Last Days in New Orleans

In order to expedite this process, we’re going to list it up:

• Day 2 with Mack at the Lower 9th Ward Village: we spent the morning with Mack clearing brush from a woman’s house because it wouldn’t be taken away by the city until it was laid out correctly.  Go figure.
• After that he took us on another tour of the Lower 9th Ward where we saw Louis Armstrong Elementary School, one of the first schools desegregated in the Deep South (now defunct, as there is only one functioning K-12 school in the Lower 9th), and the House of Dance and Feathers (accompanying book here), another amazing citizen-run museum out of a garage, with artifacts from the Mardi Gras Indians, Social and Pleasure Clubs, Skull and Bone Gangs, Parade Krewes, and other assorted black cultural traditions.  It also had a display of news articles from the Times-Picayune that detail how the media accounts of widespread rape, looting and murder had been grossly exaggerated.  Ronald Lewis (the guy who runs the museum) also had on hand a veritable library on pan-African culture, as well as letters of support from heads of state and President Obama.
• After that we went back to the Village where Leona Tate, one of the women who had desegregated Louis Armstrong as a kid, was waiting to talk to Mack.  So we met her.  Y’know, the woman who, as a first grader decided to stand up to White supremacy and do some changing-of-the-country.  Unbelievably modest and humble.  Mack told her about our trip and she was like “oh man, I couldn’t do something like that”, to which Ruth and I responded, “you’re joking right?  you’re like, actually a real-life tyranny-smacking superhero”  (okay, we didn’t really say that to her, but it’s what I was thinking).
• We then helped prep the main space for a meeting that was going to be held at the space later that week, after which we bid our farewell to Mack and went to see the Rebirth Brass Band.  I cannot thank Mack enough for the time he showed us in the Lower 9th Ward.  I can’t speak for Ruth and I both, but I will most definitely spread the word as much as I can about what we saw there and more importantly will try and bring folks with me to check it out and do some real roll-up-our-sleeves service there.  It was one of the best things we experienced all trip.
• The next day Mommy Solow joined us!  We commenced to repeat some of our favorite New Orleans spots (by which I mean we went to Mother’s Restaurant four times or so #we’reallaboutmom) in the Quarter and Treme (we had to show her Backstreet Cultural Museum).  We did also catch some new ones.
• Mardi Gras World, while totally touristy, also totally blew my mind.  Blaine Kern’s workshop handles at least 80% of float construction for the biggest social aid and pleasure clubs (which were initially created as a kind of community pooling of resources when black folks and immigrants weren’t able to get insurance) that run parades during the 2-3 weeks of every-day-parading of Mardi Gras.  The artisanship and ingenuity of the floats is just mind-boggling- we’re talking floats that in some cases run probably 100 feet long, loaded with the membership of krewes up to about 50 people, each of whom has probably purchased about $200 of beads and other throws to give out to Mardi Gras revelers.  They’ve got bathrooms on them.  And peep this: Mardi Gras has no corporate sponsorship.  40,000 New Orleanians (out of a current resident population of about 350k) basically pay dues to their S&P clubs, and wholly own and self-finance Mardi Gras.  So there’s never a Coke float, a Michelin Man float, or any of that baloney like you see at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (full transparency: I love the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade).  Mardi Gras is basically put on by the community that has said “this is a priority for us, this is our identity and culture”.  Mardi Gras, I also learned, is very different from the Girls Gone Wild breast-a-palooza that primarily occupies Bourbon Street.  Almost all Krewes adhere to a family-friendly policy, meaning that while costumes and themes can get raunchy the idea is always to make sure that the broadest possible swathe of the community can participate.  Our tour guide emphasized over and over again how much the popular perception of Mardi Gras doesn’t capture it as a full-on community event- it’s way way beyond the spring break party-zilla it’s portrayed as.  It’s frickin’ cool.
• After that we went to a cooking lesson at the New Orleans School of Cooking (taught by a guy who sounds strikingly like the honey-badger guy).  It was basically two and a half hours of this dude cooking in front of us while rapping on New Orleans and Cajun history, and emphasizing, just like the tour guide at Mardi Gras World and just like Mack at Lower 9th Ward Village, how misunderstood Cajun culture and Louisiana cuisine is.  I mentioned this before, but just to reiterate, here’s the lowdown on Cajun as this guy told it to us: so New Orleans starts off as a ‘French Catholic’ colony.  It being a swampy, malarial mess, it’s kind of hard to get anyone other than prisoners and those without land (which is, to be fair, in absolutist France, a pretty sizable test market) to go there.  Louis the whatever (XIVth, I think) wants to beef it up as a colony, but the Church won’t support it unless those new colonists are French Catholic.  So Louis declares that everyone in the area (we’re talking French, Spanish immigrants, some Germans, Native Americans, Free Blacks and Slaves) is a ‘French Catholic’, regardless of background.  Hooray gumbo pot!  Then, when France mega-loses the Seven Years’ War and the Acadian people in formerly French Canada are like (cue bad approximation of French accent, we’re talking like, muppet bad) “oh ho!  eff thees, we have no eenterest in your British tyranny!” the British are like (cue bad approximation of British accent, we’re talking like, the Patriot bad) “I say you could just, bugger off and get the eff out of here, we have no ‘eenterest’ [in my fantasy this is accompanied with a lip-curled sneer, Snape-style] in your peasant ways”.  And so the Acadians seek amnesty and because Louis is real excited to have actual French Catholics in his ‘French Catholic’ colony, gives them a biggie tract of terrible swampy land in Western Louisiana.  The Acadians become Cajun, and are for all intents and purposes left alone for the next, like, a hundred and fifty years, and their French rapidly becomes unintelligible and dialect-y, their culture and food shifts to adapt to their new surroundings.  Eventually, in the early 1900s, Americans think it would be a good idea to build pipelines and oil refineries in the area, try and get the land, and discover that they have no idea how to talk to the people there.  They bring in French people to try and talk to them and the French are like “oh ho, I have non idea what these people are saying.  It is certainly not Academie-sanctioned.  I’m going to go home to my middling eemperial power now, enjoy trying to deal with this in a humane manner”.  So the Americans employ a time-tested approach to dealing with diverse ethnic and socio-economic patchworks: suppressing the hell out of the language, shaming an entire culture, and turning white people “White”.  They economically marginalize Cajun-speakers, break the fingers of kids who speak it in school, turn them into ‘white trash’, and take the land.  Cajun culture only begins undergoing a resurgence in the middle to second third of the century when it’s revived by global interest in Cajun cuisine, and a growing sense that we probably can’t finger-break our way out of our differences.  And these guys are white.  Needless to say, other migrant groups, Native Americans and Blacks have similarly, if not more ‘exciting‘ times becoming Louisianan.  Oh, and remember that this is a cooking class.  So as he’s telling us this history he’s also stirring his roux, telling us he’ll flay us alive if we over-season his gumbo and chicken creole, passing out beers and engaging in sassy banter with the fellow cooks.  It was rad.
• We saw Kermit Ruffins and Ellis Marsalis with mom.  They were amazing, though Ruth and I couldn’t help but lol when Kermit Ruffins did a cover of “I Gotta Feeling” by thre Black Eyed Peas.  Thanks for a wonderful time in New Orleans Mommy Solow!
• When Mommy Solow departed for points North, we met up with Lauren who was coming in to New Orleans for Halloween, and stayed with Jessica Judson and Tuyet Ngo who incredibly graciously put us up for that weekend.  Highlights included: 1) seeing friends again and catching the Black Men of Labor second-line parade, 2) a hilarious Halloween party and series of bar-hops on Frenchmen, 3) recovering from our hilarious Halloween party and series of bar-hops on Frenchmen and hanging with Kirsten and her housies, 4) walking around a bunch and hanging out with Tuyet in New Orleans East (don’t have time to go into it, but really fascinating place-history.  briefly, it was started as a bedroom community for when the NASA facility was built there back in the day, eventually went through White flight like much of the rest of industrial America, and then became the main destination for thousands of Vietnamese refugees.  Like the Lower 9th it was massively flooded during Katrina, and with most of the houses being one-story we’re talking flooded above the roof).  Thanks again to Lauren, Jessica and Tuyet, it was wonderful hanging with yall.
• And then we left.  Ruth boarded a jet plane for New York and then Costa Rica, and I took a train from New Orleans through Mississippi (gorgeous) where I got to meet some incredibly cool Aussie music journalists who had been at Voodoo Fest.  Had a day layover in Chicago where I got to hang out with Obed and check his workplace and the Field Museum as well as the awesome National Museum of Mexican Art.  And then got back to Cleveland.

