Tag Archives: travel

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01-11-19

Little I have to write of tonight. There is, however, much to be finished from last night’s journal, but I’m far too tired, so that will have to wait. Today, though, was simple. Pick up car from rental company and drive to Houston, stopping here and there along the way to get out and walk around some of these towns with my camera, then upon arriving in Houston check in to my hostel before returning the car.

The drive was sublimely relaxing (something I think I craved) for not having to bother with sore legs, nor was there cursing at rough and bumpy roads with no shoulders, horrid traffic or crushing headwinds; just cruise and watch the landscape slip past. There were two tiny towns, Nome and Raywood, along the way that I stopped in, as well as the larger town of Dayton, which I managed to not leave myself enough time—classic me— to explore as I would have liked, and I stopped along one desolate, straight stretch of road that led 180 degrees, from horizon-point to horizon-point, without a car on it to photograph a single tree standing in the distance isolated in space between the blue blue of the sky and the brittle, dry, straw-yellow of the immense field within which it stood, and all around me and it only silence and a slight breeze tumbling through the grass and my hair like the gentle purring of a cat. It was a truly remarkable stretch, and made for a fascinating contrast with the wetter, estuarian regions of this eastern Texas landscape.

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01-10-19

Distracted by too many gadgets, and things in the gadgets, and things in the things in the gadgets. There is a red light beaming from my forehead, like a third eye to see through the dark. Red because it glows dimly and is difficult to see from a distance, but I can see by it to read and write just fine. This is ideal because I’m camped behind a fence bordering houses in a neighborhood and it’s not so late (nine pm) and I’d rather not be seen.

I stayed with an extremely Louisianan couple last night in Sulphur. That day was mentally taxing and long, as days with headwinds in the range of 15-25 mph are, and I missed my estimated day’s distance by twenty miles or so. Remembered in the nick of time that their was a Warmshowers host in the area, texted her and she sent her boyfriend out to scoop me up in the dark, around 6 pm. Good thing too because I discovered after texting her that I had lost my bottle of stove fuel, God knows where and when, so that had I camped I would have had a cold, miserable, unsatisfying dinner of two bananas and a Clifbar.

These two were a fascinating yet at the same time utterly boring couple. I’m still not entirely sure what to make of them. When Jay picked me up I told him I was planning on pitching my tent somewhere around the Rec Center in Mossville (where he picked me up the next town over from Sulphur) if they were unavailable, but he told me that could have potentially been bad had I had to go through with it because there were “blacks” living all around, and there had been murders at that Rec Center several times over the years. I was naturally somewhat taken aback by the brazeness of the statement, as I think many might be. Later there was another incident at a gas station where we tried to break a sixer of beer and the Indian attendant at the counter (there’s a stereotype for you) refused to break it and Jay stormed out annoyed then went on this rather uneducated, conspiratorial rant about Arabs (which Indians are not, of course), how this one fellow could have sold him the two beers and put the rest in ice but didn’t because he was too lazy, which then led to the statements that they’re (Indians, Arabs, I don’t know, but it’s interesting how to the ignorant that whole part of the world just gets grouped together, like all the peoples and the whole of the population is all the same culture) going to buy up all the gas stations in the country and stop selling gas to Americans which would somehow shut the country down, or some sort of cockeyed, outlandish, nonsensical horseshit. It was clear that he had no clue what he was talking about, but was simply flailing about mentally, attempting to make sense of something frustrating him, changes in the country, or perhaps in his own state, city, or community, that he doesn’t understand and is unable to grapple and reconcile with (like, probably, hundreds of thousands of other Americans).

I thought these peculiar ideas coming from a guy who travelled the world with his father in the merchant marines for many years (favorite countries being Sweden and Brazil (Recife, specifically, in Brazil). These comments, though, contrast sharply with his desire to take his most kind lady friend out to Colorado, then to New Mexico to explore the lands of the Apache and Navajo Indians. He practically glowed talking about this, and it was clear to me that he has an admiration and esteem for the natives of this land. Being there and listening to him speak I could hear it in his voice. Racism, it seems, is not nearly as cut and dry a topic as many people like to think it is, but this was the first time in my life that I had witnessed this sort of polarity of it within one person.

