Going Solo

[In a driving kind of way, you understand. Don’t panic, haven’t got rid of James… yet…]

I’m getting pretty cotton pickin’ good at this here driving lark.

I’ve driven a couple thousand miles, including (between the two of us) two or three 6-8 hour driving days [gasp of horror from UK audience / so what? from the US readers]. OK, most of it on incredibly long, straight, long, straight, long, straight roads where a mild bend in the road is a cause for some excitement and the appearance of another car leads to giddy euphoria, whilst in between times, audio books keep us just the right side of sane.

But still. I’ve crossed 15 states (and one District). I’ve experienced all the climactic challenges the southern United States in summertime can throw at me. Sun so bright it blinds. Nights so dark other cars’ headlights blind. Thunderstorms, lightning and flash flood warnings.

One final frontier remained however. I’d never driven alone.  Where best to break this taboo? Well, I read about a certain road…:

“Although the surface is unpaved, only large RVs and unusually low clearance cars should not make the journey. Heavy rain may temporarily make the road impassable for all but 4WD vehicles, however. The drive is 17 miles long of which 13 miles is a one-way loop, and typical times for the full trip are 2 to 4 hours. 15 mph is the nominal speed limit, and some places are too rocky and bumpy to go any faster, though other sections are quite smooth (with a surface of hard pressed sand), and up to 40 mph is possible.”

How could I say no?!

The road in question is actually the self guided scenic tour of Monument Valley; James unfortunately couldn’t join me on this so the logic for the virgin solo drive became compelling. The conditions are every bit as bad as described and then some, but with the phenomenal views on all sides, who cares? (Well, James, but I got the car back safe and unharmed so he can’t really complain). Driving on my own over rocky twisty turny dirt roads ended up being a blast and an experience I wouldn’t have missed. We’ll post full piccies of Monument later – most were taken on this drive so you’ll see just how amazing it really is.

Backgrounds – Monument Valley

We have been heading West, with some Very Long Drives soaking up our precious blogging time. Here is a taster of the view from our hotel room in Monument Valley to bide us all over while we catch up a little.

Monument background

No, I haven't photoshopped the colour of this!

Short Runs in Strange Places – New Orleans

Well, the food was out of this world, and we didn’t hold back. No problem, thinks James. All I need to do is put on my running shoes, leave the air conditioned frigidity of our hotel and do a standard six-miler. In the evening sun. In 90 degree heat. And 90 degree humidity. Ouch.

 

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m not proud, but this run almost finished me off. Anyone tech-savvy enough to download the .kml file behind this google map and interrogate the time signatures (geeeek!) will be able to work out that I ended up dragging my sorry ass round this embarrassingly short course in the world’s slowest time. I had visions of staggering into the hotel bar at run’s end like something out of Ice Cold in Alex and asking for a whisky sour and a litre of house saline (“warm water, one teaspoon salt, five of sugar and three straws please barman!”). I won’t say I burned off all the Jambalaya, but hell, I gave it my best shot.

I must admit that the heat wasn’t my biggest concern when I set out. New Orleans has had a relatively troubled past and as a result has some similarly troubled parts of town. The logical solution to a starting point in the French Quarter and a nice six mile loop takes an out-of-towner along the river, through the up-and-coming Marigny and into the Lower Ninth Ward.

For those of you who don’t know the city, Old New Orleans – the French Quarter, Bourbon Street etc. – was built on a natural levee on the curve of the Mississippi. More modern parts of town, for example the Lower Ninth, were built behind artificial levees about 10 feet below sea level, and as a result were … about 10 feet below sea level after Hurricane Katrina paid her visit in 2005.

Lucy and I both spent the majority of our waking hours over the past decade on the fringes of the (re)insurance industry, for which Hurricane Katrina was a Major Loss Event. Having seen the effects at a narrow industry-wide level, we thought it would be worth paying a visit to the Hurricane Katrina Museum, situated one floor below the Mardi Gras Museum – turn left at the artfully stranded boat by the cathedral.