And that was that.  Trip was done, I returned to Cleveland.

I’ll leave this post as is for now.  Later on I’ll try and do some last trip reflections before wrapping this sucker up for real.

Peace and Love,
Joel

Rose: We had an awesome Emelio going away/Joel returning from away party on Friday.  Thanks to everyone who came out!

Thorn: Emelio goes away today :’(

Bud: Mega-excited for Thanksgiving.

Wrapping it Up: Last Days In New Orleans and The Trip Overall

Hi from Civilization!  In this post I’m gonna try and provide some legit closure to the trip, capture the coolest events that transpired in the latter days (I totally googled that phrase with no idea what would turn up, I just figured it would be something good.  I was wrong.  It was something great, #realtalk) of our New Orleans adventure, and end with some lasting impressions and highlights. [Editor's note: Surprise, surprise, this is gonna be a multi-poster]

So last post took us right up to the doorstep of Mack McClendon’s Lower Ninth Ward Village, so that’s where we’ll start.  Ruth and I had originally been hoping to do a longer term of service in New Orleans, something like four or five days, and this had been one of the impeti (let’s not worry about whether that’s a word or not) for taking a bus from Houston to New Orleans.  However, a number of factors (among them that the original place we were going to volunteer and hopefully be housed had closed, that we didn’t really give great advanced notice, and that our Mom would be in New Orleans on the 26th and we wanted to show her around), meant that we had a window of a couple days to really get into it.  So we ‘volunteered’ with Mack for a couple of days, Monday October 24th and Tuesday October 25th.

I say ‘volunteered’, because in reality what occurred with us is what often occurs when youths decide to give of themselves, especially if the group or person they match up with is really good at what they do: they (the youths) put in a bit of work and time, but invariably receive far more value than the investment they put in.  We got knowledge dropped on us in a big way.

Mack started off with us in the foyer of the Village, a big warehouse space that serves as a community center, explaining that our main task would be to prepare that foyer to make it nice to serve as a greeting for a larger group of volunteers that would be coming soon.  He asked how we had found out about him, and I let him know that I had heard of the Village from a friend who said they were doing good work, and he said that, despite that to many outside New Orleans Katrina and its aftermath are ‘over’, it’s heartening that groups still know there’s work to do, are still drawn to this place (and to the Lower Ninth in particular) to work to make things right.  It was clear (as it’s been clear to me in other service situations I’ve been in) that the engagement and interest of youth means a great deal to folks who have been so neglected and abandoned (when they haven’t been antagonized horrendously by the government or other forces) for so long.

He then took us outside the Village to show us a mural map that had been put together along the exterior of the building, the map showed lines of string radiating out from New Orleans to almost every state in the country, with each color of line denoting a different status for a Lower Ninth resident.  One color meant that the resident still wanted to return, but lacked the resources to do so.  Another meant that the resident did not want to return, and had decided they couldn’t bear to be back with everything that’s occurred since then.  Another indicated a resident that had returned, but was struggling to re-situate.  As Mack would later tell us, there are roughly 4,000 residents now living in the Lower Ninth Ward, down from 18,000 at least who had been there before Katrina.  He explained that helping residents return is one of the main projects of the Village, and that they pursue this agenda by working to make the Village develop the many services that have not been restored to the neighborhood by the City, and by serving as a locus for community meeting, organizing, and awareness-raising around the legal rights of residents (which many residents don’t know).

After this he showed us around the Village, which has in it a room with cots for temporary housing for volunteers, a room with exercise equipment to serve as an impromptu gym, a room that he hopes will eventually become a recording studio for neighborhood artists, a computer room (which he said was the most important room that needed to be brought back after Katrina, as people continued to lack awareness and access to communication systems for months), and a main auditorium space that held a stage, probably over a hundred chairs for seating, a basketball hoop for games, and a room-of-requirement class array of stuff including an assortment of pianos, a mini-library, more exercise equipment, tools, Christmas fixin’s, and banners from all the schools and groups that had sent down volunteers.  It reminded me of my desk at work or my room- cluttered, alive, in a constant shifting state of repurposing.

After the tour of the space (and an introduction to his brother) we worked on cleaning the foyer and the main space.

After that, Mack took us on a tour in his truck of the Ninth Ward, because it was clear that the most effective use of our time was not to serve as short-term volunteers for a couple of days, but to learn as much as we could about that place, to share what we learned, and to build the beginnings of something of a relationship that could deliver further commitments.

We went down Caffin Avenue, which used to be lined with businesses all the way down to the bayou, but now looks barren, a mix of vacant lots that have cohered into a mostly-continuous urban field, and an assortment of broken homes and storefronts.  We saw the bayou, where trees used to rise out of the water and where as a kid Mack and others could fish and catch food.  Those trees were cut down years ago to create a shorter shipping route out to the Gulf, and thus failed to impede the storm surge in 2005 as they might have done.  He then took us down North Claiborne Avenue to the Jackson Barracks of the Louisiana National Guard, a recently renovated (with costs in the millions if not billions of dollars) base that runs along the border of the Lower Ninth Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish.  It is by far the nicest and best kept compound or building in the neighborhood.  From there we checked out St. Bernard Parish, which had a 99% home flooding rate, but has rebuilt spectacularly post-Katrina-  their high school’s campus could compete admirably in a beauty contest with Oberlin.  Mack attributed this primarily to the tremendous organization and united voice of St. Bernard Parish, and while he acknowledged the community’s racial makeup and socioeconomic status (more middle class than low-income, as most of the Lower Ninth Ward has been made up of elderly homeowners on fixed incomes) as factors in their rebuilding, mostly highlighted the strategies pursued by St. Bernard that he felt should also have been pursued by residents of the Lower Ninth.

