streets, collecting people along the way to join in on the dancing and drinking, which is legal on the streets of New Orleans. It was an all afternoon mobile party and by the end I was exhausted. New Orleans was exhausting in general. It was a total sensory overload of people, and music and buildings and food.
I feel a bit relieved to be at our new haven here in Austin. The Bio-squat is a small peice of land on the edge of the city where kids over the years have built a little eco-village. There's bike part sculptures and forts everywhere. We're sleeping up in a tree house platform with only a roof to cover us. The weather is so humid and mild. Cacti and air-plants are everywhere. We spent the day here alone just relaxing as people are gathering with families for the big U.S. turkey day. I look forward to exploring Austin tomorrow.
Hope all is well with all of you. Bye for now.
Love Sheri
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