Arriving in New Orleans

The 11:45 PM bus to Montgomery was full so we sat on the ground of the Atlanta terminal until 2 AM for the next one.

"I'm from N'awlins," said the young woman across from us.

"Oh, that explains your accent" said the girl from Alabama. "We were wondering."

The woman had a little son. He was the age where, not yet able to talk, he communicated by throwing things and making outrageous facial expressions. He was black but with light hair and blue eyes. His mother was white.

"How is it there now?" asked the girl.

"About the same as eleven months ago. St. Jean's parish isn't half as bad as the Ninth Ward, but it's still mostly empty. Nothing's really been rebuilt."



The India House Hostel is in the mostly empty Mid City Neighbourhood. It, however is full of travellers, young construction workers and locals who get a bed for working a few hours per week.



The city might still be mostly rubble, but Capitalism don't stop for nothing. Brand new billboards are everywhere, advertising liquor and lottery tickets to a meagre bunch of returning residents, those poor few who never left, and Mexican construction workers.

Waiting in Charleston

Across Dorchester Road, in the swamp behind the store selling boiled peanuts, two kids (braids, XL tees and denim shorts) inadvertently celebrate July first by setting off the bottle rockets intended for Tuesday.

"The two forty five bus to Atlanta broke down outside Florence," says the intercom. "It won't be here for another four hours. Don't blame me because it ain't our fault."

The intercom is a single outside speaker broadcasting the station manager's announcement through a foot of concrete to the bench where I sit, next to two older West African women with name tags.

Inside the cooled air of the one room station, a gang of Mexicans joke around and buy each other rounds of cola from the machine in the corner. The stuffed animal claw game periodically bursts into action accompanied by an electronic melody. The computer is broken and the station manager (a fat woman with skin tight jeans and hair extensions)shouts at the five person line, "y'all haf to wait a while." Nobody looks at her.

At the store, the vats of boiled peanuts are a sickly green so I buy the dry ones instead. The woman who is looking after my bag wants a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and the boy in front of me (braids, an XL tee and Air Force Ones) buys onion rings and a stick of beef jerky. He counts out his coins one at a time.

The Arab behind the counter is watching the World Cup on a little TV. His accent is both deep south ebonics and Arab ESL. "Who won the early game" I ask.

"Tie...England and some place, Borto. I don't know what that is."

"Portugal?"

"Yeah, Portugal"

He yells at a guy stacking boxes in the back and smiles as he counts out the change.

WASHINGTON DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Albuquerque is the Greatest Place on Earth

Chicken Fried Steak, Okra and Mashed Potatos with a Butterscotch Malt at the Route 66 Diner.
Two Dollar pints of Blue Moon Wit Beer at the Copper Tank
Sweet Rolls at the Frontier
Green Meat and Chorizo New Mexican style Burritos from a stand off Route 66
Fair Trade Coffee at Winnings
Carne Adovada, an Enchilada, a Taco, a salad and a Coke with a shot of Vanilla Syrup at some student run place in Santa Fe
plus more cool people than I met on my whole trip, mountains, adobe buildings and aging hippies.

Remembering the London Bombings

A year ago yesterday, I waited half an hour for a bus that never came. Deciding to take the tube, we walked towards Liverpool Street station, right into a news scrum outside the gates of a London hospital. Ambulances, helicopters and police cars made it impossible to hear the spokesman give his press statement. On the other side of the street, women in head-to-toe Burqas shopped in the Bangladeshi vegetable market. We walked through Brick Lane, and past the police presence at Aldgate East. People were still being evacuated from Liverpool Street Station. A guy in a suit came up to us warning us to stay away. "Terrorism," he said with an air of self importance. "It's the fucking Arabs." I bought a newspaper with the headline "Terrorists Bomb Tube, Scores Dead" only to find no article inside. It only happened , like, half an hour before. What could they know that I didn't.

Yesterday, I was on a bus from New Orleans to Austin Texas. At Houston, five recently released convicts came on wearing their prison regulation pants and shoes. The first white people I'd seen on a Greyhound since New York City. They all had only one red mesh bag, big enough for a change of underwear and big box of condoms. Except when one tried miserably to hit on a blonde girl, they all just sat and stared forward, arms crossed, shirt sleeves rolled up Tattoos bulging.

Last night I saw Danielson at Emo's. Tomorrow, Albuquerque.

Biloxi Mississippi is a pile of rubble next to luxury casinos and vast trailer parks. New Orleans is not much better. (I didn't actually take that picture but almost a year later it still looks that way)