The South (Part Two)

We meandered our way back to Asheville. This had cost us our original route through Birmingham, Alabama and now leaves a state out of the loop. We tried to close the problem off a few times but never managed it for various reasons. It had also seen us tread water a bit in the preceding week as we killed time. We came into West Asheville via the town of Bat Cave. It was another one of our pointless diversions to odd places, but it did furnish us with the great greeting of 'Come Bat Soon'. Priceless. We caught up with Jill again and heard one of her friends music tapes. The woman was so awesome I thought I was listening to a recorded artist and wa strying to work out whose voice it was.



We went out to a cafe in town where I had another of my problems with the word cheers. I asked for "a mocha cheers". She said "pardon". I said "Can I have a mocha", to which she replies "what was the other bit, I thought you wanted some cheese". The English accent was getting us into some odd situations but the waitress loved it and jept using it from then onwards. One of Jill's mates was playing keyboard and doing a homage to our 'hometown' 'hero' Elton John. He then handed out percussion instruments to the crowd and I gave a decent account of myself on the cow bell in assistance. Was fun and apparently an Asheville tradition. We then headed off to her friends house to watch Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic convention. Ollie ended up in the kitchen with a guy who was making his own hash cakes from a massive bag of weed. He also tried to brew it in a tea but that went horribly wrong. There was a young couple who we chatted politics and healthcare with. Most Yankees are amazed at our 21 days holiday and free healthcare. They even have to pay for giving birth to a child. Quite disgraceful for a country with their wealth. Another guy was making lucha libre masks in the college football team colours for import which was really cool. The speech itself was awesome with the stand out lines coming on 'we all bleed together whether Democrat or Republican' and he took on McCain on foreign policy which finally showed some teeth for the campaign. Also tremendous kudos for tha balls to talke to the country about areas they disgaree with him but where common ground can be found. Then we headed back to Jills and caught up with her musician housemate who told us about Morgan Freemans bar in Clarksdale Mississippi and we chatted more politics before grabbing some sleep.



Next up was the morning of the big court appearance. We arrived in Waynesville and found the courtroom. It was a massive room full of people, but I didn't bring in a pad of paper to do a courtroom sketch as I had intended originally. It was kind of foreboding and was the first time I had appeared in court. There was a big bench with the judges chair at the back and a guard who kept insisting that people removed their hats in court. The time of appointment came and went before a man and woman burst into the room. the guy looked like Jim Carey in Liar Liar, the woman like a librarian. They told everyone to queue from the right and that they would be seen in order. We scrambled to the right and waited in line. Jim Carey seemed to dole out harsher punishments so we hoped for the woman. The guy in front got a new court date pushed back for october 10th and we hoped we didn't get that. There were some right fuckwits though. One guy was speeding with no licence, another guy had an expired licence and another one had no licence and no registration plate. It seemed we would have to get lucky. We had been told by Slade we can plead 'nolo contendere' which meant we did not contest it and could wipe out the points, but it would mean driving school and so became no real option. Apparently we could also ask for a speed reduction. So Ollie's turn came and he nervously approcahed the bench. We got the librarian. She said speeding was taken very seriously in the US, to which he replied he now realised. We thought about saying we now understood and used cruise control, but thought better of it. He looked nervous and asked for a spped reduction and she said ok and reduced it from 27 over to only 7 miles over the limit just like that. It left us with a fine of 191 dollars but at least we could continue along our way. Ollie paid it downstairs (I only contributed 10 dollars) and we left through the car park. In there we were confronted by some battered up black car like something out of the Punisher blocking our way. Evidently given his driving skills, this was one of our fuckwit mates from the courtroom. We escaped from there and headed back up to Pigeon Forge for some more golf on the 'dirty' course according to the owner. This is the one Ollie won and he won it with a hole in one when his golf ball went off the course. I still can't believe how flukey that was. It rolled off the end, hit a divert, rolled down the hill, bounced back over the side and rolled into the hole. Unbelievable.