Having always considered Katrina a natural disaster (hurricane – go figure) it was a surprise to me to hear it classified as man-made: to see exhibits detailing the mammoth but all too often counterproductive efforts undertaken by the federal flood protection programs over the years; to see clearly-explained design flaws in the levees themselves; and to see minute by minute dioramas of how and why they failed. After a room of hurricane tracks and a room of soil science, the rest of the museum focuses on the human cost and suffering of those in New Orleans at the time – those trapped in their homes and the tens of thousands suffering in the temporary shelter in the (Mercedes Benz sponsored) Superdome while the federal government struggled to help. It is pretty harrowing stuff.

A point that was made so carefully by the museum as to seem almost accidental was that 100,000 people remained in New Orleans … while 1.1 million reacted to the truly apocalyptic hurricane warnings and left town in a carefully orchestrated, pre-planned evacuation. That’s your eleven closest neighbors fleeing town, and you deciding to stay behind. And expecting the Federal Government (and there is a huge essay brewing somewhere in me about an Englishman’s take on the touchy relationship between the federal and state governments) to step in and helicopter you out.

I am not able to put myself in the minds of the people who stayed behind. Many may have lived through worse-sounding hurricanes. Many may not have been fortunate enough to have had places to go, or cars to take them there, or even money for petrol. Or may have been afraid of leaving their homes unprotected. In any event, those who stayed had their already tough lives made much, much tougher. All while the richer, older parts of the Big Easy remained relatively untouched above water level.

Returning to the possible route of my run, some said that the Lower Ninth Ward should never be rebuilt – that constructing a neighborhood well below sea level in a notorious hurricane zone may have been unfortunate once, but that doing it twice would count as carelessness. The people of New Orleans are made of tougher and brighter stuff, however, and the buildings have been reconstructed. That said, razing one of the city’s poorest areas to the ground and rebuilding it in a hurry has done nothing for the crime rate – I decided it wasn’t a place for an out of breath Englishman to be caught after dark, and kept my run shamefully short.

Clouds over New Orleans

Worrying looking clouds at half time

Through the Keyhole

[A Glimpse into the Lives of the American Rich and Famous]

Whilst James’ and my trip across the States has devoted much time to achieving (and even more time to relaying) a sense of what the kind might call the intrepid (the less kind the down’n’dirty), we have also tried to make room in our travels to witness that fulcrum of the American dream: the super super rich. This is a nation that has established its own definition of wealth (Beckingham Palace won’t cut it here) – what’s needed is something sufficiently vast, sufficently magical in scale and potency, to drive the engine of American morality. Any man [woman or child] can make it good here. Any inequalities in access to….well, basic healthcare or access to any type of schooling not primarily based on gun control, just serve to winnow out the weak. After all, weren’t we all immigrants once?

Thus far we’ve borne witness to two epic bastions of the American dream: the Vanderbilt family with their legendary legacy of shipping and railroad wealth. And Elvis. Uh huh huh.

Both disappointed just a little. We were hoping for sensational tackiness. Gold bidets. Diamond encrusted serving staff. Hot and cold running Cristal.

We got luxury for sure. Biltmore, the Vanderbilt’s “little summer place” could sleep about 50 guests, with entertainments ranging from the usual country pursuits to an indoor swimming pool (including underwater electric lighting at a time that most people in the US had not yet witnessed the miracle of electricity) and bowling alley (pins set up by the servants between each round). I’m presuming the women were slightly less enthusiastic participants in these pursuits given each one required its own costume, with associated 30-60 minutes changing time. And Vanderbilt certainly pushed the envelope in a few places (takes a brave man to combine gold leaf AND embossed leather on the wall of his own bedroom … ROOOAAAARRRR … I sense had he seen the robes from our DC hotel he’d have been right on ’em). All in though, the place was rather (depressingly) lovely and, given that these guys were the Michael Jackson cum Madonna cum Posh Spice of their age, sufficiently remote to categorically ensure the privacy of the family (even the most determined paparazzi would find it tricky to sneak past the estate’s 1,800 employees).

Not quite next stop (but hey who’s going to grudge me that?) was Graceland, famed home of Elvis Presley. Now I’d love to say that this too, was absolutely comme il faut, but the poor guy had a certain handicap here (beyond the obvious addiction to prescription drugs and squirrel meat, that is). He last redecorated the place at the height of the decade that fashion forgot. Yep, the seventies. Now, even my beloved ma and pa, creatures of style and taste that they otherwise are, installed acreages of purple shagpile in that decade. So I think we all need to put on our retro disco glasses and look with a little love on the green shagpile coverings (floor, wall AND ceiling) of the Jungle Room and the exuberant African wrappings (floor, wall and ceiling all kind of combine here) of their basement pool room. After all, a King lived here and who would deny him a little nylon-based splendour?

