Our Voyage in Pictures

We're home... in Tallahassee, Florida!!

Yesterday we arrived in Tallahassee and last night we spent our first night in our new home. One of our neighbors who knew we were arriving left us a gift basket in the kitchen with bread, apples, olive oil, rosemary, and basil, and left us organic orange juice and soy milk in the fridge, and some rice dream treats in the freezer. This was great because Andrew and I were exhausted after a long day's drive from New Orleans, and it felt so good to have a good snack before going to bed. In the morning, another neighbor left us a box of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts by the back door... OK, it's a little less healthy, but still a great welcome. The neighbors here are very friendly.

It has gotten a lot cooler in Tallahassee since we were here over the summer (thank god!). Andrew and I slept in the sun room with the windows open, which meant we could listen to all the night sounds of bugs buzzing and crickets chirping. Wow, they are loud out here! In the morning, we could look out at our back yard and see tall trees all around. It's easy to forget you're in the city here, which I LOVE. So, it's nice to be here so far.

Segui has been on a few walks so far and loves the neighborhood (he's generally a pretty happy explorer). Andrew and I are pretty tired from our big car trip and cross-country adventures, and we'll be taking it easy for a few days as we slowly move into the mindset of moving in and doing some home improvement projects. Stay tuned for our Tallahassee blog, which we'll set up and make available to any of you who want to hear our stories of living in this part of the country.

If you haven't read it already, I highly recommend reading Andrew's blog of our time in New Orleans (the post written before this one). I'm sure it will be of interest to many of you.

New Orleans, The City That Care Forgot

I was apprehensive about visiting New Orleans on this trip. I had spent a lot of time in the city between 1997 and 2000, and I haven't been back since Katrina hit. I wasn't really sure what to expect and, at first, nothing really looked all that different. The Superdome had a pristine new roof, but the downtown area and the French Quarter appeared much the same as when I was last there. (These areas were built on higher ground, so flooding was less of a problem when the levees broke.)

We spent the night on the 36th floor of the Sheraton, which is downtown on Canal Street. The high-angle perspective, looking down on the city, didn't reveal the devastation that might lay within:



In the morning, we walked down by the river and had beignets at Cafe du Monde. Again, everything was much the same as I remembered.



After checking out of our hotel, we headed uptown on St Charles Ave, towards Tulane University, which is the area of New Orleans I knew best. I saw the Columns Hotel on St Charles, which was a popular hangout for students because they used to serve free food at the bar in the evenings. (Mmmm, Catfish Fridays!) It was still there and looked good. Indeed, much of the Garden District and uptown looked just like I remembered it.

As we progressed on St Charles, however, I started to notice signs of damage that could have been hurricane related. One or two shops were boarded up:



Many lampposts and street signs were blown down or crooked:



The biggest sign of Katrina in the uptown area, however, was an absence: there were no trolley cars working their way up and down St Charles Ave. The trolleys usually run on tracks on the grassy median in the middle of St Charles. The median looked muddy and the grass was overgrown. We passed only one work crew digging around the tracks; it looks like it will be a while before the trolleys will run there again.

I tracked down an apartment I used to live in on Pine Street. I thought it might not be there anymore, because it was below street level, but it looked fine. The only sign of Katrina I saw on Pine Street was an X that had been spray-painted on a building across the street:



As we left uptown, we saw similar spray-paint markings on buildings elsewhere in the city. The markings provided information about what search crews had found in the property. It lends the whole tragedy a distinctly biblical set of imagery, and can be seen on all different kinds of buildings (click to enlarge):





Sometimes the spray paint simply had words written instead:



As we drove away from uptown, down Martin Luther King Blvd and past the sealed and deserted Projects, we started to see more of the devastation. The poorer sections of New Orleans contained cheaply made wooden houses that often crumbled under the hurricane conditions. Many looked vacant, some were only shells now. The Projects, however, didn't look too bad in comparison:



They were brick built, and it looked from the street like it wouldn't be all that hard to fix them up. My guess is that middle-class and affluent areas – such as downtown, the Garden District, and where I used to live in uptown – have received the most help from the city, and could afford to hire contractors. Institutionalized racism, however, makes government and industry feel they have more to gain from not letting the black underclass back and from not restoring the Projects. As real estate goes, the land on which the Projects reside is in a prime location for downtown. In a few years, it will no doubt all have been transformed into upscale condos.

The devastation got worse as we headed north of downtown to Gentilly, which was one of the areas of New Orleans that was hit hardest by the flooding, as it's close to where the levees broke. From the main business streets, we could see a lot of restaurants, motels and gas stations that had been heavily damaged – although a pristine-looking McDonalds was on the same strip! It was starting to look like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, like something out of Day of the Dead:









Heading into a residential section of Gentilly, we witnessed street after street of devastated houses (click to enlarge):



We saw some reconstruction taking place at a couple of residences. Apparently, New Orleans witnessed an influx of Mexican workers for the cleanup and reconstruction, and most of the workers we saw were Mexican. A while back, I heard a sociologist describe how this would forever change the racial demographics the city.