We passed through Knoxville Tennessee for a bit and stopped in the library to find out McCain had picked some unknown governor from Alaska called Sarah Palin as his running mate. This one was going to be interesting as he was obviously hunting the Hillary Clinton vote. Knoxville is a pretty little town but we pressed on to Lebanon Tennessee which may be the biggest bollockhole in the middle of nowhere I have ever been. A pointless town where we had some Chinese. It made us think that without a car you can't get anywhere in these towns as they have no town centre and the fact the bars are all over the place with no public transport practically makes driving drunk a near certainty. Very odd urban planning. We tried to go and see some drag racing outside of Nashville but the arena was closed because a storm had kicked up (man we were bringing the weather). We were almost poll axed by a felled tree as well in the driving rain. Hurricane Gustav was making its moves on New Orleans at this point as well and we had seen the city had been evacuated by Bobby Jindal and Ray Nagin. This was bad news as I wanted to see New Orleans for the first time since 2004. We drove down towards Winchester Tennessee and tried to camp there. It was Labour Day weekend however and the whole camp site was full of people with jet skis for the lake, so after pitching our tent we had to up sticks and head to a Best Western hotel in Winchester. I did not realise that we were only 20 miles from the Alabama border at this point and could have popped across so it was another chance missed. We ended up targetting Mobile Alabama for when we were down in New Orleans.



In the morning we headed out for a tour of the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg and got a Jon Goodman clone for our tour who was really funny and informative while we wandered round. Now I hate whiskey and am sick from the smell so was glad that with Lynchburg in a dry county we could not sample the product. We did get a high five from the tour guide when he found out we were British and Britain is JD's largest export market. Take a bow Wetherspoons. On the drive back to Nashville things were getting a little tense as we'd been on the road along time and to stop the stir craziness we decided to construct our perfect festival line-ups. I'll let you decided on whether A or B is better and tell you whose is whose later.



Festival A:



Friday Saturday Sunday



The Clash Prodigy Iron Maiden

Rage Against the Machine Sigur Ros Nirvana

Ska-P Michael Jackson Def Leppard

The Smiths Daft Punk Guns 'N' Roses

Fleetwood Mac Rodrigo Y Gabriela Bob Marley

Cat Empire Smashing Pumpkins Elvis Presley

Beach Boys Murder Dolls Kirsty McColl



Festival B:



Friday Saturday Sunday



Rolling Stones Michael Jackson Bruce Springsteen

Jonny Cash Faithless Rage Against the Machine

The Who Bob Marley Bob Dylan

Manu Chao Cat Stevens Rachid Taha

Outkast Eric Bibb The Kinks

MSTRKRFT Fleetwood Mac Rodrigo Y Gabriela

Jimi Hendrix Creedence Clearwater Revival Ray Charles



We arrived in Nashville and were searching for Jessica's place. I asked a kid for directions and his response was "Are you Cuban, because you've got a funny accent". Not too helpful. It was Boscobel Street and for some reason it stops for a few blocks in the middle before re-emerging on the other side so it took us ages to find. We drove into one road and found a sign saying 'Police watch for drug activity'. Only later did we find out this was a bad Nashville neighbourhood. We met Jessica and her boyfriend Christian, who loved our accents and offered us some drinks and showed us around the place. We had a bedroom at the back, but they had converted the upstairs of the house into a giant bathroom with a shower the size of a spare bedroom and a cast iron bath. They also had a cool hot tub out in the garden at the back. We ended up smoking from a dragon pipe after I had answered whether I smoked with the answer 'not cigarettes'. We ended up reminiscing over London before driving out to grab some alcohol from the local off licence in a top down car listening to Suede. A proper blast back to the 90s. It was a cool vibe and we drank some odd cocktail of spirits and wine that hit home hard before we all headed out to the hot tub. We met Jessicas friend Azra who was heading to a gig by the Zombie something or other. We planned to go but ended up staying in the tub. Their housemate Suzanne came and joined us, before her mate January turned up. Then a long haired guy from Alabama called Dave turned up (another great guy) with his girlfriend Kirsty. Azra left and after circling chatting philosophy and Hunter S Thompson (we were all fans) Jessica and Christian retired. They also had a cool gadget that switched the radio up inside and I found E Street FM that played just Bruce Springsteen. The six of us left got chatting and drinking. Dave was interested in how Obama would change the world's opinion of America, but Kirsty thought he had eveil eyes. Suzanne and I started playing and disappeared inside to acquire some painful carpet burns on my back, while Ollie mediated the domestic. At some point January disappeared but all her clothes were left behind in the morning so not sure what happened there. We returned to the pool to experience a drive by shooting, with five gun muzzle flashes as someone fired on one of her neighbours houses after an earlier domestic for which they had called the police. Interesting. Dave finally departed as he was baked and me and Suzanne vanished off again, leaving Ollie with Kirsty in the pool discussing random shit. Eventually around five in the morning it all warpped up.



