New Orleans

In the morning, as I am getting on the freeway, I am thinking I will just take I-10 straight to New Orleans and not mess around with any of the smaller roads and risk getting soaked in the middle of nowhere again. This plan does not hold out and as soon as I reach an exit leading to 1 South, I pull off and check my map. I can take this road for awhile, then jump briefly on 70, which will bring me to 3127, which hooks up with I-310, which in turn hooks up with I-10 and brings me right to where I am staying at a hostel in New Orleans. It's not a spectacular ride on 1 through some small towns, but it beats the interstate any day, and so far the rain is holding off. I get to 70 and take a left at the intersection and drive a ways until I get the feeling I am headed in the wrong direction. I look at the map and see that I am right, so I turn around, cross 1 where I just turned off, and continue on 70 the other way. After fifteen or twenty minutes I have the feeling that this is not quite right either, I should have hooked up with 3127 immediately, and so I stop at a gas station and ask a young couple in line where exactly I am. P'yair Pahht is the response from some greasy kid with a wife beater on and a tattoo of praying hands on his chest. I ask if he can show me where it is on the map I am holding in front of him. He says I probably won't find it on the map, but I do, and I realize we are in Pierre Part after translating his thick accent. I backtrack my path on the map and see that 1 and 70 cross in two places and I did not turn where I thought I had, and in fact, when I went left and got the wrong feeling about the direction, I was in fact right. So I turn around and drive back, passing houseboats on thin rivers, and people pulling off to the shoulder to fish in the natural culverts that run alongside the road. They all have coolers and I suppose that these roadside fishing holes that look half like swamps with the tree stumps sticking out here and there are where all the catfish that I see advertised on homemade signs posted outside of shacks along the road come from. I pass some farmland and recross 1 and go in the direction I was initially heading and make it to 3127, just beyond where I first turned around. This is a good road. It is long and straight, and I see only a handful of cars for the forty or forty-five miles that I drive it. This is the sort of road that you can let your mind wander on, and that is one of the best parts about riding a motorcycle on small roads: thinking about whatever your natural thought patterns bring into your mind while the air goes by and you look at the trees on the side of the road.
Where this road joins to I-310 the relaxation comes to an end and I am back on multi-lane madness. The interstates here seem to be raised up and built on columns rising out of the swamps, and along the sides there are just trees below me and the other cars. Pretty interesting views as far as interstates go. When I get into New Orleans, my route to the hostel brings me past many of the beautiful above-ground cemeteries that this city is known for, and I drive down Canal Street and find the hostel without much problem. This is only the second hostel I have stayed in in America. I found the first, when I initially moved to Salt Lake, nothing like other international hostels I have stayed in and was disappointed that it was just locals looking for a cheap place to live. The India House here in New Orleans is much better though. There are actually international kids staying here and there is an energetic, fun atmosphere to the place. I park my bike along side the porch, as out of sight as I can get it. It is Saturday night and everyone seems to be hanging out on the front porch. There are a group of three girls who are all nannies in DC. Two are from Germany and one is Swedish, and I learn that there is a previously unknown to me culture of international nannies that come to the states and work for rich people after college in Europe. These three are all part of the same program and just on vacation, and they entertain me with various complaints about the kids or families they work for, although overall they seem really happy with what they are doing. We catch one of the streetcars that stops right on Canal and ride it to the French Quarter and walk down Bourbon Street. It is nothing like Bourbon Street from earlier in the afternoon, when I strolled around just to check the place out. Now there are people crowding every inch of the thin street, and it seems that every bar is pumping music out of their windows and doors to compete for who is loudest. People are walking by with a thousand kind of drinks and everything is closed off to cars. We find a bar that we were supposed to meet some other kids from the hostel at, but they are not there and it is actually pretty empty, so we walk two doors down and go into a large, out of control looking place where people are signing karaoke. After a couple of hurricanes, which seem to the the house drink here, and are just huge glasses of sweet slush and alcohol, it seems like a good idea to sing We Didn't Start the Fire. Of course it really is a bad idea, and the words don't come up fast enough on the screen to match the music and I am awful at singing in the first place. Oh well, I don't think anyone actually notices. Two of the nannies go home early. One was not feeling good, and in fact she was underage but with a fake Swedish ID, the bouncers just looked confused and let her in as I figured they would. We met up with some other people from the hostel randomly though and we all watch karaoke until early in the morning. On the way out, I lose everyone in the crowds and end up walking something like twenty-five minutes back, north up Canal Street, under a dark freeway and through places I probably should not have been walking. I am alive and unbothered back at the hostel though, and climb into my bunk and sleep.
It's late when I get up and I don't feel like doing much except laying around and eating and taking a nap. Eventually I get the energy to drive around on my motorcycle and I walk through the French markets and see a bunch of touristy crap. On a boardwalk along the Mississippi, some black shoe shiner comes up to me and is such a smooth talker that before I know it my boots are clean and he has ten dollars from me. I don't even know what he said really, it was like a whirlwind, but it was entertaining so I don't really mind. Back on Canal Street, it is easy to see that the city is not recovered very much from Katrina. Many of the houses are boarded up, and those that aren't are in need of repairs. The massive trees that line the street and drip with moss have a deep dark green to them, probably from the humidity, and add to the sense that nature is taking back this part of town. Grasses are overgrown and sidewalks are cracked and phone booths are ruined, and there is a pervasive empty feel to the place, like not nearly enough people have come back to make it feel alive. Very strange.
That evening I meet an Australian girl named Kris. I see her after she comes in from a cab and apparently she and the driver had just heard gun shots and seen a guy running towards them as she got out of the cab to come into the hostel. What a great neighborhood. The hostel has a safe feeling though, because it is closed off from neighboring houses, and there are so many people that work and stay there that friendly people are always around. After a hard night of drinking last night, I am content to stay in, so Kris and I pick up some Southern Comfort to sip at the hostel and we take it easy. We get along great, and it's always nice when you meet someone traveling that you fit well with, temporary though it may be.
It is Sunday and Kris has heard about a place that William Faulkner had lived in in the French Quarter, which is now a bookshop. I have only read a couple of his books but I am aware of his reputation, and it sounds good. I think back to the Henry Miller library in Big Sur and wonder if it will be anything like that. It turns out to be nothing like it, a small couple of rooms jammed with books down an unnoticeable side alley Pirate's Alley. They have old and rare books there, and it was apparently the place where he wrote his first novel. We spend the day visiting cemeteries and grocery stores and sushi restaurants and at the hostel in the evening Reid, an older guy that works and stays there and sometimes busks, tells me about the history of the India House, a one-time brothel and bar, and the history of the music that New Orleans is so well known for, and we listen to him play my little travel guitar by the pool. It's nice to hear it played well for a change.