Finally, before heading home for our first day, he took us out to the Brad Pitt Houses.  Many residents reportedly call them ‘spaceships’ due to the solar panels on them, as well as the hydraulic systems that will reportedly kick in, raising the house when water rises to a certain level.  The Make It Right project appeared to be emblematic of many of the efforts in the Lower Ninth (and part of what I’ve increasingly come to feel is an issue with the non-profit organization industry as a whole): well-intentioned but primarily driven by a leadership and governance that lacks transparency, accountability and participation by the community for whom the organization’s leaders bear good intentions.

Some other things we learned:

• The City of New Orleans has a law that when a house’s grass grows to above 18″, the City can take over the home, under the assumption that the homeowner won’t return.  Many homeowners want to come back, but being elderly and dependent on fixed incomes don’t have the resources to do so, and there are minimal (read: none) services supporting resident’s  return.
• As such, Mack spends a great deal of his time not maintaining the Village or working on growing it (or, for that matter, making sure he himself isn’t foreclosed on), but in cutting the grass of residents he is in contact with and knows want to come back, but are still working on getting their stuff together to do so.
• The City of New Orleans gains no property taxes from homes valued at less than $75K.  Most homes owned by elderly, black residents are below this value, which is part of what allows them to live there.  However, this also contributes to a decided lack of interest on the city’s part when it comes to reviving the community.  Mack suspects (and I’m paraphrasing here) that the City’s primary interest is in allowing older residents to continue to be unable to return and lose their houses, so the land can be developed in a fashion that would take advantage of its ideal waterfront location for commercial and potential tourism uses.
• The new levees are only two feet thick, and probably no more than ten feet tall.  Not nearly enough to prevent another storm surge, should another Katrina-class catastrophe occur.

So that was day one.

I’ll get to day two later, and try and wrap up for real for real.

Peace and Love,
Joel

Rose: It is an awesome fall Cleveland day, I’m chillin’ at Civilization drinking my coffee.

Thorn: Mega-struggling to say everything via blog I want to get out about our times in New Orleans and the trip overall.

Bud: Seeing NLDP folks tomorrow, and we’ve got a week of Emelio-leaving celebrations coming up.

“And Now For An Original I Call ‘So Sad And Blue’”: The Beginning Of The End- New Orleans!

Greetings from New Orleans!  We’ve been here a little over a week and will be leaving for our respective post-journey adventures (Ruth to Costa Rica to do some service with Cross Cultural Solutions, I back to Cleveland to work with Slavic Village Development, #VISTAround2!) on November 1st, but I wanted to drop what little post-age I could before time gets away from us.  There’ll definitely be more future posts once we’ve had the time to collect our thoughts.  I’m hoping this post will take us from when we got to New Orleans up until this last Monday, because the two days we spent with Lower 9th Ward Village really need a post of their own.

So, we got to New Orleans on the night of Tuesday the 18th, after greyhounding it from Houston (we’ll get to Houston, I swear, and thanks again Ned for your hospitality!) through East Texas, Western Louisiana, Lafayette and Baton Rouge.  I wish we had been able to spend more time (that is to say, more than roughly ten minutes in each of those cities, and more than the two and a half hours that were dedicated to each of those regions) along the route because from what I hear, bayous are really cool, the swamp is pretty, and Cajun culture is fascinating, danceable and delicious.  But alack alas, this trip has already tried to take on perhaps more than was fair to expect of our time, and so we hurried through via bus.  Upon reaching New Orleans we made contact with Kaitlyn Gam, our incredibly gracious host (along with her boyfriend Sam Lawrence and his roommates) for our first section of the trip, and took a streetcar from Lee (as in, Robert E.) Square down St. Charles street to 7th, where we proceeded to walk through the Garden District, mouths agape, because

DEAR LORD, IT’S BEAUTIFUL

As a New Yorker transplanted to Cleveland with a truly odd (#thatwasacharitablecharacterization) sense of aesthetics and beauty (some might call it an appreciation for tragic majesty), I was a little knocked out by how traditionally beautiful the architecture and streetscape was there.  The Garden District is basically a bunch of mansion-looking buildings (like plantation-looking, so also a teensy eerie) with towering, imposing live-oak trees overhanging many of the major residential thoroughfares as well as St. Charles.  St. Charles also of course has the street car running through it, and joggers and bikers use that central median (what I actually learned today is called ‘neutral ground’) for their various activities, all of which combines to form the realization of all those urban design sketches of the ideal streetscape.  Local character, pedestrian access and utility, and businesses and entities encouraging pedestrian, public culture.  And mega-tree-of-life-trees.

So we make it to Kaitlyn’s apartment (which is also pretty as all get-out), chill out for a sec, and then make our way with her and Sam Lawrence (who had done the TransAmerica Trail this summer and with whom we swapped many a story) over to Parasol’s, where we ate smoked pork po’ boys, some gumbo and sweet potato fries after which we exclaimed

DEAR LORD, IT’S BEAUTIFUL

Because oh my god, as we would discover moving forward, the food in New Orleans rules.  Just to get this out of the way and avoid the temptation to wax poetic about every thing and give the impression that all we do on this trip is eat (#Iswearwe’renotlibertines), here is the list of places and things we’ve eaten, or at least the interesting ones (I won’t bore you with the PBJ, steel-cut oatmeal, pears and peaches we ate #ohnotoolate!), in chronological order after that night:

• Hubig’s Pies
• Beignet and Cafe Au Lait at Cafe Du Monde (duh)
• Muffuletta and Pimm’s Cup at Napoleon House
• Ample Abita Beers
• Jambalaya (at a place whose name I regrettably forget.  It was dope, but not blog-cite-worthy dope.  I’ve got a feeling you could get good Jambalaya quite a number of places.  It was somewhere in the French Market)
• Liuzza’s for more po’ boys
• Cooter Browns (yep, that’s totally its name) for… more po’ boys
• Mother’s with Mommy Solow (we got a bunch of Ferdis- basically po’ boys #onlyasIwritethisdoIrealizemyshame), which I saw on a poster in Houston (long story there) is one of the ‘most hip-hop’ places that one can get food.  I didn’t really feel like six-stepping afterwards, but it was definitely delicious.
• Jacques-Imo’s Cafe for some awesome fish, lamb and gumbo
• and The New Orleans School of Cooking which was touristy like whoa, but delicious and fascinating- we had gumbo, creole chicken, and pralines.  All while a dude who sounded just a little like this guy regaled us with tales of Louisiana (mostly Cajun) history and culture.  Fun fact!  Did you know that in the early 20th century Cajuns actually had their language suppressed in the public schools, with children who failed to speak English receiving broken fingers until they would do so?  Seriously, that happened.

