Day 52: Hastings, MN

After being chastised and brow-beaten for failing to update my loyal fans, I've finally found some time to do a little writing.

I spent a bit longer in Chicago then I originally intended, due partly to weather and partly to my own disorganization and lack of planning.  But to be completely honest, after 7,000 miles I wasn't all that excited about jumping back on the bike right away to ride another 3,000 miles back home.  It was a much needed break, and gave me some time to do a little maintenance and a little cleaning, as well as have some fun and spend some quality time with my family.  Rather than trying to recreate a narrative of the past two weeks, I'll just list some of the highlights, not in any particular order:

I got to meet my cousin Andrew's wife for the first time, as well as my cousin Charlotte's husband and two sons.  My Uncle Dan and Aunt Audrey took us out to dinner at White Fence Farm, somewhere off of Joliet Road.  They serve the best fried chicken I've ever had, hands down.  I don't know exactly how they do it, but it's not a traditional batter.  Apparently they steam the whole chicken before they bread it and deep fry it in a pressure cooker.  The restaurant itself is huge, with seven or eight different dining rooms, and basically a small museum full of antiques, including some sweet motorcycles.  It was the first time I'd ever seen an Ariel.

I went to see a band called Catfight with my cousin Kristi.  It's a girl band that plays covers of everything from AC/DC to Greenday to Franz Ferdinand.  They're pretty talented musicians and they put on a great show.  The next day she helped me change the oil and air filter on my bike.  She has a little Kawasaki ZZR600, and I was hoping we could go for a ride, but her bike needs a battery and her registration is expired.  Maybe I can talk her into riding it out to Seattle next summer.

I went on a ride up to Lake Geneva with Uncle Kim & Aunt Terri, Uncle Jeff & Aunt Lynn, and my little cousin Kaira.  It was the longest I've ever ridden with a passenger, and apparently the longest ride she's ever been on.  Her father has a big Harley Davidson Electra Glide with a big comfy back seat, but she seemed to enjoy the sport bike quite a bit.  I think she has knee-dragger potential.  It was a beautiful day and a beautiful ride, and we had lunch at Popeye's across the street from the lake.  They've got great pulled pork sandwiches and unbelievably tasty apple pie.  The apple pie was so good it made the scoop of ice cream that came with it seem kind of pointless.

I went on a ride with Uncle Dan out to Rockford, then down to Dixon, and back to Elgin.  That was an absolutely beautiful ride.  Highway 2 between Rockford and Dixon is a nice winding road along the river.  Not exactly what I'd call twisty, but pretty good for Illinois.  We stopped at the John Deere Historical Site and I got to see one of my uncle's blacksmithing friends do a demonstration.  He gave me a little good luck charm to take with me.

One of my uncle's neighbors is an artist and author, and while I was staying there I read one of his books.  It's a collection of short stories and poems, and basically amounts to the insane ramblings of an angry old man.  It was great.  I tend to agree with the majority of his opinions.  He was having a showing/book signing at a gallery in Glen Elyn, so we went to that and I got to meet him and talk about his book, and what he went through to publish it.  He's a really interesting guy.  Afterward we went to the Bavarian Lodge for some authentic German fare.  I ordered the Braumeister's Platter, which included a bratwurst sausage, a thuringer sausage, a nockwurst sausage, a center cut smoked pork chop, and a slice of roasted pork, along with sauerkraut, red cabbage, hot german potato salad, sliced pumpernickel and rye, and a bowl of liver meatball soup.  Everything was great.  Then we went to Oberweiss Dairy for some home made ice cream.  The butter pecan was just about perfect.

Aunt Terri made the best oven baked chicken I've ever eaten, and some kind of cucumber and onion salad that she learned how to make from her mother.  Uncle Kim grilled up the most perfectly cooked pork tenderloin I've ever had.  Aunt Lynn made some delicious biscuits and gravy, maybe even better than my brother's, and some baked carmelized onions that were delicious.