We also saw telephone poles on every corner that were covered with signs advertising businesses related to the Katrina reconstruction (click to enlarge):





I think the second of the above photos is particularly rich for the different narratives that it contains. The top sign – "We Tear Down Houses" – stresses that the company is locally owned, perhaps to suggest that Americans will pull down your house rather than Mexicans. Two signs below this is another sign that instead proclaims that "We Buy Houses!" – no doubt from one of the many companies looking to buy up land on the cheap. Below this is a sign advertising ... signs!

The building behind the signpost tells a story of its own. The roof has a big hole in the top, which looks a lot like something the owner might have made to find higher ground to escape the flood waters. On the side of the house, there is a sign declaring "We Are Rebuilding." Indeed, it appeared like a lot of this particular community – working class, but more affluent than the projects – is in the process of staking a claim to their property, refusing to let the city or other outside forces take possession of it. Throughout the neighborhood, residents had moved back to their properties, but were living in RVs parked in front of uninhabitable houses:



One house we drove by had this display in the front:





It seems that one of the main battles being fought right now is over the shape that the new New Orleans will take. In other words, the battle over who gets to define what the city is. Will it be the people of New Orleans, many of them living in low income neighborhoods that were dealt the cruelest blows by Katrina? Or will it be the governing institutions and the Haliburtons, who are already erecting track housing in the neighborhood next to Gentilly, which we could see from the 10 Freeway as we left the city?



What we witnessed confirmed my suspicions that there are multiple strategies being employed by the governing institutions to gentrify and Disneyfy this "City That Care Forgot." The reason that this will likely happen, aside from all the economic and political might behind that push, is that it was the hidden side of New Orleans that was hit the worst. In the eyes of the casual tourist, New Orleans will look just like it used to. Downtown still looks good; the Garden District and uptown still look good; the French Quarter continues to party on. The image most people have of New Orleans lives on, so most people won't dig deeper into how the city has been transformed, and they will be complicit in letting further transformations take place. They will let the Haliburtons have their way with the city.

New Orleans has always been a tourist destination. Once the trolleys are running again and the PR machine is at full speed, it will regain that celebrity. (Watch closely how next year's Mardi Gras gets covered on TV to gauge this.) But there was a whole other side to New Orleans that I remember and that I fear will be gone for good. One in which the locals hated the tourists who'd descend on French Quarter to flash their boobs for beads. One in which I could find the best food and the best jazz in divey holes-in-the-wall far from the noise and the glare of Bourbon Street, such as the time Harry Connick Jr wandered into a neighborhood bar to start jamming with Kermit Ruffins while my friends and I chowed down on ribs from the barbeque in the back of Kermit's truck.

I am happy, though, that by moving to Tallahassee we are only half a day's drive to New Orleans. I hope to check in on the city again sometime soon...

Bright Lights, Big Segui

Today was a marathon driving day, 500 miles from Austin to New Orleans. On our journey through Texas, we discovered that Texans might be the most aggressive drivers in America: they rarely give you room to change lanes, and on several occasions they deliberately cut us off and refused to let us pass them. I can only guess that those drivers saw our California plates and didn't take too kindly to us passing though their state. Indeed, it struck me the other day that we are taking a similer path across the country as Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda did in Easy Rider: starting in Southern California, passing through Taos, Texas and New Orleans, and ending up in Florida. Hopefully, some rednecks in a truck won't shotgun us off the road...





After trying many motels and hotels in New Orleans, most of whom charged exorbitant pet fees, we ended up finding a great deal for a swanky room on the 36th floor of the Sheraton, overlooking the French Quarter and downton New Orleans. It's the first time Segui has been in such a hotel, and it's surprising that they allowed him there at all. It's also the first time Segui has been to Bourbon Street. He was very popular indeed with all the drunkards stumbling around the French Quarter. I've never seen him get so much attention from strangers.

Austin, Texas

We spent last night and tonight at Lisa's friend Kathleen's house in Austin. Following a looooooooooong drive across Texas yesterday, we were greeted with good, home-cooked food at Kathleen's ... which is just what the weary travelers needed.

We spent this morning doing various bits and bobs around the house, then went into Austin for some tasty Brazilian food. I looked for a decent music/DVD store in town, but was disappointed with what I found. In the evening, Lisa, Kathleen, Scott (her husband) and I went to the Alamo Drafthouse movie theatre to see The Servant, which is part of a Joseph Losey retrospective they are having. The movie is a great slice of 1960s British weirdness, but the movie theatre itself was just as much a highlight for me. Not only does the Drafthouse serve food and beer to you, with service to your seat, they also screen lots of the kinds of movies I like. It was recently ranked the #1 Best Cinema in the US by Entertainment Weekly:



We'll probably hit the road for New Orleans tomorrow. I spent a lot of time in New Orleans a few years back, so I'm curious to see how it now looks, post-Katrina.