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

More lists!  Here’s a further list of the stuff we actually did up until our Monday and Tuesday with Lower 9th Ward Village (which as previously stated will warrant something of its own post):

• On Wednesday we checked out the French Quarter, again mouths agape at the beautiful architecture; admired the Disney-like presentation of Jackson Square (St. Louis Cathedral + mule carriages surrounding the square + ‘gutter punks‘ who look like pirates + assorted gypsies, artisans and street musicians + tourists out the wazoo); checked a bunch of street music; and headed over to the Marigny to see more pretty architecture.  The title from this post comes from a scene in which we encountered a trio of street musicians (I think they were guitar, trumpet and bass) and the guitarist/singer after having crooned a couple of very pleasant standards, announced that he was going to do an original called ‘So Sad and Blue’.  This tickled me like whoa because, let’s face it, this title is probably the second most generic song-title of all time after the reigning champ in that category.  Still, it was a good tune.  Later that evening with Sam and assorted educator friends we watched ‘The Experiment‘, a documentary following five kids through the nearly wholesale charterization of the New Orleans school system.  It was pretty pro, but pretty simplistic (but what do you expect from a TV journalist, really?)
• On Thursday we headed over to Audubon Park and the Tulane campus, and walked around more of the Garden District to check some more pretty architecture.  We also went to a Planned Parenthood house party after dinner, after which I crashed a Tulane law student birthday party (I was technically invited).
• On Friday we went to the Treme neighborhood to see Louis Armstrong Park (including Congo Square, #historyswoon) and the Backstreet Cultural Museum (#cultureswoon).  We also made our only trip through Bourbon Street at night en route to Frenchmen Street, where we caught some fun music.
• On Saturday we went to Occupy New Orleans for a march (unfortunately turnout was rather low- around 50- because it had been kind of hastily put together) and then Sam and I (Ruth was unfortunately suffering from mega-allergies, and so didn’t go) went to an ‘End Times’ themed second-line parade that was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever participated in.  Just imagine a couple blocks’ long parade with a ton of families and people of all ages, amazing brass bands, people throwing candy everywhere, a Star Wars themed parade crew (Intergalactic Krewe of Chewbacchus, Fi-Yi-Ya), a ‘Noisician Coalition’, and a couple of Indian tribes (one of them was Victor Harris of the Mandingo tribe, an African pride-oriented tribe.  We actually thought he was dead, but it turned out he was just in the hospital) with their chiefs in full regalia.  It will receive its own post.  For now, peep the pics on Facebook.
• On Sunday we were hoping to do another second-line, but it got canceled.  So like God, we rested.

More posts at some point soon!  They may come post-trip depending on how much time we have, but they warrant super-sharing.

Peace and Love,

Joel

Rose: We’re hanging with Mommy Solow in New Orleans!

Thorn: The weather was kinda cruddy today.  Also, Mommy Solow leaves tomorrow.

Bud: More second-line tomorrow, Halloween, and freakin’ Lauren is gonna be here for mini-Austin reunion (#Ihavetogoback, #ImissmyAustinObievillage)

The People’s Republic Of Austin: Extended Obie-And-Americorps Family Reunion, Occupations, Highlander Mock-upations, Roadside Epiphanies, And Tacos Every Day… Part II

Oh hi again!  Where were we?

• Day 7, October 11, Part II: So we made our way back to Amelia’s house, listened to some bumpin’ tunes, and decided on a plan of action.  First we made our way to the local library for some planning and other errands, and then, relieved of the pressures of having to get anywhere specifically, biked around a bunch, and checked out Barton Springs.  Barton Springs, for you unfortunate souls who haven’t visited Austin, is a delightful spring-fed swimming pool in the middle of a truly dope set of urban parks.  It was refreshing as all heck.  After Barton Springs we met up with Momo to bottle a bunch of wine from a groupon promotion, which we, Tantalus-like, learned shouldn’t really be drunk (drank, dranken?) for three months after bottling.  Not ’cause there’s anything wrong with that, it just won’t taste as good.  So we resolved that I have to come back to Austin in three months so we can enjoy it.  After this we went to Torchys for, uh, even more tacos (#thisisjustgettingridiculous) and then to a bar with a trivia night in the hopes of winning $100.  Alack, alas, it was not to be, the questions being way more obscure than any trivia I had ever attended.  After that we went home and, after moving our stuff from Amelia’s house to Momo’s (we didn’t want to have our stuff all over Amelia’s common room) watched some Avatar with Amelia.
• Day 8, October 12: We started the day with some much-needed laundry and then did a bunch of errands you don’t need to hear about.  I did, however, also check out Mellow Johnny’s, the bike shop I hear was started by Lance Armstrong.  It was pretty groovy all things told, and sports a downtown bike support center where you can shower and use a locker so as to bike commute to work and not be a stinker.  After that we moved our stuff again, from Momo’s house to Lauren and Eric’s, so as to get out of Momo’s roommate Emily’s hair (thanks again for your patience with us Emily!), see a new part of town, and just hang a bit more with Lauren and Eric.  After this move was accomplished, we met up again with Marina and her boyfriend Damien and made a mega-delicious-dinner that was also good for us (#mybodycriesfornutrientsthatdon’tcomefromtacos), featuring sweet potato, quinoa, mixed green/walnut/cranberry/feta salad (a Solow classic), and ample boxed-wine.  We then moved on to a bar/outdoor theater called Vortex, which had a really great vibe, so great that Eric, Lauren, Amelia and Momo joined us for a chill-down sesh.  We finished the night with donuts, lest we be TOO healthy.
• Day 9, October 13: While I had hoped to make it out to Urban Roots for some gardening, it turned out to be way more remote from our location than I had thought, so Ruth and I instead took in some north side Austin.  You should still peep the link though, because they look really cool.  We checked a radical bookstore, a coffee shop, a vintage shop, and a toy store (featuring a book published by some theater Obies I remembered from my years as a theater Obie.  peep the link to… read the book.  yep, peep has become one of my new favorite verbs, thanks to Amelia) before I decided to make my way over to check out an organization I had learned about in our pizza-pedagogy-pow-wow with Amelia and Cameron a few days earlier- Casa Marianella.  There, I met with Melissa, a staffer there who was incredibly generous with her time as she also dealt with her work there and told me about what they do and how they operate.  Basically, Casa serves as a shelter for migrants, asylum and refugee seekers, and even women and families fleeing domestic violence situations.  The community is, by its nature, constantly shifting, but talking to Melissa I was able to learn some really interesting (and in some cases, really sad) things about developments and shifts in Austin’s more vulnerable populations.  Casa fills a lot of roles, but in many ways serves as a one stop shop and resource link for the major needs of migrants and refugees- for legal, medical, ESL, food, and a host of other services.  They also offer transportation for some of those services and have done a lot to even get some migrants who’ve lived with them out of detention with ICE- that rules.  For those interested in volunteering (here’s looking at you, Austin Obie/Americorps crew, because you don’t do enough good already you layabouts) opportunities, she told me that they’re very flexible in responding to volunteer interest, and have a pretty wide array of opportunities.  Plus, given the nature of the shelter, it sounded as though they’re pretty flexible on hours as well.  I could go on, but you can probably even just learn more by checking them out yourself or peeping their website.  Anywhoo, after checking out Casa, feeling somewhat glad to have learned a little bit something about Austin beyond just their dope taco scene, I headed back home to hang with Eric, Momo, Ruthie, Amelia and Lauren.
• Day 10, October 14: Last full day in Austin!  This day actually progressed fairly uneventfully for the most part.  Ruth and I took care of logistics regarding our future plans.  We bid farewell to our bikes, shipping them out to our respective homes, and boxed up our now extraneous gear, also for shipping.  And somehow that took us to about 4:00, at which point we joined Lauren for happy hour.  We went with her from happy hour I at Sol Y La Luna to another place, but they carded and as such, Ruthie couldn’t go, so we went with Eric (who we met at that place, I forget what it’s called [#blogginlate]) to a place called Spider House, which, despite sounding like a biker den filled with ZZ Top looking guys or possibly haunt of goth teens (Editor’s note: I’m never googling ‘goth teens’ again.  The internet is gross [#dontdoit]) turned out to be an incredibly chill bar/restaurant that was playing exactly the indie-jams I was in the mood for in a very pleasant patio atmosphere (which, to be fair, can be found almost anywhere in Austin).  After Spider House we headed over to Central Market to meet up with Marina and Damien for a farewell dinner where there was live music and an all-around very pleasant family-friendly atmosphere that was kind of refreshing, given Austin’s occasional ‘neverland for twentysomethings’ feel, which can get kind of unreal.  We bid sad goodbyes and, meeting up with Amelia and Momo there, proceeded to a party at Momo’s friend Sadie’s house.  It was fun, though unfortunately did NOT end in Karaoke, as was proposed a number of times.  Instead we talked about Lord of the Rings, the hajj, and 90s music.  It was a pretty standard night.  We then headed home for a mega sleepover for our last night in Austin (wah).
• Day 11, October 15: The next morning Momo had to peace early for some appointments, but Eric, Amelia, Ruth and I made our way to Torchys for, yep, a last round of tacos (#hellyeahIdid) before leaving town.  After several sets of goodbyes, final packing, and some snacks for the road purchased at Wheatsville Co-op, Ruth, Amelia and I headed off into the Texan sun for Houston, our next and second-to-last destination.  And there I’ll suspend the narrative.