I really enjoyed just sitting down after dinner and talking to my uncle, sipping the twelve year old scotch he's not allowed to drink anymore, listening to all his stories.  He has a story for everything, and usually more than one.  He's got drinking stories, cooking stories, boating stories, hunting stories, motorcycle stories, and all kinds of crazy childhood stories, which my mother insists are mostly exaggerations.  I've found that it's quite different getting to know my aunts and uncles as an adult and on my own, rather than in the context of a family gathering like weddings, funerals, and holidays.  I seem to have earned a bit of street cred with all my biker uncles for this trip, and especially for doing it on what they see as a completely uncivilized and horribly uncomfortable bike.  Uncle Dan took one look at it and exclaimed "I wouldn't give you fifty bucks for that thing!"  Oh well.  It's not for sale anyway.

On one of the rainy days I took the train into the city to meet my old boss from Safeco.  We had coffee and watched the rain, and caught up for a bit before she had to get back to work for more conference calls and meetings and reports, and all the things I'll probably never miss about my old cubicle job.  I spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering aimlessly, taking pictures of the buildings and bridges, and ducking into bars and pubs when it started raining too hard.  I found a really cool looking piano bar, but the bartender informed me that they didn't open until seven, and "oh, by the way, we have a dress code."  It was a nice little reminder that I was pretty far away from the west coast.

The ride to Hastings was nice, but I got kind of a late start and had to make some work calls every time I stopped for gas, so I didn't have as much time to explore Wisconsin as I was hoping.  I've heard a lot of good things about Madison and it would have been nice to wander around a little bit, but I guess that'll have to be another time.  Wisconsin is a beatufil state.  The roads aren't as straight and square, and they have nice rolling hills and cute little farm houses, dairy barns, and grain silos everywhere.  It's almost as picturesque as Missouri but it feels like it has a lot more personality.  I love the little towns in the midwest.  Every tiny town has a functional downtown, with a main street harboring more than just boring, kitschy little antique and gift shops.  As a result of a road closure I ended up on a detour and encountered the best twists and turns I've seen since Mt. Lemmon in Arizona.  It kind of caught me by surprise and I almost forgot how to ride them properly.  Riding along the river at sunset was beautiful, but as soon as the sun went down I was blazing my way through clouds of bugs again, just like Mississippi.  Maybe I'll hit another thunderstorm on my way to North Dakota so I won't have to wash my jacket all over again.

Day 37: Wheaton, IL

Eventually the rain in Memphis lightened up quite a bit, or at least enough that I would be able to see where I was going, so I just threw on all my rain gear and continued north.  Most of the rain was along I-55, so I wound my way northwest through Arkansas and Missouri until I hit US-67, which took me back northeast into St. Louis.  I think I may have figured out why Arkansas is the poorest state in the country.  In Mississipi I saw a lot of corn fields.  Across the river in Arkansas I saw a lot of neatly cultivated rows of dirt.  In all the heavy rain most of those neatly cultivated rows of dirt turned into lots and lots of mud.  I saw a domesticated zebra in Arkansas, just hanging out in a pasture with a bunch of mules and small horses.  One zebra.  Not even a pair.  It was possibly the strangest thing I've seen so far.  The folks in Arkansas are nearly as nice as the folks out on the bayou in Louisiana.  Everywhere I stopped people wanted to talk to me.  It was as if no one had ever seen a sportbike before, and the idea that anyone would ride one all the way from Washington state to their tiny little town in Arkansas was just unbelievable to them.  The girls at the gas station teased me about riding in the rain, the young guys wanted to know all about the bike, and all the old guys gave me somber warnings to ride safely, and be careful.