New Features & Segui Interlude

I've just added some new features to the blog's sidebar. Under "Our Route", you can now search for blog entries by location. The places are listed chronologically (i.e. from California to Florida, when we get there). I've also added a section at the top of the sidebar for photos we have taken. The Flickr Map lets you interact with Yahoo Maps to find our photos based on where they were taken. Below this, there are links to different Flick photo sets I have organized of our trip.

We will be spending the next few days in Austin, Texas. You'll hear updates about this leg of the journey soon ... but in the meantime, here is a short video of Segui's reaction when Lisa left the car and entered a stranger's house. It's a perfect illustration of his pack mentality.

Whites City & Carlsbad Caverns, NM

In England, there are certain criteria that a place needs to meet in order to qualify as a city. Some of these criteria are commonsensical, such as population size. Others are more questionable and reflect the lack of separation of church and state in England, such as requiring cities to have a cathedral. I'm not saying England has the best system for classifying cities, but at least its system prevents travesties like Whites City from happening.

For the hundred or so miles leading up to Whites City, there are dozens of roadside signs advertising all the great things to be found there. When you arrive, this is what you get:



This is basically the entire "city", which must have a population of about 25 ... and certainly doesn't have a cathedral (although one of these establishments does call itself an opera house). You check into all of the city's motels and RV parks from the same desk, and if you are not checking into the Best Western, you have to sign a document stating that you know that Best Western is not affiliated with the establishment where you are staying. Our motel was on the other side of town (i.e. across the street), so we could have easily sneaked Segui in without their knowledge. They told us on the phone that they only had one room left; we arrived after 11pm to find only two other cars in the parking lot. They also claimed to have wifi. This trip has made me believe that we need a wifi police to go around and put hoteliers in wifi jail if they don't provide the functioning, high-speed wireless Internet access that they claim they do.

Okay. Rant over.

We spent a few hours in the morning at the Carlsbad Caverns. They were quite beautiful and very large. We arrived at the start of the day, off-season, so there were hardly any other people there. The only thing to disturb the tranquility was a staff member who was vacuuming the cavern paths(!). I took some slow shutter speed photography (because it was so dark down there). Lisa and I posed for a picture with a 10 second long exposure; trying to remain still made us feel like it was the early days of photography and we were posing for a dageurreotype.



Upon leaving the caverns, as we drove down the hill, Lisa noticed a tarantula crossing the road. Lisa grew up around tarantulas, so she's really comfortable with them. Back in Canyon de Chelly, she found and removed a baby tarantula from our campsite. I, one the other hand, grew up watching movies like Kingdom of the Spiders in an island country that possesses no poisonous spiders or snakes. As a result, I spent that entire night at Canyon de Chelly worrying about the baby tarantula returning to our hogan. Today was the first time I've actually seen a tarantula in the wild. Fortunately, we were safe in our car, so it didn't scare me ... and Lisa was able to take this great shot of the beast (click to enlarge):



We left the caverns around 10:30am, then drove half the width of Texas to get to Austin. There truly is nothing at all in West Texas ... and, as a result, there truly is nothing to report about it here.

Old friends in Santa Fe, New Mexico

After a relaxing morning, we left our little B&B and traveled about one hour to the outskirts of Santa Fe, where we visited my old friends Leah and Bruce. Leah is the mom of one of my close childhood friends, Heather, and it was great to see her again. Leah and Bruce live a bit out of Santa Fe on land which they are farming. The land is on low rolling mountains. Very beautiful new mexico landscape surrounds. Leah and Bruce are in the process of building a new house on their property, and Bruce gave us a tour of the project in process. It was fun to walk around the new house and see how they are putting it all together. Leah also gave us a short tour of their land, in which we got to pick and eat fresh (delicious) apples off one of their apple trees and say hi to their goats. We then sat down for a longer visit with Leah, Bruce, and their friend Greg, and we talked while enjoying yogurt and scrambled eggs which Leah made for us--all from the milk and eggs produced by their own goats and chickens. Very fresh and tasty! In all it was a lovely visit.

Andrew and I then went on to Albuquerque, where we stopped long enough to replace two of the tires on our car which were getting dangerously bad. This turned out to be no easy task, for we have a very rare tire size (which we didn't even know before today), and it was Sunday, so most tire stores were closed. To give you some sense of our dilemma, no Walmart, Sears, or Costco carried the kind of tires we needed. My dad came to the rescue and helped us out by looking online (from his house in Santa Cruz) for info and phone numbers for tire stores in the Santa Fe and Albuquerque areas. We were lucky to find the tires we needed at a Firestone shop, and we got there just a few minutes before they closed. Once our car was ready, we made the long (4.5 hour) drive south to Whites City, New Mexico, where we are spending the night. Whites City is just outside the Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Our plan is to visit the park early in the morning and leave Segui in our motel so we can go for a walk in one of the caverns and get back to the motel in time to check out. Hopefully it will all go as planned and tomorrow we can tell you about the caverns.