After arriving to home for the night Jay was kind enough to cook up, in his words “a real cajun meal” which in this case meant rice and two kinds of deer and pork sausage. One was storebought. The other was made from a deer his son had slain. Not sure where the pork was from in that one. I’m not quite sure where the “cajun” comes from in this respect either, unless he just meant “cheap.” Maybe it’s cajun because the sausage was a bit spicy. Really the meal just struck me as extremely simple and rustic. And honestly not all that good even setting aside the fact that I prefer to stay away from meat if at all possible. Still, it was better than the sausage, egg and cheese biscuits he brought back from Burger King the following morning for breakfast. His girlfriend, Rebecca, however, whose WarmShowers account it is that I contacted was the most welcoming lady, giving me a hug upon our introduction and treating me as a respected and honored guest. For a time she did bookkeeping for a bike shop in the area, but after a change of ownership she was let go. She doesn’t need to work though, and said she wasn’t at all upset about being let go, actually expected it, and very nearly welcomed it if it was for the benefit of the new owner. Currently she’s been scavenging lumber, nails and various other useful raw stuffs as materials for creative projects—benches for a friend’s outdoor wedding at the moment, but has other ideas which she is formulating projects around. For the last fourteen years she’s been volunteering her time with an organization that handles taxes for destitute and poverty stricken people. She says she does taxes for three to four hundred people a year. An astounding number. That was the task she had set herself at when I arrived—re-certification, actually, so that she could continue her philanthropy. Her home is full of knick-knacks and memorabilia. Family photos primarily. Remembrances. Pictures of her dead husband. A photograph of a family dog who had died a few years back. Christmas lights strung over and across everything. The small Christmas tree still up, decorated, standing on a table beside the television that is always always on so that I feel I’d go brain dead if I was to be there for too long. Eventually chit-chat got tiresome, and I was tired as well, and being as nothing much else was happening I went off to my bedroom where I could hear through the walls and the door the television blaring in it’s brainless stupid way.

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01-08-19

I was feasted by the owner of Myers Rv Campground–I think she said her name was Joleen, or something to that effect. I’m not quite sure why she fed me so, unless she was really that desperate to get rid of the food from the “party” she had last night, or she realized that as a cyclist I would be very hungry, or maybe she is just this generous with everyone. All I know is that I was feasted to the brim on gumbo, rice, veggies, dessert and now I am satisfied and all the mosquitoes in my tent are dead. No finding refuge in here, no siree!

I went to Avery Island my first day in New Iberia for a TABASCO tour, and I’m reminded of this because I kept my rather large ticket as a bookmark, and on the side currently facing up, which I hadn’t bother to read as it’s something like a crest or seal, it states: “Avery Island “Man and Environment In Balance””. They do a lot of environmental conservation on the “island”, which, if you’re interested you can read about briefly here. I shall like to go back some day as I didn’t pay the fee to wander the jungle gardens within which there resides a large Buddha statue from, supposedly, the 12th century—quite a wonder! The gardens are themselves too a wonder.

In the distance, the middle-near distance, a cow moo’s, and another, and that is a wonder. A mournful kind of wonder, though. And fifty yards straight on is an oak wreathed with Spanish moss lit up by a lamp, the moss radiating light faintly, like a phantom, like horror stories from nineteenth century African(-American) slaves. And THAT is a wonder, a fearful, savage, sad wonder.

All these fucking RV’s are humming with the energy of their generators, or whatever is producing electricity for their microwaves, tv’s, air conditioners, stereos, computers, or whatever it is to run. I don’t know if that’s a wonder or not. I suppose it’s a technological wonder. But what I can’t understand is why when camping one wants all that noise and blather around. Where went the sanctifying peace and quiet of nature? The soft and continuous chirp of crickets. Or the mysterious crunch and rustle of leaves as a curious creature scurries past. Inside their five insulated walls they miss all this with their televisions and stereos blowing static, and they miss the mournful lowing of the cow, and the “who cooks for you” of the barred owl, and the chatter and squeaking that has just sprung up out of the darkness like hundreds of rubber duckies squeezed over and over in a sort of distant musical cacophony.