We all awoke to green water in the jacuzzi. Not sure what happened there and a scattering of peoples clothes. A very gonzo night but good fun if awkward. Christian cleaned up the pool in the morning and me, Ollie and Suzanne ventured into Kentucky to see Mammoth caves. We had a cracker barrel which was pretty shitty and then got to the caves to find out all the tours were sold out. A cracking 150 mile round trip so we did the mini self guided tour and the caves really are quite immense. You could drive a tanker down them. On the way back we saw a truck carrying some giant plastic bears and got back in time for a meal with Jessica's family which prompted some cool discussions. Then Ollie and I headed into town. We had toured the Ryman Theatre the day before (which was a waste of time but would be good if you saw a concert instead). We skipped the Country Music Hall of Fame as neither of us were that into country. We found a good microbrewery and found a horse inside a car which was odd. I coined a good little phrase of "I am the eye of my own storm". I liked that one as chaos and shit always happens around me, but I'm usually ok. We went to the Stage and saw a really good covers band so we bought their cd but that proved to be shit when we listened to their own stuff. Then we went round to the BB King Blues Club as Ollie had never really experienced any proper blues music. On the way back to the house we stumbled across a concert that was happening on the river so we wandered in for free as it was wrapping up. And who was it playing? Fucking Peter Frampton and the only song he had left to do was 'Do You Feel'. Fucking unbelievable but very funny. I believe Frampton should take on a ghostly Obi Wan Kenobi style position for my travel writing. Once we got home the others had gone to bed, but I got a concerned text from Jessica at 3am asking if I was ok. At that point we were already asleep. We also learnt that in Iowa only 1/6th of drivers have to take tests. The rest are just given their licences. Lucky bastards.



The next morning we headed out to see the Parthenon while leaving Nashville. They had a sign saying 'no skateboarding, roller skating or cycling on the Parthenon' . Now they don't have that on the real one in Athens. We did another crazy divert up to Paris Tennessee to see their Eiffel tower that was given to them by a church in Memphis. Its tiny and was another waste of time, though I decided we should try the teapot museum in Trenton as it sounded stupid. When we got there however everything was closed including the petrol station so that was a waste. We then drove west and over the mighty Mississippi into Missouri. I love that river. We drove down into Arkansas then back over into Memphis. All the while we were listening to the great conservative talk radio show 'Rick and Bubba'. It has the best jingles and is insanely funny. They had one caller calling about Palin, who said at least it looks like the Republicans have chosen a Vice President this time who knows how to fire a gun. Take that one Cheney. We found ourselved a motel and headed out on to Beale Street. It was at this point that my account seemed curiously low on money and I suspected that I might be a victim of card fraud. It would turn out that Nationwide opted to freeze 130 pounds of my money for about a month for no reason and they still never explained why. We had the best pizza ever on Beale Street with a barbecue pork one and watched a lot of blues in very touristy bars where they started begging for tips which was a little unseemly. We ended up heading up the tram lines to a posh hotel bar that told us to head to Buccanneer so we figured we would go there the next day. On the way back we stumbled across some guys doing backflips for 100 yards down the road like Olympic gymnasts (some with one arm). We also noticed that Great Britain had done really well in the final count for the medals table in the actual Olympics and that Spurs had started shit (and at the time of writing they still had not won a game). Memphis is a dirty little city that is quite cool. Like a battered relic. Nashville is a little more glam but not that great unless you love country music.