Missouri is a pretty state, and almost every view from the road could be called picturesque.  That being said, there's really nothing interesting about it.  Nothing significantly sets it apart from Mississipi, Arkansas, or Illinois, aside from the effort that they seem to put into maintaining that picturesque appearance.  Every lawn is trimmed, every house is neatly painted, even the grass growing along the highways seemed like it was actually tended and cared for.  I stopped in Fredericktown, which is a charming little community about 90 miles south of St. Louis, looking for a barbcue restaurant that my brother had heard about called The Pig.  Some yokels on the internet claimed that it was the best barbecue in the state, and worth the two hour drive from St. Louis.  Since I ended up on route 67 to avoid the rain, it seemed like providence.  With a little searching I was able to find the place, and it looked like what you'd expect from a drive-in barbecue shop that's been open since 1947.  When I saw the menu on the wall I thought it was a typo.  $2.40 for a pork sandwich.  When the price was confirmed, I thought I had hit the jackpot.  As soon as I saw it, I realized why it was only $2.40.  It was about two ounces of meat squished between two pieces of white bread and grilled in a sandwich iron.  I finished it in about two minutes, and when the girl came back and asked if I was done with my plate I said 'yeah, unless you want to put a couple more sandwiches on there.'  I figured for two and a half bucks I could sample just about everything on the menu.  All said and done, I had a 'Brown' which is theoretically made from just the edge of the pork shoulder, so it has the most smoke flavor, a 'Combo' which is basically a Brown with a slice of american cheese melted on top, a fried catfish sandwich, pulled pork, and coleslaw, along with a couple bottles of soda.  I hadn't eaten anything all day because I was anticipating the best barbecue in the state of Missouri.  After making my way through three sandwiches that were good, but less than impressive, and a tiny little dixie cup full of coleslaw that wasn't any good (and cost me a $1.75) I decided to forego the white bread and just orded the pulled pork without the sandwich.  It took the little girl a couple seconds to catch on, but she asked the cook to 'throw in a little extra, cuz he seems kinda hungry'.  The pulled pork actually turned out to be pretty good.  It was the only thing that really impressed me, which is nice, otherwise I would have walked away incredibly full, but not very satisfied.  It was a typical midwest style, with smoked, shredded pork stewed in a thick, sweet, tomato based sauce, and it was really pretty delicious.  I ate a ridiculous amount of food and the bill was still five dollars less than my rib dinner in Memphis, so I can't complain too much.  Besides, to find this place I ended up on a tiny little highway out in the country which turned out to be the best road of the entire day.  Perfect blacktop, smooth, winding turns, and beautiful farm houses and ponds and orchards and pastures to my left and to my right.

I made it into St. Louis about an hour after dark and rode straight past the Arch.  It's huge.  I was never really that impressed by it before.  I always thought 'It's a big arch; who cares?'  But it's absolutely enormous, and when it's lit up at night it's quite pretty.  St. Louis is a beautiful town, probably the prettiest city that I've seen so far.  Even some of the more beat up neighborhoods south and west of downtown are full of old brick houses and tenements that show a lot of character and soul, even if they're not so well kept or restored.  I decided to take a tour of the Anheuser-Busch brewery while I was there.  I'm not a big Budweiser fan (in fact I kind of hate it) but it's the biggest brewery in all of North America, so I had to check it out.  I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the tour is free and even includes two free beers in the tap room at the end of the tour.  Free beer always tastes better.  I've probably been to more than thirty breweries in four different countries, and this was by far the biggest and the nicest.  Parts of it were built in the 1880s and they've built new additions to it as late as the 1990s, but they've done a really nice job of maintaining the architectural style.  A lot of the brewery sits on land that was originally part of the Busch family estate, and some of the existing buildings were part of that estate.  Regardless of what you think of their beer, the brewery has a lot of history, and it was fun to see beer being made on such a massive scale.

After my brewery tour I had lunch at a place called Penny's BBQ, famous for their ribs and their pork steak.  I'd never heard of a pork steak before and I assumed it was basically a big pork chop.  It's a little more than that.  The chef used to be a meat cutter for Kroger, so he cuts every pork steak himself, and each one is smoked individually, then grilled and smothered in a honey barbecue sauce.  It's listed on the menu as an 18oz Pork Steak for $10.99, but I swear I've had 20oz porterhouse steaks that weren't as big as this.  It was enormous, about two and a half inches thick and the size of an oval dinner plate, and there was only one tiny little bone in it.  They had home made potato salad and coleslaw to go with it.  The potato salad was possibly the best I've ever had, and when I told my mother about it she was horrified.  Her coleslaw is still better though.  I don't know how they got the potato salad to be so rich without being incredibly dense and pasty.  I think they may have used whipped butter.  I don't know, but it was damn good.  The pork steak was also wonderful, and for the first time in my life I felt like I may have eaten enough pork for one day.  But that didn't stop me...