Of all our senses I think the sense of hearing is the most mysterious. All these ethereal tinglings of hair follicles in one’s auditory canal. Things perceived at a distance just far enough away so that you can not quite make it out visually, or so nearby that you might step on it but unable to discern where at all it is, and so unfamiliar that even if you could see it it would be almost meaningless. Sound can come from anywhere and be transmitted through anything. It floats on air, is carried by the wind, is the wind itself. It is like millions of taut wires protruding from your ears in countless directions being tripped by tiptoeing feet or colossally heavy hammers or butterfly wings of dynamite. We hear things in the dark, and may, through their agency, be brought into the light, yet we may hear things in broad daylight and be pitched into an impenetrable black.

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01-06-19

Another day.

Another day spent questioning what I am doing, or, rather, why I am doing. Most of this stemming from thoughts abut the self-guided tour of the TABASCO facility: of was it worth the money ($5, which is very little, really) on a Sunday when no one is there working, and so the bottling plant, which is where I would see any activity, is just a large room with a lot of inert machinery, instead of a place humming, alive with employees applying themselves to whatever tasks are tasked them. You might say it’s like going to see an opera on a day that it’s not being performed, and paying for a ticket anyway, and going to your seat and sitting for two or three hours. Well, the theater it’s being performed in might be beautiful, but what’s the point of rustling up the price of a ticket to sit amongst the old bones, to stare up at that sternum and ribs vaulting over you like a cage just to look out on an empty black? It’s the musicians and actors, the set design and props that put flesh on the skeleton, that are the blood and the heart and the lungs that give it life, that enable it to move one to tears or make him laugh uproariously or gasp in astonishment. That’s what people go to the opera for. Not to stare at a skeleton, no matter how old or fascinating it might be! Leave that to the archaeologists and historians to sweep away the dust from the bones, and inform you on just which date it was born and how old it was when it died…

[Later]
I was interrupted mid-thought for dinner with my hosts, and now I’m back a different person. The way they talk, these two! And their life experiences! Their knowledge and feeling for the South, but Louisiana in particular, is a beautiful, admirable thing. It’s like finding a pearl hidden amongst all the junk and trash and sediment of the road, or on the banks of some garbage-strewn bayou. It shines with the light of a thousand suns, and its flame is fanned by all of these crazy yet simple contraptions that have been collected and refurbished so that they work and shine like they are new, and are placed just so on the shelves and tables like so many trophies and pictures of loved ones smiling down at one affectionately. “Would you like to go on a bicycle ride around town? We can eat at such and such a place and you can take a tour of Shadows. It’ll be fun and easy. New Iberia is small so it won’t take much time at all, and there’s a lovely city park just the other side of The Teche. Or how about some open-water fishing? I can tell you the fish like to congregate around the oil rigs out there in the gulf. If you get hungry again Kathy’ll make you some of that delicious shrimp gumbo. NO tomatoes in gumbo, and the stock is made from boiled shrimp heads like it should be. And you know why Louisiana has such a French character, or at least it used to, well the English who were busy settling Canada and the northern United States didn’t like these French mongrels and kicked ’em out and they somehow ended up in Spain and later a deal was cut whereupon the Spanish shipped ’em into the swamps of Louisisana and then you got cajun cooking. If you need some salt to season anything just head on over to these places called “islands.” They’re not really islands, but just look it as they’re large mounds surrounded by swampland, but these mounds are solid, subterranean mountains of salt forced up out of the earth like a pimple. If you go to Avery Island you can get yourself some TABASCO sauce and pray at the buddha all together. The camelias might be just beginning to bloom too. And when you’re done all that just come back to the house and we’ll feed you some more and we’ll give you a history of Mardi Gras, how it’s a Catholic event, Fat Tuesday preceding Ash Wednesday and all, and you can look at these pictures in the creole cookbook of how the holiday is celebrated out in the country because it is far different from what they do in New Orleans.”

So, now I am relaxed and happy with a full belly and WILL be taking a tour of Shadows tomorrow and getting a Po’ Boy and eating at Victor’s Cafeteria, and God knows what else. The bike trip. Ah, the bike trip. I’m less concerned about that now. What comes, comes. I’m just here to record the experience.