I or Ruth will cover Houston later.  It’s late, so I should get to bed soon, but I wanted to rock some minor reflections on Austin and Texas to tie these suckers together.

Austin Is A Ton Of Fun.  There are many ways in which Austin is just a young, just-out-of-college person’s dream.  The weather frickin’ rules (at least while we were there, granted we had come in on the heels of some horribly hot weather), it’s sunny and pleasant as heck, the hills, springs, parks, and rugged aridity is beautiful.  The city is the capital of live music for crying out loud, and it’s definitely all over the place (though Amelia and I noted an unfortunate lack of R&B and hip-hop, which is kinda a biggie).  There is cheap and delicious food all over the place, with food trucks every couple of blocks it seems (at least, where we were).  All of this leads to something that was noticeably different from what litte we’ve seen of Houston- there are a lot of people outside, all the time.  It feels alive and vibrant, pick-and-choose.  We got there at the end of our bike-iest portion of the trip, but there are bikers and bike lanes everywhere.  The bike culture is incredibly visible, and while I don’t know how politically active it is I imagine it’s relatively muscular if it has all the infrastructure it’s got.  I didn’t get the chance to peep a social ride, but they have them every week and apparently get hundreds out each time.  I practically felt guilty when I kind of just wanted to chill out and not do something.  For all the stuff we did there were still recommendations we hadn’t gotten to.

Austin Feels Out Of Place.  I don’t mean like ‘wrong’, I mean like, I kinda forgot I was in Texas.  To be entirely fair, we didn’t (and still haven’t) see nearly enough Texas for me to really be able to say I got a super accurate impression of Texas.  And we also spent way  more time there than anywhere else, and were also in different relations to reality (being sedentary, rather than on the move).  But Texas felt different as soon as we crossed into Texarkana, the Texas side.  The land looked different, arid and scrubby (pine forests notwithstanding).  The people we encountered were excitedly, enthusiastically curious about what we were doing, in a different way than others had been.  The hospitality was mind-boggling (though obviously it’s been that way everywhere).  The towns we passed through were very different than in other areas in their layout, busy-ness, and feel.  Among other things, the whole state’s clear mix of Anglo and Chicano influences lead to it feeling like you really can’t lump it in with the South (maybe it bears more similarity to the Southwest), and Austin’s wholesale adoption of Mexican culture (or at least, its contours and outlines) fit in with that.  Lone Star is called the national beer of Texas.  I already mentioned the economic data and stuff, but really, when you’ve biked 150 miles from the border and you’ve got another 150 to go to reach the major city you’re trying to get to, and you then think about the fact that that city is like, a third of the way across the state, and that the terrain has changed dramatically in that time already, it hits you that this state is really effin big.  And that that city you’re trying to get to, at 850,000 is considered small by the standards of the other parts of the state.  You go to the capital of the state, read about the resistance against a brutal dictator and then the deliberate and intentional, treaty-driven process of entering the union, and then the revival of ’the spirit of ’76′ in the face of northern coercion, and you (by which I mean, Yankee Joel) begin to feel viscerally that this really is a state where regional identity approaches nationalism in its potency and personal significance.  So country of Texas, within which you might as well acknowledge the city-state of Austin which clearly takes several Texan characteristics of independence (and also, mega-privilege) and, shit, creative survival as gospel truths, but also is almost entirely made up of folks who come from elsewhere and bring their own meanings to this place.  In Austin, I didn’t feel like I was anywhere I had ever been before, and I felt it way more than I had on the trip so far.  To that end, also

Austin Is Growing, But Into What? It kinda blew me away when Momo told me that Austin is projected to grow to a city of three million people by 2030, accustomed as I am to the general sense that America is growing, but my adoptive city’s future is tenuous and uncertain.  In that regard, Austin and Cleveland are actually very similar: it’s really not clear where they’re going.  You can make predictions, but it’s going to depend on a lot of factors.  But how their identities are being forced to change are in completely different ways.  Austin is just such a colony of weirdos, progressives, greenies, creative types (and frankly, mostly white ones, by the looks of it, despite a substantial Latino population)- almost all of them young- that it has a very ephemeral, transient feel.  The friends I talked to, and the sense I get in general is that many are not there to stay, and that the character of the city will continue to shift and churn.  I have to wonder how that will continue to change depending on demographic shifts and, significantly, climatic shifts (because of course, Texas just went through a ‘once in a hundred years’ drought that should be on schedule for once a decade if the climate keeps doing what it’s doing now).  And the city is segregated.  Not northern segregated.  But there’s definitely a part of town I walked through that felt cut off from the ‘main’ Austin, and heard of parts where there’s no reason to go.  And there’s clearly a large migrant and foreign-born population for whom participation in the dynamism and prevailing culture is difficult.  And there is, if we’re honest with ourself, a part of youth culture that is alienating and off-putting to those that don’t get to participate in it (ironic given so much of its creation out of feeling alienated from other places).  There are definitely folks working on bridging those gaps, and I’m lucky to be friends with several of them, and to have met others.  But especially as fears of gentrification and income polarization abound (how could they not in a city dominated by politicians, techies, musicians, waiters and food industry service workers, DIY bikers and farmers, and immigrants?) it’s not clear where those trends will go.