The second day in Memphis we headed out to Graceland in the morning. Apparently one of Elvis' concerts was watched by 1.5 billion people but we suspect that to be somewhat of an overexaggeration. Its much smaller than you would imagine and kind of cool, even though I am not an Elvis fan. You get an audio tour that becomes quite annoying by the end, but I did begin to develop a bit more of an appreciation for his work. The carpark was full of Toyota Highlanders as well. Which was weird as we hadn't seen any others on any of our travels so far. It was like they had gathered for some kind of reckoning and they would all battle until there could only be one. After Graceland we headed to Sun Studios for a tour. i would thoroughly recommend this as it was really interesting. We found out Elvis was sold for $35,000 to raise money to keep the studio, that I was standing on the spot where he recorded his first song. There was a cool photo of Elvis, Jonny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins from one of their random jam sessions and Jonny Cash gave Carl Perkins the inspiration for Blue Suede Shoes when they were jamming late one night. We listened to some original recordings and then headed back to Pig on Beale for some southern barbecue. After this we went drinking in the Flying Saucer (which someone had recommended us). Its like a Yankee Porterhouse with the toughest of pub quizzes so we helped (hindered) some locals, had a few strong beers and walked a few miles out of town to Buccanneer.



On the way out there we were accosted by some girls in a car at a petrol station offering us free flyers for a local strip club. We had a good chat then carried on the Buccaneer. We rocked into this bar and it was nearly deserted save the barmaid, some guy in a hat and some old woman. The old woman turned out to be an Irish woman who wanted us to join her watching some soccer the next day. She ended up soliciting Ollie with an offer to go to a hotel with her, which he dutifully declined. The guy in a hat turned out to be a guy called Billy who was a nice guy and seemed to know everyone in town. He was a massive Grateful Dead fan and had followed them all over the States to 48 States. His mate Hunter had also travelled to 49 States and it seemed true that noone ever visited North Dakota. Billy used to date the barmaid Jennie (lovely girl, fantastic arse) but for some unknown reason fucked it up by hedging his bets with some other girl while touring. Never understand that when Jennie was clearly class. What a waste. The guys knew a band member from the awesome blues band North Mississippi Allstars which was cool and we met his brother and a few of his friends. Ollie has shaken off the Irish woman and was chatting with a guy named Jonny, who used to be a roadie for a band named Ween. This bar was proving to be class although it could not serve beer. It had lost its beer licence for allowing gambling machines on its property without a licence, so it could only serve beer over 5.5% because that counts as liquor in Tennessee. So we were getting suitbaly cained. So cained I started buying drinks for random people, so I must have been bollocked. We went out back to smoke from a pipe with a random assorted group of people and met Billy's brother's skanky but hot girlfriend. We went back in and chatted with Jenny, then Ollie played darts with two random guys called Will and Will (who seemed like an odd buddy movie pairing). I went and joined a rasta guy from Eritrea who was happy I knew where it was and claimed Yankees were too ignorant. We chatted with him and some guy named Hunter until he had to leave at 4am because his wife was going to beat him for not getting the shopping in. Nice guy. One barman had told us he had had a gun stuck in his back up this way and not to walk here, but we had no trouble and the night was good so far. I got chatting with a black guy named Marcus who was studying German philosophy and its relationship to race in the States. We had a wicked philosophical discussion for an hour or so, then he got chatting with Billy and Ollie. I ended up chatting with some stupid girl who seemed to hate the English and was trying to tell me bollocks and explain how I think. Very annoying bint and she fucked off with some drug dealer which was a relief and then i got chatting with a US marine who was sad to see how Americas image had fallen abroad and he had grown up in Germany. The remainders of us kept chatting and drinking till half six and then they shut up the bar and Jennie drove the others home. Was a class night, though I was batterd and staggered semi naked back to the hotel to get a couple of hours sleep.