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01-04-19 Leaving New Orleans today. Don’t really feel like it. Don’t feel like it at all. Not sure what I want to do, though. Apply for hire at this wonderful, little bakery and cafe that I’m currently writing this at and learn how to make delicious breads and vegan treats. This trip has just been so disjointed. Like a bloody asthmatic trying to run up a dusty mountain trail: all fits and starts and stopping to take breaths off the inhaler. I haven’t had a chance to build up any kind of momentum. I’ve spent more time in cities, mainly Tallahassee and New Orleans, than I have cycling. Frankly, I’ve enjoyed being in town more than I have cycling. The question is is that because I’ve cycled so little, i.e., the disjointedness of the trip, or is it because I just don’t really feel like cycling? And do I not feel like cycling because I have this deadline for the Australia trip that I don’t even want to go on, or do I just want to travel differently? Like via motorcycle, which I continue to think about. It seems to me that all these questions and considerations are tied in such a knot that one can’t find the cause of it all (and so never the answer), or that they’re all simultaneously causes and effects, and so intertwined with each other that they can not be separated. It is a fine day though, regarding weather, but I wish there wasn’t such an abundance of gusting winds—leavings from the rainstorm that blew in last night, I suppose, all upset for being left alone, and so thrashing about in their anger and frustration. My next stop, briefly, is New Iberia, where the Shadows on the Teche, a 19th century home that has a special appeal for me, is located. I’m curious about it because Henry Miller visited there on his cross-country journey, which he recounts in his book The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. There are Warmshowers folks in town, so a possibility of staying with some people in a cozy home before my next and final stop in Houston. From Houston I’ll be taking a sleeper train to Los Angeles. I’m most excited about spending two or three days in Houston exploring, and then traveling in fairly luxurious style to L.A. over a period 36 hours, leaving Houston on the fourteenth at seven pm and arriving in L.A. at five am. [Later that night] Not the best day. Not the worst day. Just a much much much… much much much… MUCH too windy day. That together with leaving so late meant covering only fifty miles. On the other hand I have a great camping spot in the area of a boat launch. Wonder if anyone’ll be here early tomorrow morning. No matter. It’s nice here, and lit up and surveilled for my safety. The only company I have is the noise of passing cars and the neighbor’s air conditioner, the few mosquitoes outside my tent, and a backhoe which is propping up my bicycle. I would expect frogs, so close I am to a bayou, but nothing. Perhaps they’ve all been eaten. So, as I said, today was rough. Clear blue sky and cool temps, but I couldn’t stop myself from cursing myself, Australia, and the wind. THE DAMNABLE WIND! AND DAMNABLE DEADLINES! And my foolish self. Foolish for being a fool, and foolish too for getting so worked up about all this. Well, in less than a week I’ll be in Houston, then it’s only a couple more days by train to L.A., then the flight to Perth. In the meantime New Orleans was great and I’m so grateful to Nico for giving me his apartment while he was away. Not sure what I would have done otherwise (probably left sooner). But New Orleans! It’s stunningly beautiful, even if most of the buildings are half-decrepit and rotting, molding, and falling apart from the constant damp and humidity and mild to hot year-round temperatures, and many people can’t afford to fix their dingy hovels, or some people just don’t care. Crazy too that one could see on a single block two magnificent specimens of Greek Revival architecture, one building being immaculate with fresh coats of paint gleaming in the sun, and a verdant, manicured lawn; and the other green with algae, lichen, moss, the concrete chipped, pillars discolored, lawn in disarray, basically looking like it’s been neglected for half a century. The food can be wonderful too, if one goes to the right places. I saw many lines of people waiting to get into certain tourist traps in the French Quarter. There are of course many excellent restaurants nestled in there; you just have to know where to go. Like anywhere else I suppose.

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01-02-19

Fair Grinds Coffeehouse, Mid-City, New Orleans

On the back patio. Birds chirping. A fine, wet day. Wet, but no rain. At least not now.

Voices from over the fence. Through the gate people whooshing to and fro, and waiters in white linen aprons carrying boxes to the cafe across the street; children’s toys, and bicycles and tricycles interspersed with the potted plants and the dog bowls filled with water which the birds drink from. From inside the cafe comes the muffled noise of conversation and people jabbing away at their laptops. And I’m out here sopping this all up like a sponge, sipping my okay coffee, nibbling my decent muffin, and feeling strongly nostalgic for my early days of cafe culture back in Annapolis before I, and much of the world, discovered that coffee could be as good as an excellent bottle of wine or a great cocktail, that with care the most extraordinary flavors could be coaxed out of that little seed. Those days for me weren’t so care-free—I was broke and in debt at the time, working jobs that barely paid me enough to live on and pay the minimum amount necessary on my credit card statements to keep from getting charged those absurd fees that do so well to keep people in financial manacles (as if being poor and in debt isn’t enough)—but it introduced me to a life, a culture that has shaped my life and acts now as a key on a map advising where to go. And I’m eternally grateful for that.