After all that food I had no choice but to go back to the hotel and take a nap.  Nap taken, I went downstairs to the lobby where they had free drinks from 5:30 to 7:00.  St. Louis is quite a beer town, but you'd better be willing to drink Bud, Bud Light, or Busch. Cuz that's what you get.  I heard a rumor that President Obama had 150 pizzas flown from a little place in St. Louis called Pi (the mathematical symbol) all the way to Washington, D.C. because it's his favorite pizza in the country.  Normally I don't pay much attention to celebrities' opinions, especially politicians, but for a Chicago kid to say that his favorite pizza comes from St. Louis, well, that's a pretty gutsy claim.  So I had no choice but to check it out.  The place itself drove me nuts.  It's in a trendy, gentrified part of town and was packed wall to wall with ageing yuppies and rich young hipsters, and is the kind of pizza place that has a bigger wine list than menu, but before I finished my first beer a seat opened up at the bar so I seized it and settled in to wait for my pizza and observe the crowd.  The bartender confirmed the rumor that it was, in fact, Obama's favorite pizza, but rather than having 150 pizzas shipped to Washington he had the chef and kitchen crew flown out to Washington D.C. and they cooked the pizzas there.  Much more sensible.  Anyhow, I ordered the South Side Classico (deep dish), which came with onions, green bell peppers, italian sausage, and of course mozarella.  The sauce was incredible.  It had huge chunks of tomato and tasted strongly of fresh basil and wasn't overly seasoned with garlic or oregano.  The crust was just right, crispy on the outside where it seared on the pan, but fluffy and chewy on the inside.  I can't however, say it's the best pizza in the country.  Too much sauce, not enough toppings.  It's a deep dish.  The reason you make a deep dish pizza is to fit more toppings on it.  That's why they were invented.  I could barely taste the sausage, and there weren't nearly enough peppers or onions on it.  It was still a fine pizza, just not the best in the country.

The following day, having exhausted my food and lodging budget for St. Louis, and still full from all the pork and pizza, I set out for Chicago, or at least the outskirts thereof.  I took the interstate, which was boring, but after all, this is Illinois.  The highway engineers of the midwest have less imagination than a slice of wonderbread.  "Go straight for 15 miles.  Make a 90 degree turn to the right.  Go straight for three quarters of a mile.  Make a 90 degree turn to the left.  Go straight for 30 more miles.  If there's a hill, get the dynamite; we're going straight through it.  I'll be damned if this road is anything but flat."  Not that there are really any hills to worry about.  I saw an exit sign for Mt. Pulaski.  The closest thing to a mountain I could see was a hill about as tall as a three story apartment building.  There are bigger hills in Seattle that don't even have names, let alone aspire to the title of 'Mountain'.

I haven't been in the Chicago area for very long, but already it looks like my schedule is filling up.  We had a big family barbecue in Elgin yesterday with my mother's side of the family.  Tonight I'm taking my grandmother out for dinner.  Later this week I'll be having dinner with my father's side of the family.  Later still I'll be having lunch or dinner with my old boss from Safeco who moved here a few years ago.  And somewhere in between I'll be changing my oil & air filter, going for bike rides with all three of my uncles, and spending some time with all of my cousins.  I should still have plenty of time to relax before I head out west, finally in the direction of home.

Day 33: Memphis, TN

Last night I had dinner at The Bar-B-Q Shop on Madison in midtown Memphis.  Apparently it's not typical of Memphis style barbecue, but it's been rated number one in the city for the past several years.  The pork ribs came highly recommended, so I tried those.  They have a really unique style.  They actually sell their own dry rub mix and their own barbecue sauce, both called Dancing Pigs.  They use the dry rub to smoke it, but then they seem to brush it with a really thin coating of the sauce, then sprinkle more dry rup on top of that.  The result is a sweet, salty and very flavorful rack of ribs.  The coleslaw and bbq beans were the best I've had since I left Seattle.  It's hard to say for sure, but I think Stubbs in Austin was a little bit better, based just on the quality and texture of the meat itself more than the flavor.  After dinner I went to a cafe down the street and was enjoying a glass of ice tea on the patio when a strong wind blew in and I saw some pretty ominous clouds to the west, which happened to be in the direction of my hotel.  I figured I should try to get to the hotel before the rain hit, but I was about 5 minutes away when it started to fall.  By the time I got to the hotel, I was almost completely soaked.  At least it cleaned most of the Mississippi bugs off my helmet and jacket.  Since I woke up this morning it's been raining hard, so I've just been passing time in the hotel lobby, drinking coffee and trying to plan my next stop in St. Louis.  It looks like a little break in the weather is coming, although it probably won't be completely dry until I get all the way into Missouri.