In the morning we had to check out and head on down towards Clarksdale and a stay in Morgan Freeman's bar. First we limped around town and saw Mud River Park where they have mocked up an imitation for 2km of the Mississippi River and where it flows. It is well worth checking out complete with a fountain for Lake Ponchartain. We found out Gustav missed New Orleans and decided to head down that way but we were caught in the rain as it made its way north. Ironically it had smashed Baton Rouge where a large chunk of the two million evacuees had fled to. We also treked down to the National Civil Rights Museum which was really good and we met a Belgian guy who had been assisting in repairing the Katrina damage still, but was forced to evacuate the city with Gustav approaching. Memphis had been full of New Orleans evacuees and it made sense as there and Austin are most similar to the Big Easy. We had a phenomenal meal in Cafe 61 and then headed out on the Route 61 blues highway down to Clarksdale. The newsreader on the radio sounded like Kermit the Frog as we passed south and then we found out Jim Henson was from Mississippi so that made sense. We missed his hometown though as we travelled through. We found a place right near the crossroads where Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil for his musical talent and the landlord was like a strange Mississippian Yoda. We ate dinner in Abes (great pork, too sharp coleslaw) and headed down to Morgan Freemans bar. Its a wicked little bar with cool live blues music. Some of Jills friends had played here. Also everyone has written all over any surface from the lights, to the walls, to the bar, to the floor. Only the pool table is prohibited. I took the chance to write my future book's title underneath the waitresses desk so if it gets published it will be written there first. The bar is called Ground Zero. We had a few drinks, listened to some music and then headed back to the motel to catch Sarah Palin's speech. She seemed decent enough if most Europeans won't understand her appeal. Personally I wanted McCain to pick Huckabee but oh well. In the morning it was to be onwards to New Orleans, the mid point of the Yankee road trip, and we still did not know whta to expect.

We missed Leland (the home of Jim Henson) as we headed south on the highway and were also confronted with the fact that the Natchez Park Trailway was closed due to devastation from Hurricane Gustav. Trees were felled all over the state of Mississippi and we caught one construction crew clearing away felled trees with a buzzsaw. We rolled through the town of Port Gibson that had a sign saying "too pretty to burn", which I presume was a reference to General Sherman and his burning on Southern cities during the Civil War. Now this place looked like a shithole from the outside, so me and Ollie mocked the sign. Then when we made it into the centre the city turned out to be immensely pretty. It looked more Savannah than Savannah and just dripped with weeping willows and beautiful foliage. I can only assume the sign was there to stop people burning it before they saw the beautiful parts. From there we headed into Vicksburg, which was a victim of a huge Mississippi flood in the 1920s. They built a new flood barrier at the waterside and it is now decorated with really pretty murals. Now due to US federal gambling laws casinos are illegal in the States except for in New Jersey, Nevada and Indian reservations (so most States have them on their 'reservations'). Federal waterways are also exempt and so there are fleets of casino boats all down the Mississippi. Needing cash we wandered on to one in Vicksburg and withdrawing $400 I was presented with four Benjamin Franklins ($100 bills). I can presume this was high rollers, but I was never going to be able to break them anywhere else so had to change them up in the casino. I also slapped a dollar in one of the slot machines and came out with three dollars. So my first venture in gambling proved a success. Given my addictive personality this was probably a bad thing overall. As we headed further down the highway we encountered felled telephone lines and power cables and trees everywhere. We also had to pull over to allow military convoys through that were heading down to protect oil tankers and food supplies heading back into the hurricane zone. At Natchez we stopped and had a look around. Its a pretty little town with a good chocolate shop on the waterfront. Everywhere we drove we were encountering huge queues for petrol stations, as a lot of them had run out of petrol and we did not realise at this point quite how serious the petrol shortage was to prove to be. We passed on through Baton Rouge (the Louisiana state capital) that had taken the worst brunt of the storm. The town looked hammered. Trees had taken out roofs, the bridge underpasses were flooded and trees and debris lay all over the roads. We tuned into the local radio station as we headed south to get updates from Bobby Jindal (the governor of Louisiana) as to the state of the area and what to expect. He said most precincts had been advised not to return yet and that there had been shortages in supplies from FEMA. We headed south of the river and along the banks through the parishes that were most devastated. They had no fuel whatsoever and we would find out later they had to wait a few weeks for restoration of power etc. At this point it was dark and we were running low on fuel. We also managed to get slightly lost and with about 30 miles of petrol left we cruised past a sign saying 'Prison area, don't pick up hitchhikers'. That filled us with confidence. We again had to switch of the air conditioning and cruised around until we luckily stumbled across the road into town. New Orleans itself seemed to have been spared the brunt of the storm and we were able to get fuel, but accomodation was a different matter. Everywhere was either shut or full. We rolled into a neighbourhood with no lighting and the power out. These areas were patrolled by police cars to ensure no looting like 2004. All the hotels turned us away as full or were boarded up. Most had been taken by returning evacuees while they waited for their neighbourhood to return to power, by emergency crews or by the police/military, so we were advised to move on by a soldier from one place. We tried every hotel all the way out to the airport and eventually had to settle for sleeping in the car with the windows open in the carpark of the airport Hilton. On the plus side it was free and we had caught John McCain's acceptance speech on the radio which sounded good, especially his calls for sacrifice and volunteering for society in general. This looked like it would be a good race. We also read an article by a couchsurfer who commented on the media coverage of New Orleans during Gustav. He said he had gone for a run out by the lake the day after the storm because it was a beautiful day. After he got back he turned on the tv and saw some news reporters standing in the same sunny spot he was just in, being blown around by 'winds' and suffering from the 'rain'. Ah who says the media has no credibility. New Orleans felt like a ghost town as we wandered the streets. We were yet to realise that there was a curfew in place on the city.