Okay, I’m rambling enough, and I haven’t taken the time to really order this.  I loved Austin, and I loved it for its puzzlement in a very different way than I love Cleveland (fitting, given how opposite they are).  So I’ll keep thinking about this.  I hope I didn’t say anything dumb.  I’m going to bed, good night.

Peace and Love,
Joel

The People’s Republic Of Austin: Extended Obie-And-Americorps Family Reunion, Occupations, Highlander Mock-upations, Roadside Epiphanies, And Tacos Every Day… Part I

Okay, I’m gonna try and do Austin now.  We’ll see if I can make this in one post [Editor's note: clearly not].  We’re in Houston right now, and will be heading to New Orleans tomorrow for what will be- oh my god- the last part of our journey.  It’s a little bonkers.  But I owe an epic post for our Austin times, which I will try and herein impart.

SO.  We had been having a rad time in rural Northeast Texas.  There had been slip-ups to be sure (namely a flat in Texarkana, a near-flat outside of Tyler, another flat IN Tyler, a final frustrating flat several miles outside of Palestine, and Ruth’s mega-sickness in Palestine, which should bring shudders of recognition to all my old Dascomb friends from Oberlin- you know what I’m talking about).  But we had also been encountering the following joys (below the flip):

 

• In Texarkana we had stayed with Harvey and Gwen, an absolutely lovely and hospitable couple we stayed with through Warmshowers who: 1) set us up at a property they had just acquired that was COMPLETELY gorgeous, (though was somewhat outshone by their own gloriously beautiful apartment) 2) treated us to our first sample of regional Tex-Mex meals at Zapata’s (of roughly a gazillion to follow), 3) showed us around and told us about the very interesting twin-cities of Texarkana, Arkansas and Texarkana, Texas (if my fellow Cuyahogans think it’s hard coordinating an extended community within a fractious and divided county, imagine trying to pull it off in a metro-region that straddles two states as different as Arkansas and Texas.  The former is an incredibly geographically and population-wise-ly diverse state that, in many ways, resembles a more rural Cleveland- it’s full of potential, has gone through really hard times, and has a ton of folks who love it and are trying to figure out what to do with it [needless to say, I loved it].  The latter would be the 11th or 12th biggest economy in the world were it its own nation, which, by the way, it kinda thinks of itself as, and resembles in no small measure due to its own mega-diversity, hugely independent spirit and fascinating history, and China-levels of development/environmental catastrophe/labor practices.  Whoo baby. #Texas-sized-tangent), 4) engaged with us in an INCREDIBLY interesting conversation regarding women in construction (Gwen owns a construction company, which indicates to me that God is not done with me hanging out with tradeswomen and women in nontraditional roles), education, the future of Southern Arkansas, and bike-adventures, 5) took us to the awesome Berridge Bikes and Boards, and 6) fed us even more.  If only to hang out with Harvey and Gwen, I highly recommend Texarkana.
• In Avinger (population 444), encountered the following progression of events: 1) get to Avinger, 2) look around for signs of human activity, 3) run into a group of chillers hanging outside the back of a restaurant, 4) ask where we can camp out without bugging anyone, 5) are referred to a nearby park, 6) ask if the restaurant will open soon- when saying we just were thinking of getting a beer (to save money on food), are told that they don’t sell beer, it’s BYOB, but hey, do we want a miller-light from their bottomless cooler full of miller-lights (#whohastwothumbsandisalwaysdownforfreebeerthisguy), 7) ask if they mind if we hang with them for a sec and are pleased as punch to have young folks to hang out with, 8) are told that if we want we can have a steak dinner on them, 9) are asked, upon sitting at our table, if we want ‘a beer’- are brought an eight-beer-bucket, 10) are served by a city councilwoman, 11) Texas rules.  Seriously, to any of the folks from Five D Cattle Company and Steakhouse who might be reading this, thank you again SO MUCH.  To anyone who likes steak and chillers, go to Avinger.
• Outside of Palestine, when my tire flats for the third time in three days, are picked up by the first pickup truck we hail for help.  Shoulders (not lying, his name was ‘Shoulders’) brings us to the Holiday Inn, we really didn’t want to have to camp after the crap-tastic day we had had.
• Mom and Dad incredibly graciously help us cover the hotel (#thankyouagainmomanddadforyourunmitigatedsupportandlove).  Little did we know how critical this would be until Ruth’s mega-virus reared its ugly head.
• At the Holiday Inn, Carroll and the general staff: 1) help us find a bike shop where I can get repairs and replacements, 2) give us free cookies and delicious sweet tea, 3) when Ruth gets MEGA-sick, take us to the Emergency Room, and 4) let us stay in the room an extra day for FREE so she can recuperate.  Thank you again SO MUCH, Palestine Holiday Inn staff for your incredible hospitality.
• Momo and Eric, like shining knights in the night (#yougotmefeelinemotions), come to Palestine to rescue the hell out of us and bring us to Austin.  For reference, this means that Momo got off work at like 5:30, picked up Eric, drove 150 miles to Austin, and then drove 150 miles back with us and our bikes.  We listen to a mega-90s dance and R&B mix.  We stop for Whataburger before reaching Austin at roughly 1:30am.  All is right with the world.

Thus confirming that not only do we have the best friends and family in the world, but also can’t trip without being picked up, dusted off, and given a sammich by strangers (#myrescuefantasiesincludefood).

As great as all those joys were (so great they deserved bullet points and extensive links), Austin was even more joy-tastic.  In order to order my thoughts, I will chronologically detail our time in Austin via bullet-point, being sure to address where we ate at every meal, and follow this catalog of comiendo-como-its-our-job with some general Austin impressions:

• Day 1, October 5: While Ruth spends the day still recuperating, Joel accompanies Momo to work at Hays-Caldwell Women’s Center, learns about primary prevention, and is deeply impressed by how much of a grown-up Momo is.  Also, eats incredible brisket and gets to see San Marcos, outside of Austin.  Later, Joel and Momo get their first batch (of many to follow) of Torchys Tacos (#JoelsfirsttasteofAustintacos), is mind-blown, and later meet up with Amelia to go to Blue Moon Rock n’ Blues.  Enjoy some legacy-of-Stevie-Ray-Vaughn class blues music before going home.
• Day 2, October 6: Ruth and Joel go with Amelia to brunch at Bouldin Creek (#timeforsecondroundoftacos), and geek out about ESL, senses of place, movements, music, and tacos.  Later meet up with Marina at Occupy Austin.  Highlights include: 1) seeing Marina again, 2) a great speaker from an organization ‘Daughters of Vietnam Veterans’ talking about honoring veterans and getting fluoride out of the water (a recurring theme in the day), 3) a number of folks advocating greater civic participation in Austin electoral issues, 4) facilitation training for the general assembly, 5) a big contingent waving signs at passing traffic, 6) the obligatory protest drum-circle and brass band, 7) calls for the establishment of a radical cheerleaders wing, 8) planning for a march on Bank of America, 9) open-mic and grandstanding, 10) a teach-in on the Letter from Birmingham Jail, 11) LaRouche heads promoting reasonable things (like bringing back Glass-Steagall) while discrediting those reasonable things by doing stupid and insensitive things (like waving Obama-with-Hitler-mustache posters), 12) Ron Paul heads all over the place.  After briefly flirting with the idea of camping out at Occupy Austin (and that flirtation being rebuffed by the fact that no one was actually camping at the site of Occupy Austin, #longstoryyoudon’twanttohearaboutinternecineconflictontheleft), we decided instead to go ahead and have a mega-reunion with the whole Obie crew, and had a delightful potluck with Amelia, Momo, Lauren and Eric.
• Day 3, October 7: Ruth and Joel do laundry and then walk down South Congress avenue on the southern side of Austin taking in Jo’s Coffee, Uncommon Objects antique store, Allen’s boot shop, Lucy in Disguise costume shop, and the general joys of Austin pedestrian culture.  We then crossed the river into downtown, I showed Ruth what she had missed of 6th street (mostly closed, what with it being the day, and 6th street being kind of analogous to Beale or Bourbon streets), and we made our way to the Texas capitol.  It’s gorgeous and mind-blowing to me as a northerner.  We then walk to UT’s HUMUNGOID campus (#citywithinacitysayswhat), arrange to meet up with Lauren later, and go to Kerbey Lane on Guadeloupe for migas, pancakes, and mild food comas (#reallyjoelanothertacothat’snumberthree?).  We then meet up with Lauren, catch up a tic, and make our way to the Austin Whole Foods.  Are somewhat underwhelmed (it’s a great Whole Foods, it’s just that Austin is the headquarters and we thought it might be bigger.  There are like, multi-level-foodie-palaces of Whole Foods in New York.  However, in retrospect, the galaxy of awesome supermarkets in Austin makes it less surprising that Whole Foods wasn’t so mega).  Then go on to Book People, which is a legit good book store (#itsnobookloftbutwhatareyougonnado).  Then go to Waterloo records.  Then meet up with Marina, check out a really cool set of graffiti art and murals (I really want to say it was on Baylor Street) and then go on to Chilitos for a delicious dinner (#okaysoyourideaoftakingabreakfromtacosisgettingaburrito?).  Marina had to go study, but the Obie-tribe-of-Austin went back to Lauren and Eric’s house for some brews and then made our way to the Alamo Drafthouse for some Master Pancake, featuring The Highlander.  Talking like Sean Connery and saying ‘Oh hi Brenda’ in a weird voice persists for the rest of our time in Austin.
• Day 4, October 8: Amelia, Joel, Momo and Ruth go to the farmer’s market and pick up some materials for a later cooked dinner, and then, for good measure, go to Tacodeli (#joelthisisnumberfouryouvegotaproblemanditsnameistaco), then go to Central Market for more dinner supplies, and then go home to cook dinner (local-made pasta with, yep, deer sausage).  Watch Wayne’s World and play Taboo with Emily (Momo’s roommate, thanks for letting us chill at your place so long, Emily!) and friends, including member-of-Obies-in-Austin-tribe Kameko.  Then go out to a bar on East 6th.  Joel, foolishly still thinking it’s the third to last day before we are to depart from Austin, waxes poetical about how much he loves everyone.  Passersby are mildly disturbed, but mostly drunk and don’t care.  Incidentally, Momo intervenes as some dumb drunk people scribble on a guy passed out in the street with sharpies and calls 311 to get this guy taken care of.  We all decry societal degeneracy.
• Day 5, October 9: Joel, Ruth, and Momo go to Magnolia for brunch (#joelyoureaveragingatacoeveryday) and then take a brief drive out into Texas hill country west of Austin, in Wimberley.  We encounter a bansai tree enthusiast who tells us more than we thought we could integrate into our mental frameworks regarding bansai trees.  We then take in some pie, check out a hilariously bad toy shop, and make our way back home for a solid movie veg-out sesh of watching Daria and Coming to America (#yourestandingonmyhead).  Tears are shed at the thought of breaking up the band.
• Day 6, October 10: Joel and Ruth do some more Southern Congress browsing and meet up with Amelia and her super cool boss at English at Work, Cameron.  Talk about pedagogy over pizza for a geek-out at Home Slice.  Ruth and Joel consider the ramifications of taking a bus from Houston to New Orleans instead of biking that distance, so as to be able to spend more time in New Orleans.  They ponder this course of action over Amy’s Ice Cream.  Later they have dinner with the Obie-crew, and sadly prepare for peacing from paradise.
• Day 7, October 11: Joel and Ruth pack up, don their sunscreen, and begin biking out of Austin.  After about an hour they have a roadside epiphany (see previous post) and decide to head back to Austin.  Momo having gone to work, they head to Amelia’s house to drop off their gear and figure out their plans. 

Okay, this is taking mega-long, so I’ll pick up the trail later on and include some actual, y’know, reflection.  But this should last yall until then.

Peace and Love,
Joel

Rose: Houston has been super and it’s been great hanging with Amelia and godbrother Ned!

Thorn: Amelia has returned to Austin, meaning that we have finally left the last of the Obie-in-Austin tribe (until Halloween when Lauren comes to New Orleans).

Bud: Going to New Orleans tomorrow and getting mega-psyched.  Also, new group of Obies to see (#letsseehowlongIcanavoidleavingtheobiesphere).

Where We’re At

Guys and ladies!  Sorry for the mega-gap between the last post and this our new update.  There’s a lot to get caught up on since Ruth covered our travels from Little Rock through Texarkana into Texas and our less-than-fortuitous entrance into Austin, and due to an overabundance of things to do here, an overabundance of friends I desperately needed to hang with all the time, and also due to, well, the unexpected turn our trip has taken I’ve had a hard time mustering the will to convey our travels and current state to yall.  But I miss yall dearly and want to let you know how we’re doing, so I’m hoping this will make up for our digital absence somewhat.

So before I get into our Austin adventures (next post) I will cut to the chase of where we’re at now.  Namely, still in Austin, about to head to Houston.  So the original plan was to stay in Austin for a few days and depart on Tuesday, October 11th for Houston.  Arriving in Houston on the 13th, we would stay for a couple days to rest up and continue on, hopefully reaching New Orleans (via Lafayette and Baton Rouge) on the 21st or 22nd or so, with another larger stretch of biking, about 350 miles or so, between Houston and New Orleans.  That was the original plan.