Day 32: Memphis, TN

My second day in New Orleans I managed to find a really nice Vietnamese man that was willing to keep an eye on my laundry while I rode my bike around the city and did a bit more sightseeing.  By the time I got back my laundry was done, and all I had to do was fold it up and pack back onto the bike.  I went back to the hotel and changed into some freshly laundered clothes, then hopped a shuttle down to the 'quarter again.  Following a suggestion from one of the locals never to eat at a restaurant on Bourbon Street, I wandered around until I found a nice little seafood bar a few blocks from the cathedral square.  It was an upscale place nicely maintained in the original art deco theme, but they had seafood and okra gumbo for only $4.50.  I followed the suggestion of a hand-painted sign on the wall and ordered a Dixie Beer to go with it, which was ice cold and absolutely delicious.  The gumbo was better than mine, and maybe better than Celestine's, but I doubt it was the best that the city had to offer.

I wanted to sample some more gumbo, so I wandered around a bit more looking for a place called The Gumbo Shop, but couldn't find it.  I did, however, wander into a place called K Paul's Louisiana Kitchen.  Apparently it's a pretty famous place, but I didn't puzzle that one out until I recognized the chef's picture on the wall near the bar.  They had some kind of chicken & sausage gumbo on the menu, but I was too intrigued by a couple appetizers to even think twice about the gumbo: pan fried rabbit tenderloin with a creole mustard sauce and sauteed spinach, and buffalo fried frog legs with onion rings.  I couldn't make up my mind so I ordered both.  They brought out a plate with a little southern biscuit (basically a really sweet cornbread muffin), a jalapeno roll, a plain white roll, and a molasses walnut muffin.  The southern biscuit was probably the best of them, but the molasses walnut was the most unique and interesting.  The rabbit tenderloin, frog legs and onion rings were all fried in what appeared to be a traditional southern buttermilk batter.  It was the first time I'd ever had rabbit.  It was like the best piece of chicken I'd ever had.  It has the texture of white meat, but the richness of dark meat, with none of the greasiness.  The buffalo sauce was more of a glaze, like it was made from hot sauce & honey instead of hot sauce and butter, like the buffalo sauce I'm used to.  For dessert I had half a slice of pecan sweet potato pie.  It's like a pecan pie, but instead of a custard filling it had a sweet potato filling.  It wasn't as good as Jason's pecan pie, and it wasn't as good as Sandra Dee's sweet potato pie, but it was good, and quite unusual.  Apparently it's so popular that people have it shipped all over the world, like Oprah and her Ezel's fried chicken (also good, but not worth express shipping from Seattle to Chicago).  As I wandered back in the direction of my hotel I walked directly past the Gumbo Shop that I was looking for, but was far too stuffed to even consider it.

The next morning I headed to the Cafe Du Monde for breakfast.  It was highly recommended by a freind (thank you Liz). The cafe is at the end of the French Marketplace, across the square from the cathedral.  It was the best cup of coffee I've had since I left California, but I couldn't convince them not to put cream in it.  I can't even remember the last time I had beignets, and these were hot and delicious, and covered in a mountain of powdered sugar.  I have to wonder how many 50 lb sacks of confectioner's sugar that place goes through in a single day.  It wasn't even a weekend and the place was packed at ten o'clock in the morning.  I wanted to stay in New Orleans one more day, but just couldn't afford it.  There's too much good food and good drink, and the cost of a comfortable bed is pretty steep.  So I headed north, toward Memphis, Tennessee.