In the morning we got up and looked for hotels that were taking the boards down as we figured they could not yet be full up. We managed to get a place in Hotel St Marie. Virtually everything was shut in the city and we found out the zoo would not open till after we left. It was a shame but luckily I had seen a lot of the attractions before. Ollie was not as lucky. I did manage to get done by a shoe shine boy as well who challenged me to a bet that he could guess which city I got my shoes from. While I asked what the bet was, he shined my shoes and said I gots them on my feet in New Orleans and charged me $10 even though I never agreed to anything. Oh well you live and learn lol. Nothing wrong with a bit of graft. We slept through most of the day and then headed out down the waterfront to a few bars. There were loads of soldiers in the city patrolling around and protecting supplies that they were distributing from around the Superdome. We ended up drinking in a Russian bar where we got chatting with a girl from Puerto Rico (who was a trainee nurse) and her barman boyfriend. There was also a random couple and some guy who wanted to bet us that Obama will win the election carrying Georgia. The barman told us of a funny story about him having to spend a night in a jail cell in New Orleans for having an expired driving licence that wasn't actually expired. Due to the reputation of the prisons here his girlfriend made him go and take an aids test because she didn't believe he hadn't been annally raped in prison. From here we headed on to a Piano Bar on Bourbon Street that was really cool and just played covers on request. We had had to abandon our aim to go to Mobile Alabama when we lost a day due to the need for sleep after 'sleeping' in the car, so it looked like we would have to leave Alabama for some other trip. At 2am the bars closed due to a curfew and we had to head back. We asked a local officer if there was curfew on. He replied "yes and we have plenty of space in the back of the van". A simple yes without the threat would have surficed.

The next morning we got up and split up. I took care of my washing in some random laundrette and then took a drink in a random gay bar with a strange cross dressing man in drag as a barman. I had originally thought it was just an ugly woman. It turns out Ollie grabbed a drink in there seperately when he missed me at the Laundrette because i had buggered off to find a paper. Most of the parks were closed. Ollie went around taking photos of the city, including some covert shots of the military barracks they had set up in the convention centre which was probably not wise. We floated down to the Voodoo Museum and had a wander around and I made a voodoo prayer to a spirit in a tree which I shant reveal. I will however let you know if it comes true when the time comes. Louisiana along with Georgia has by far the sexiest of accents and even with everything shut down, New Orleans is still one of the sexiest, prettiest and best cities in the US. We went on a bar crawl down Borubon Street past the prostitutes on the balconies and into a random hip hop club full of Football fans. It was 3 for the price of 1, but that 1 was the price of 3, so it evened out. The club was mc'd by a 41 year old guy who seemed to model himself on Tim Westwood and got bouncing at the front with the Silicon Sheilas out of Tampa Bay. Bourbon Street is fun, but like Beale Street its a bit of a tourist trap with fun bars. The better bars where the locals are however, are away off these strips.