Long story short, on the intended day of departure we got about an hour outside of Austin by bike and, well, frankly, realized our hearts weren’t in it anymore (at 5:38 this clip bears an eery resemblance to what happened, including the arid ruggedness and emptiness of the terrain outside the Austin airport, minus the devoted and inspired followers).  The reasons are complex and varied in their origins, and could well make up a fascinating study, stream-of-consciousness novel, or made-for-TV-psychological-drama-movie, but the basics are:

• We had lingered a little bit too long in the warmth and comfort of both friendship and familiarity (what with friends Momo, Amelia, Eric, Lauren, and Marina all living here and showing us an incredibly good time) and also, frankly comfort, consistency, and sedentary existence.  We had grown weary of the travails (and accompanying joys) of the road- of searching for a place to sleep, of roadside flat-fixes (and the uncertainty of how long those fixes would hold), of the lack of other company, the whole shebang.  Much more than physical endurance our sense has been that this bike trip is a matter of mental commitment.  Having spent a good week in Austin, in different enough conditions from the rest of the bike trip, we had naturally slipped into a different routine and mindset, one we didn’t really feel like leaving.
• We wanted to get to New Orleans with enough time to really commit to doing some service for a number of days while also exploring the city.
• We were relatively satisfied with the progress we had made, 1290 miles in all from Cleveland to Palestine (where we were picked up by Momo, and had truly stopped biking).
• It became clear that the part of this trip that we enjoyed most was really getting to explore cities, neighborhoods, organizations and, yes, unbelievable numbers of taco joints, in greater depth, and enjoying the company of old friends and wonderful hosts.  We’ve been trying to do, well, kind of a lot of different things on this trip and we decided to stop and focus on one particular part of it.  The journey itself has had an incredible number of joys, surprises, and instances of remarkable honesty and hospitality in between cities, and we’re thankful to everyone we’ve encountered along the way, and the luxury we’ve had to see the country in this way.  But with the way we had framed this trip, really as a road-trip from city to city by bike rather than a ‘bike trip’ with occasional rests (if that distinction makes any sense), we had to acknowledge that it was the cities, and hanging out with folks we knew or had connections with that was most in line with our interests.  And with the option available, we’d rather just move on to the next cities than bike between them for a week or so.
• Blah blah blah.

So we turned around, met up with Amelia (who didn’t have work in the morning), and plotted the rest of our journey, in which we’ll get a ride with Amelia (and possibly Momo) to Houston today, and then greyhound from Houston to New Orleans, where we’ll stay for a couple weeks, and are working on arranging some manner of relatively cheap service we can engage in, before going home.

So that’s where we’re at now.  There’s a lot more I could say about it, and a lot I’m still trying to process from our decision to peace out from the biking portion of the trip a bit early, but for the most part I’m glad we decided to focus on spending more time in Austin with folks I’ve missed dearly for a while, and on getting to New Orleans with the time to really take it in.

Next up, I’ll try and give as thorough an account of our Austin adventures in the almost two weeks we’ve bummed on our friend’s couches here.

Peace and love,

Joel

Rose: It’s been freakin’ awesome hanging with everyone here in Austin, it feels very much like home seeing them all again.  Also, as I’ll get into in the next post, Austin rules, and it’s been great being able to take the time to explore it and get to know it a bit better than the other cities we’ve seen so far.
Thorn: It’s mega-sad that we’re leaving and I’ll miss our folks here dearly.  Also, some lingering disappointment on my part that we didn’t make it all the way to New Orleans from Austin.

Bud: Really excited both to spend some time in Houston and see what I’m guessing will be a very different side of Texas (in a state that is clearly practically its own country inside the US, Austin is practically its own city-state inside that mini-country).  Also, obviously, New Orleans.

Sneak Peek!

Hi all!

I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve posted so, while I don’t have time to go in-depth at ALL, I’ll post some highlights (and lowlights) of our trek from Little Rock to Austin.

• First day, we make it to Arkadelphia (#whatasillyname!), home of TWO colleges (universities?) literally right across the street from each other. Hang out in an awesome cafe for dinner and post dinner ice cream (duh) and make our way to the park to camp for the night. We meet some hilarious college students while there, and talk to them for a hot second. FUN!
• Next day, we get to HOPE, Arkansas. Birthplace and childhood home of Bill Clinton! Since we’ve already visited his presidential center, we’re pretty pumped up on Bill Clinton. We stop by the actual home, the library, an awesome burger joint (Tailgaters) for some fries and conversation with the waitstaff, then we head over to fair park for camping and the COUNTY FAIR! Yesssssssss. It is so deep fried. There we find food (gator on a stick that we don’t eat ’cause it’s expensive!), live music, hilarious rides, livestock, and more. Super enjoyable! Then camping behind the fair. More fun! Thank you, Hope!
• Finally, TEXARKANA with our lovely warm showers hosts, Harvey and Gwen! For those of you who are wondering, there are TWO Texarkanas. One in Arkansas, one in Texas. While it made our crossing the state line a little anti-climactic (we crossed it by car running errands several times), it’s kinda cool anyway. We get there by lunchtime, so we go to an awesome Tex-Mex (yeah… we’re in Tex-Mex territory!!) restaurant called Zapata’s. Afterwards we go to Gwen and Harvey’s for some computer time, home made ice cream, home made cookies, and fun conversation! Then mondo chores at the local bike shop. Then a lovely dinner at Harvey and Gwen’s house. Then we go to their OTHER house to spend the night. Yeah!
• After a day in which Joel gets yet another flat tire, we spend our first night in Texas proper, we go to Avinger, a town of 444 people! At first we have a hard time figuring out where to camp/what to do, but then we meet the waitstaff of Five D Cattle Co. Steak House and Meat Market hanging out behind the restaurant, and they turn out to be AWESOME! We drink some beers with them, talk about life in Avinger a little, then go to their restaurant for a FREE STEAK DINNER. Now that’s some hospitality!! Thank you so much Five D!
• Nothing interesting happens from Avinger to Winona.
• ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE EN ROUTE TO/IN PALESTINE!!! Seriously. Joel gets a flat-scare, so he has to attend to that. THEN Joel gets an actual flat, which he has to attend to once again, resulting in a horrifying blister. THEN we get so close to Palestine, when Joel gets yet another flat. This time we are in the middle of NOWHERE near no civilization. Luckily we get a ride from a really nice guy heading to Palestine to pick up his granddaughter. We check in to the Holiday Inn Express (whoamigod best hospitality there EVER!) because we are sick of camping and need a little break. Joel goes to the bike store (yeah, there’s a bike shop in Palestine, Texas!) and then we go to dinner at BBQ joint. Go home to watch TV and then back to the hotel for some TV watching and bed. All is going well until bedtime, when I start getting horrendously and disgustingly sick. Like all night sick. It was horrible. So horrible, in fact, that I spend the next morning in the ER (the manager of the Holiday inn drove me there and back!!!!) for some medicine and major fluid. Needless to say, I am in no shape to ride that day. LUCKILY, Joel’s wonderful savior friend Momo offers to drive 3 hours that night after work to pick us up in Palestine and take us to Austin! This is the best news ever because I’m still feeling so sick and have no idea how I’m going to get back on a bike. But it gets better. Momo and Eric (another Obie) is supposed to arrive at around 9:00 PM, which means we either have to find somewhere to hang out for the day or book the room for another night. Or do we? NO! The management lets us stay in the room free of charge while we wait for Momo and Eric to come. What wonderful people.
• So here we are, in Austin. I have yet to experience the city because I spent yesterday in bed recovering, but now I’m feeling GREAT and am excited to eat delicious food, see the nature, hear the music, and OCCUPY!

We’ll share more on Austin later. Joel can fill you in on what HE did our first day here, and anything else I left out (I’m sure I left out a lot).

Once again, Rose Bud Thorn should be SUPER obvious from this post. If you just skimmed though:

Rose: We did NOT have to ride to Austin.

Thorn: Vom city! First time in ER everrrr.

Bud: Get to see Austin today!