After 4,900 miles and 31 days of traveling I ran out of gas for the first time out in the middle of the swamp about 40 miles outside of New Orleans.  I was feeling cheap and didn't want to fill up near the airport, thinking it would be less expensive to wait a couple more miles.  Eventually I started to get nervous and took the first exit I saw, which was for a town called Ruddock.  I saw the sign, and I saw the little dot on my map, but when I got off the freeway all I saw was about two dozen people fishing in the swamp under the overpass, and a a little side road going north.  The only signs around pointed back to the freeway.  I headed north for a few miles on that side road, and there was no indication of civilization anywhere in sight, so I turned around and headed back to the fishing hole apparently known as Ruddock.  I asked one of the fishermen if there was a gas station near by, and he told me there was a fueling dock in Manshac if I just kept following the side road north.  I turned around again and just as I was in sight of a few houses on my right and a big bridge in front of me the engine died and I coasted to a stop right in front of the houses.  There were no signs indicating where I was, and the only paved road aside from the bridge ended in front of the third house.  There was a little gravel road that crossed some railroad tracks toward a couple of boat houses, so I followed that, wondering if one them were the fueling dock.  One of them turned out to be a wildlife observation center, where a couple of guys were working.  They were kind enough to give me a ride across the bridge to the fueling dock, and let me use one of their gas cans to carry enough juice to get me to Ponchatoula, where they had a proper gas station.  In all my travels so far I've never met such friendly people as live out on the bayou.  It's really remarkable.

I hit a little bit of bad weather and got pretty soaked before I even had a chance to pull over and put on my rain gear.  Louisiana thunderstorms aren't like Texas thunderstorms, where they're over in 15 minutes, and you're dry again in another 15 minutes.  They're a lot more thorough, and the humidity ensures that it stays with you.  I stopped for lunch in a town called Amite, at a place advertising 'Old Fashioned Goodness Since 1947'.  I was standing around waiting for my fried catfish po-boy (which turned out to be about as big as my forearm) when the rainstorm caught up to me, and with renewed viciousness.  I ate my sandwich and drank my tea and stood around for a bit, but it showed no signs of letting up.  I was afraid that at this rate I'd never make it out of Louisiana before dark.  So I piled on all the rain gear and headed out into it.  It was coming down so hard that even with my jacket on and the rain gear over that, the droplets were stinging my arms and I could barely see anything but the lines on the road and the tail lights of the car in front of me.  I eventually outran it though, and about the time I reached Mississippi even the clouds were starting to break up.

As soon as I crossed the Mississippi state line I had a county sheriff 'escort' me all the way to other end of town, where he turned around and headed back the other direction.  He didn't pull me over or harass me, but I didn't exactly feel welcome.  Mississippi has some beautiful country, with rich red earth, rolling hills, tall pines and lush green pastures.  Coming down out of the hills the river delta is beatiful too, with ravines and islands covered in trees which are themselves draped with vines and blanketed with ivy.  The people though are distinctly unfriendly in comparison to the folks on the bayou, and the small towns throughout the farm country along the river don't really have anything to offer.  Many of them don't seem to have a functioning gas station, or even a restaurant.  Just a lot of churches and a lot of mobile homes and occasionally a liquor store.  I thought maybe my poor impression of the place was just my own experience, but it was confirmed by an off duty sheriff that I ran into in Memphis.  He told me that law enforcement there is a good old boys' network, known for their profiling, and the people really distrust outsiders.  I had intended to spend the night in Greenville, but it wasn't a very pleasant place, so I decided to try one of the smaller towns up river.  The sunset was beautiful, but none of the towns I passed through appeared to have any kind of motel that hadn't been shut down for thirty years, and the people weren't getting any friendlier.  When the sun went down the bugs got so thick it was like riding through rain.  I could see them swarming in the headlights and hear them pinging against my helmet.  After cleaning my visor for the third time I decided to just head for the interstate and get to Memphis as fast as I could.