We left Borubon Street and headed round to the French Quarter Square where we bumped into some random drunk girl named Felicity who was lost, crying and very stupid. She'd just had an argument with her boyfriend and joined us for some drinks. She thought it was cool we were British, but then ollied joked that we were really Americans and from that moment on she believed we were lying to her even when we showed her our passports. She insisted on showing us her breasts in the bar and then after an hour disappeared off to a casino even though she had nowhere to go and noone to contact. I'm sure she used her limited talents somehow though. We were then joined by Kimberlee from couchsurfing who had seen my general message for a night out and rescued us from the centre out to Frenchman Street, which is the locals hangout. Here we saw a few different live bands and drank some good local brews. I also got chatting with three girls in one of the bars who were toying with our accents. It was a good bit of flirty banter, though they headed off somewhere else and we headed over to a dance place where we got chatting with some guys who had been photographed for the walls of the bar. Seemed like a good locals hangout full of art and drinks. We stayed there for a while but Ollie was flagging so Kimberlee gave us a lift back to the hotel. She was a really cool woman and we debated politics for a while before parting up.

Our final day in New Orleans saw us head out to the Superdome to watch the New Orleans Saints play the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Its a massive stadium and the game was nip and tuck all the way with the Saints just hanging on. They then became my football team. Got chatting with a couple of women there about travelling and both of them were teachers. They offered us to crash their couches but we politely declined as we were heading on to Lafayette. The south was still proving awesome for conversations with random friendly people wherever we went. I then got a text from a girl called Robin about meeting up. Again as we were leaving it wasn't possible, but I may catch her in Mexico in december time. We left town heading for Lafayette and at this point Ollie complained the schedule was too rigid so we decided to do a random sprint north west from Denver up to Vancouver and back so we would have to rejig the timing to fit it in. One last odd thing about New Orleand. Our hotel offered valet parking for $28 a night. The fine for illegally parking is $20. Go figure how that works. We had also encountered a guy at cabaret the night before who was not impressed with our travel plans and informed me that "people round here believe in having a work ethic". Possibly the only Southerner we met who was unfriendly besides the police, but all police are wankers. During the football game they had flashed a weather report up about Hurrican Ike that was also heading for the gulf (Ike was roundly booed like a pantomime villain and it was hilarious to see a weather formation get the full hostility of a Football crowd).

On the way to Lafayette Ollie met a guy who had been evacuated out to rural Tennessee for the Hurricane and had apparently been nearly killed by the KKK. This was in a random petrol station. He then tried to hitch a lift with us, but we were heading the other way and not too sure of his sanity. We managed to discover these mints at this point called Altoids. They are fucking awesome. Like mini Trebor extra strong mints, with added punch and more addictiveness. I began to miss my first things from home as well. It was Nandos of all things. We arrived in Lafayetter and joined Lindsey and her mates Nathalie and Peter in a bar. There were also a couple of cute Colombian girls. We started straight up on the beer and mixer shots before they drove us to the random girls' place we were going to stay. Then we headed into town and saw some random rasta drum man play in a bar. It was like rasta drum and base. Very surreal. like the time I saw a guy play deep trance with a didgeredoo in Salzburg. There were some other randoms, while Peter explained about his brother being over in the marines in Iraq. A lot of Southerners we met had relations over in the war. We then went to play some pool and Nathalie started sketching drawings all over the paper table cloths which is a tradition. She was an artist and an actress in a horror film that was to be screened in Sundance next year. They were a really cool arty crowd and Lindsey decided that we had enough life to stay at hers instead, so we piled into the car for a drunken Talking Heads driving session. Most of them had had DUI's at some point and had even done a road trip up to the north west staying with some mental woman in Vegas on the way. We got back to Lindseys and busted out the Green Tea Liquer and authentic moonshine for a garden drinking session. One by one the others dropped off until me and Nathalie were left drinking gin and lemonade out in the garden. We were pissing around with a small metallic spider when she showed me an old spider bite she had. She had an unbelievably cute Louisiana accent and being the sucker for Southerners that I am we ended up retiring to the spare room and having fun for the rest of the night. Didn't actually get any sleep and if Ollie hadn't wanted to move on I probably would have stayed a bit. Arranged to meet Nathalie again in Mexico further down the line and with no sleep Lindsey gave us a lift back to our car on the other end of town and we decided to head off onwards and westwards to the great state of Texas.