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.