Memphis is a great place, with a lot of history and a lot of character.  It's a very industrial town and very proud of its heritage and its music.  I spent some time wandering around the south end of town looking for Graceland, and eventually found it.  I thought the house itself would be bigger, but the grounds are pretty expansive.  He built his own gymnasium and raquet ball court, with a full bar, of course.  I think there were 7 bars in the house, and one more on each of his two jets.  The house was built in the thirties, but most of it was remodeled in the seventies.  Not as classy as Don Corleone's mansion, but not quite as tacky as Tony Montana's.  Elvis's jet is about a hundred times more luxurious than Jimmy Carter's Airforce One.  Twentyfour-karat gold buckles on the seatbelts.  Suede upholstery. Two televisions, a galley, a bar, a lounge, a bed room, and a dressing room.  Probably as much square footage on his plane as my old apartment.  I got to see his motorcycle collection, or at least what's left of it.  A custom built chopper, two custom built Harley Electro Glides, and his orignal 1965 Honda Dream.  I stopped at the cafe and ate a grilled peanut butter & banana sandwich to round out my tour.

After Graceland I headed into downtown Memphis searching for Sun Studios.  I'm a bigger fan of Sam Phillips than Elvis, so I was pretty determined to see it before I left town.  Last I heard it had been shut down, but the building was still there in more or less original condition.  I was happy to find out that it's since been reopened as a museum, and then a few years ago once again became a fully functional recording studio.  The tour at Sun cost about a third as much as Graceland and involved a real human tour guide.  It was really a lot of fun, and full of new facts and legends about the old kings of rhythm & blues and rock & roll.  We got to listen to some clips from Sam Phillips' personal recording library, out takes from recording sessions with Elvis and Carl Perkins and such.  It's odd that even though Graceland was Elvis's home, the recording studio that made him famous felt much more connected to his true personality, maybe because it had none of the layers and layers of opulence and glamor that he later surrounded himself with.  I guess it's easier for me to identify with a 21 year old kid putting all of his passion and energy in to the one thing that he loves most, instead of a fat, aging man in pursuit of the newest flavors of decadence.  Perhaps ironic then, that I bear more resemblance to the latter?

Day 30: New Orleans, LA

I woke up in San Antonio a couple of days ago intending to go downtown and check out the famous River Walk and of course the Alamo.  Downtown San Antonio really doesn't have much to it.  A lot of the old buildings are really neat, but it seemed oddly empty aside from tourists, and some sort of small parade going on right in front of the Alamo.  I'm not big on parades, and I'm not big on paying for parking, and for some reason I was really anxious to get out of Texas, so I just left.

Austin is a really neat town with a lot going on, even on a saturday morning.  There were hundreds of people downtown working, shopping, eating, drinking.  There were hundreds more down by the river, where they have a huge park, or really a string of parks on the banks across from downtown.  I never did find 'The BBQ Captiol of Texas!' but I did find a biker bar called the Dirty Dog Saloon, which directed me to Stubbs BBQ a few blocks away.  Stubbs was amazing.  The brisket was of really high quality, perfectly marbled so that it was tender, juicy and buttery without being at all fatty.  The pork ribs were meaty and juicy and just plain great.  It was served 'dry' with no sauce, but it was anything but that.  They used a really spicy and flavorfull dry rub on it.  There was a bottle of homemade sauce on the table, which I tried, but it wasn't anything special.  The mashed sweet potatoes were delicious, and topped with fresh walnuts, and the mac & cheese was creamy and cheezy and wonderful.  I think it was the only meal I ate that day.  I had intended to spend the night in Austin, but again I was compelled to continue on for some unknown reason.  On the way east I met a couple riding a big harley, who were kind enough to be my guides and help me stay on the right highway during the tricky parts, and recommended a hotel in Beaumont.  It was a long, but pleasant ride.  East Texas is really quite nice.  Once you get east of Huston (which I avoided) the countryside is really lush and green, and there were little yellow wildflowers growing along the side of the highway that smelled wonderful.  Not like cows at all.