I like this little cafe with its mediocre coffee and pretty-tasty baked goods. There’s not much care that goes into the technique of the making of the drinks and food here, but in the right place where exists the right atmosphere that doesn’t matter. This is a coffeeshop for the everyman. People of all stripes, all lifestyles, all walks of life are of course welcome here, and do come here, but it’s the common, average Joe who is most familiar to this place, as well as the many varied inhabitants of the neighborhood and any visitors passing through. It is like a great river which winding, winding, winding back on itself becomes a great pool that all the plants and the animals may water themselves at. It is a home, a destination, and a stopover point during migration. It draws all to its fecundating nexus with its mystical energies. Some stay for hours, some drift in for only a moment, but when they all leave they are better off than when they arrived. And now they know on their next migration, when the next chapter of their life is set to commence, they may stop here and begin the long process, or continue that process, of mutation, evolution, growth (caterpillar to butterfly.)

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12-29-18, NOLA

First espresso of the day. First COFFEE of the day. Still no sustenance in the form of solid food. Wondering what to do about that. Had planned to get beignets at Cafe Du Monde but I refuse to wait in that line even if it “moves fast” as I’ve been told; it’s a good thirty or forty yards long.

The espresso was okay. Long creamy body, balanced sweetness, but still just meh. That’s my experience with Nicaraguan coffees though, even if it’s not a very longstanding experience. Anyway, the coffee shop is Spitfire. A hole in the wall with four stools to sit on in front of two planks of wood anchored to a wall. Two women on staff currently. Espresso, pour-over, cold-brew, and some specialty drinks make up the menu. It gets crowded in here quick. Simple L-shaped counter with an espresso machine and POS, wood laminate floors, and a stucco like wall finish.

I leave Spitfire with either Mammoth or Stumptown as my next destination. Strolling down Royal St.—a tiny one lane lined with antique shops, jewelry stores, and bad art galleries, I come to an intersection where opposite me looms a Walgreens. It seems so anachronistic, so foreign to this place that I am strolling through (which itself is a bit anachronistic to the current century) that I am for a moment quite taken aback. Like while wandering through this living theater I somehow stumbled backstage, to the real world as it were. I stand here staring at this anomaly for a short while until I am accosted by a crazy African-American guy looking for money for McDonald’s. I offer to buy him a sub at Subway in exchange for a photograph. He agrees but won’t stop moving around, creeping here and there, turning his head this way and that so that getting a portrait is like trying to pin down with a needle a squirming worm. I get one though. Quite magnificent too. A portrait of the maniac in the midst of his mania. Something is wrong with his foot or leg so that he has to limp alongside me, all the while he’s talking about things I don’t even remember. Certainly nothing important. Likely nothing at all. Just talking to talk. Like he has all this verbal puss building up inside of him that this continuous chatter is a squeezing of the pimple which then just reseals and builds up again immediately. If he doesn’t talk, no matter what it’s about, all this puss just backs up and becomes an even greater abscess, and then God only knows what he might do. We arrive at the Subway and all he wants is a six inch tuna salad on wheat, plain. Then asks me to get him a beer across the street, something he very plainly does not need, to which I decline. He’s rather unpleasant to the Subway staff, but clearly he suffers from a mental condition. He seems quite irritated with everybody, and has an acerbic, vitriolic temper. He starts talking to someone else and I take that as an opportunity to escape.

At Stumptown on the ground floor of the ACE Hotel. I remember reading in a coffee publication when this place opened to much fanfare and interest. Now, looking around, it just seems old and outdated. A bit abused. Worn out. It’s lost its sheen. Lost its luster. There is a door inside the cafe that opens onto the hotel lounge. Everyone in there sitting on the couches and chairs looks bored, like a bunch of monkeys sitting in trees waiting for something to happen. It’s a strange sort of motionlessness in there, like at any moment a bomb could go off, and that’s almost like the most likely thing to happen. It’s a period of subdued pandemonium, like this moment’s just been wrapped up in a straight jacket that a nut in a madhouse might wear, before the dinner bell goes ring-a-ding-ding, and once that’s done its drunks either at the table or at the bar or at a different bar, and the riots and the whoopee!, and the dynamite and the sex and the headache the next morning, and some more sleeping in soft beds with soft pillows and the room service bringing up breakfast and coffee and lastly the question of are any of us happy? because if we really were what reason would we have for carrying on in this way.

