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Published: April 1st 2007
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Wes and BB
Riding through the French Quarter (Wes writing😊
We drove into town on March 18th and found our way to our couchsurfing host, Ben, who almost immediately took us out to “the Alamo” (a friends house which looks strikingly like the Alamo) for home-made corned beef and cabbage (it was the day after Saint Patrick’s Day). Ben lives with Walker in a rebuilt shotgun style house on the second floor. The first was still barren from after Katrina. Both Ben and Walker are really great guys. Good hearted people with plenty to talk about. They had a side yard which was unused, and just so happened to be just big enough for Gimli to park in, off the street. We stayed in the bus, and used the house facilities.
After just a little bit of driving around in that city we quickly realized the streets were not designed for an auto of Gimli’s ample stature. Ben, being an avid bicyclist, took us to a great community bicycle center called Plan B. Plan B is a warehouse type building filled with old flood bikes in various states of disrepair, and all the tools a biker could wish for. They let you use all the tools
Ben and Walker
Our first hosts in NOLA, with their awesome broken stove for free, fix up a ride, and purchase it at fantastically minimal prices. Brandi’s birthday was the next day, and she decided she wanted bikes to cruise around New Orleans. So it was with the help of Ben and Judd (a friend of Ben’s, and volunteer at Plan B) that we brought two bikes back to life. Brandi’s bike was dubbed Ruby (Rusted Up Beyond her Years), and mine B.B. (Short for Bayou Boy, a relative of my bike back in San Francisco, Swamp Thing). To thank Ben and Judd, we made dinner.
(Brandi writing😊 On my birthday, we rode our bikes down Magazine St. and found some used clothing stores, and I splurged and bought some clothes. Thanks to my mom, we got to spend way too much money, and went out to sushi not once, but twice! We rode all over the place, and that evening we went out to Frenchman St. where there are lots of bars and small music venues, and got to hear some great blues music. It was really great to have so much to do so close to where we were staying, and of course it was all possible because we could
The Mighty Mississippi
This is one of the huge tourist boats on the Mississippi River ride the bikes everywhere.
A lot of our time in NOLA was spent riding bikes around. It’s actually a pretty small city, and every single person we met, we ran into on the street at some point too. It gave it a really homey feel. During the two weeks we spent there, we saw so much great music. The best spot seemed to be the Spotted Cat (a bar on Frenchman). We heard blues, a guy playing the washboard (the Chaz Washboard Trio), a group featuring an incredible drummer named Johnny Vidacovich, a super energetic brass band called the Soul Rebels, and a lot of other groups whose names we didn’t catch. You can just stand on the street in some places and listen to the music rather than paying to get in, and since you can also drink on the streets legally, there’s not too much of a need to actually go into the bars. We also sat on the steps that lead down to the Mississippi River and watched the barges go by while eating bread pudding and drinking wine. We table-dived beignets from Café Du Monde. We wandered around the St. Louis cemetery, and went to
Music on the streets
Also in the French Quarter the voodoo museum. We rode around in the Garden District and saw Anne Rice’s former house (I read “Interview with the Vampire” while we were there). We ate a lot of good food, although we didn’t have any crawfish. I have a hard time thinking of what we didn’t do...
After a week at Ben and Walker’s, we went to a different couchsurfing host’s house and stayed for a few days. Marianne, one of the housemates, took us to her Americorps volunteer job one day and we helped her paint someone’s house. We went out to see some music with her and Kevin and Victor, one of the other couchsurfers that was there at the same time as us. All the people who live in that house are great people, too. They constantly had couchsurfers sleeping on mattresses in the hallway, or on the couch.
We decided that, since you have to have at least a little money to spend to fully enjoy New Orleans, and since you really have to live there to get the full experience and, in our case, know where it would be best to spend some time volunteering, it would be better for
Anne Rice's old house
In the Garden District, one of many huge old beautiful houses us to leave New Orleans for now and plan to come back after we’re done traveling. So we just might move to NOLA for a while after the trip is over, get jobs and a more permanent place to live than Gimli, and then figure out where we can volunteer that will really do some good for people there. So for now, it’s onto Florida, but we’ll definitely see New Orleans again.
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Cinda
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you guys are an inspiration
how fantastic that you are still truckin'! i wish you all the best of kharma as you two crazy kids continue on your journey.......hope gimli keeps on truckin' as strong as it has been ........be safe and have fun!!!! oh and happy late birthday brandi.....love from cali, ocal(ol' crazy ass lady)