I woke up early the next day and left Beaumont, and soon I was in Louisianna, in the bayou country.  There was a really nice breeze coming in from the Gulf, and view crossing the bridge into Lake Charles was really cool.  I was excited to try some cajun food, but I figured I should get further into the bayou first.  I was lucky enough to pick out a highway on my map that turned out to be one of Louisianna's official scenic byways, winding between lakes, and over rivers, and through tiny little towns.  I had forgotten that nothing in the south is open on Sundays, but they leave all their signs lit up, which is confusing.  I ended up stopping at three different places before I found a seafood shack that was actually open.  So it was cajun fried shrimp and fried chicken for lunch, then back on the highway.  Abut 80 miles outside of New Orleans I ended up talking to a crusty old biker at a gas station for about 30 minutes who gave me directions to get to New Orleans using scenic highways that aren't on the map, running straight through the swamp.  It seems like people on the bayou just sort of throw all their garbage into the swamp. Tires, coolers, radiators, sheet metal, beer cans, whatever.  It all goes into the swamp, which is a shame, I guess, but in a way it really adds to the swampyness of it.

When I got to New Orleans I followed the signs to the Casinos, thinking there would probably be some cheap hotels nearby.  I ended up getting stuck in a traffic jam that was due to a huge street fair on Cliborne Ave, which runs underneath the freeway and seems to separate the french quarter from the projects.  There were thousands of people there and beer vendors, daquiri vendors, and food vendors.  You could get any kind of food you wanted, so long as it was cajun and came off the back of a truck.  There were hundreds of bikers, and dozens of motorcycle gangs.  Almost all of them were on Hyabusas, with a few GSXR 1000s and a couple of ZX14s and one harley and two custom built choppers.  Every one of the was dripping with chrome and custom paint jobs and neon lights and just completely tricked out.  Everywhere you went you could hear guys popping their throttles and winding up their engines, and doing burnouts and wheelies.  They were weaving through the traffic and squeezing between cars like the squids up in the Bay.  I kind of stuck out, being the only white guy riding a stock, stripped down 600 with a hundred pounds of gear loaded onto it, but nobody seemed to care.  I got tired of listening to my engine overheat, so I took a right (having no idea where I was) and ended up in the french quarter.  I found a bar with a couple of bikes parked on the sidewalk in front of it, so I stopped and asked a guy on a harley if he knew of a decent hotel in the french quarter.  He said he was born and raised in New Orleans, and he wouldn't stay in the french quarter.  About 6 other locals who worked at the bar agreed with him, and suggested I stay in a little town just west of New Orleans, about 15 minutes away.  I ended up on the wrong freeway, so I got off and tried to turn around and ended up stuck in the middle of the street fair again.  This time some friendly people encouraged me to just zip my way through traffic like all the other bikes, because the cops were too busy to care and the people in cars couldn't do anything about it.  Eventually I made my way through and ended up finding a hotel in Downtown, or the CBD (central business district) which is actually Uptown.  I found that out last night when I was trying to make my way back from the french quarter.

The french quarter is pretty amazing.  The buildings themselves are just incredible, and as I was picking my way through some of the side streets and boulevards I found myself thinking that it might actually be a nice place to live.  There are markets and art galleries and drug stores and even a hardware store.  When I made my way back to Bourbon Street that thought pretty much went away again.  Bourbon Street is a really odd mix of a few locals seeking their own debauchery in some of the smaller bars on the side streets, and tourists who are acting like teenagers whose parents have left town for the weekend.  Teenagers with hundreds of dollars to spend on booze and hookers.  I was only solicited once, and I don't know if that was luck or an insult.  Maybe the curious and distainful look on my face gave me away as the wrong mark.

That's not to say I didn't enjoy myself.  I drank absinthe for the first time.  No hallucinations, but it did make my mouth feel funny.  Surprisingly most of the bars on bourbon street don't seem to have any good bourbon.  I did find a rum bar that was offering tastings, so I couldn't pass that up.  I ended up talking to a couple of bartenders that invited me out for a drink after their bar closed down, so I got a little insight into the real lives of the people who work in the french quarter, and how to deal with the most corrupt police force in America.  Seems that most of the people who work in the french quarter are originally from somewhere else.  If the aftermath of hurricane katrina was anything like 5AM on Bourbon street I'm surprised they ever managed to clean the place up.  The people cleaning up the streets hate you.  You can see it on their faces.  The locals who are coming and going to work are afraid of you, because they have no idea what you might do, what you might think that you can get away with.

I've decided to stay in New Orleans another night, since I didn't really get any sleep.  Today's mission is laundry and gumbo.  Tomorrow I go north, and begin Part III.