I’m going out for a drink.

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Today has been an interesting day. By interesting I mean completely and utterly SHITTY. Yesterday was quite nice though. I covered approximately fifty miles over about four and a half hours of cycling. That includes stopping for photographs and having lunch at a Subway, so I made pretty great time. That night I camped in Osceola National Forest near to Ocean Pond, a body of water which is as it sounds—a very, very large pond (basically a lake)—and one which I wanted to visit this morning but didn’t due to waking up to precipitation in the form of water falling from the sky. In truth I didn’t really wake up to much rain but I befriended a fellow, Connor, who was traveling by motorcycle (I thought him much smarter than I), and we struck up conversation which of course slowed my packing considerably. Enough so that by the time I DID manage to cram my belongings into the various bags that they only kind of sort of fit in, including the backpack that was not brought along with this intention, the rain, or the day’s SHITTINESS did truly begin.

It was with a sigh of exasperation and arms in the air with resignation and of course-ness that I wandered off along a hard-packed sandy road to Route 90, which, despite it being designated a “route” or highway, is actually relatively quiet and came complete with a cycling lane.

For twenty or so miles I pedaled. The rain let up some, then came down harder, then let up again, then, as though a zipper was undone along the bottom of some bulging cloud above me, rain came down by the bucketsful (as they say). My back ached from the backpack, my thighs chafed from my soaked bibs, and as I slowed down upon arriving at Lake City (checking for coffee and food resources of any kind from my phone) I began to shiver. Not the best set of circumstances to find oneself in.

As there were no small, specialty or family-owned types of cafes in town, I made my way to a Panera on the far western edge of town, chosen for its wi-fi and the heartier food options than the nearby Starbucks. Well? What else is one to do in this situation?

Anyway. I dined on warm carbohydrates, and was bought a coffee by a woman who cycles, runs and generally speaking stays active. We chatted for a bit and it was apparent that she was genuinely enthused about my trip. It was here, after stripping out of my sopping jacket and jersey for a dry top and my insulated jacket, that I decided to seek refuge for the night at the Driftwood Motel, an appropriately named place for the state I was in. So here I am, in Tallahassee, typing this up as though I was still in that motel with the time to write while my tent and other belongings were strewn about the motel room undampening in a pretended state of organization while I prepared my meh dinner of rice, red lentils, zucchini, garlic, and a few snagged basil leaves from a cart of plants lined up against a fence at Walmart.

Hopefully my things dry out completely overnight, though I’m not counting on that, and any rain tomorrow is spottier and weaker. Twenty miles is a pathetic distance for a day, and I’m rather done with this getting soaked business. I should probably just walk back to the Walmart and buy a poncho (assuming they have any)….

November 6, 2016, Bit East of Gallup

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A couple miles off is a train, creeping along beneath towering, red, sandstone cliffs spotlighted by the lowering sun and glowing like they had recently been removed from a forge. The train looks like a toy miniature running on plastic tracks amidst an elaborate display set up on a table in an old firehouse.

November 6, 2016, Thinking Outside Gallup, NM

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Gallup, NM, El Rancho Hotel. Huge, just enormous sort of mansion-like place. Above the front porch is a large sign, clearly visible while hurtling along the highway: “Charm of Yesterday, Convenience of Tomorrow.” Fascinating! Already thinking towards the future. Already in the future! I wonder what Tomorrow’s convenience might be like? Is it better than Today’s? How does it work? Does it know what I want before I want it? Will anything and everything, all my wishes and demands simply be brought to me and dropped at my feet? It’s unfortunate that I won’t be staying here, but am instead just passing through. I’m curious as to what this future will be like. Alas, here I am in the present. Sounds like a good business model though because everyone is either infatuated with and looking back to the past, or obsessed with the future. Very few people seem to be content with the present.