So y’all, I guess the moral of the story is that with true American wealth comes taste, brilliance and the true friends with whom to enjoy your richly earned rewards.

The true American dream.

Uh huh huh.

Critter Watch!

After the urban jungle that is N’Awlins, we wanted to check out the famous Louisiana bayou – a piece of wetland that is as deeply ingrained a part of the Southern myth as paddleboats, Mark Twain and slavery and yet faces extinction within the next 50 years as our ability to control our environment ever grows. That part of the landscape that has formed the backbone of protection for Louisiana against hurricane damage for the last millenium before falling (no really) to the onslaught of the state and federal flood protection programmes. Roll up folks, see it before it’s too late.

We felt a fortifying lunch was in order – three courses of fried food with fantastic swamp views coming up. Our feeling on the importance of this preparatory measure was confirmed when the resident (wild) gator popped up half way through lunch to say hello – unfortunately no photos, but take my word for it, he was a handsome, if weed bedecked, beastie.

Thus set up for our ordeal, we set off for swamp heartland over the treacherous [wheelchair accessible] raised wooden boardwalks. Photos are below (courtesy of James).

Zen and the Art of the Peanut Butter Bacon Double Cheeseburger

Lonely Planet says it best: “Sorry; scrape the brains back into your ear, because we just blew your mind. That’s right: looks like a cheeseburger, but that ain’t melted cheddar on top. Honestly, it’s great: somehow the stickiness of the peanut butter complements the char grilled edge of the meat. There’s lots of other awesome burgers on the menu, but it’s incumbent on you, dear traveler, to eat the native cuisine of a city. In Hanoi, there’s Pho, in Marrakech, Tagine; and in New Orleans: peanut butter and bacon burger.”

Lucy and I have eaten in some pretty fancy restaurants over our years of living in London and New York, and we have always tried to keep the concept of value separate from the hard fact of price. We will happily spend a little more on a really excellent meal for a special occasion than on a merely average one. But how much more? And given exponential prices at the top end, how far does the relationship stretch? Is an oversized steak in NYC at $33 really ten times as tasty as a Big Mac at $3.29? (let’s just say we don’t eat much steak). We once ate a meal at the Fat Duck in the UK which marred fine dining for us ever since, by establishing a reference price point at which everything you are served has to make you laugh. Décor is a different matter again. Let’s just say that we once had a good but (predictably) expensive and (predictably) not great meal in a restaurant in Las Vegas with $100m of Picassos on the walls.

So this brings us to New Orleans. Ah, New Orleans – home of Crawfish, Gumbo, Jambalaya and the Deep Fried Oyster Sandwich. We had been happily scoffing smoked ribs for a few days in Nashville and Memphis and thought that our diet was perhaps missing a little … class (that well known food group). There are a number of fine restaurants in the Big Easy that reinterpret Cajun cooking for the squeamish, and we had two wonderful nights out at Bayonna and K Paul’s: frog leg buffalo wings, jerk duck, rabbit jambalaya and snickers tarts were washed down with a (half) bottle of Chateau Musar and the occasional mint julep refugee from Kentucky. It was very, very good.

But it wasn’t great. For that, you have to accompany us to a couple of deep, dark dives which shall remain nameless for fear of too many tourists like us. Huge expanses of deep fried chicken livers in grape jelly, a deep fried oyster sandwich as big as my arm, and crawfish jambalaya which may or may not have contained relatives of the large dark rat we saw in the small dark corner. Perhaps it was the shock of eating an only-one-a-day-sized meal for less than $15 a head. Perhaps it was the old adage that the very best food is eaten when you are truly hungry. Whatever. In New Orleans, cheap and dirty is definitely the way to go.

Standing at a Crossroads

We are both standing at a crossroads. Life decisions. Future directions. Deeply profound. Heavy meaning. Yadda yadda.

No.

We are standing at THE crossroads. The legendary crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi where Robert Johnson famously sold his soul to the devil in exchange for mastery of the blues guitar. THAT crossroads.

Down to the Crossroads by the Patrick Dodd Trio (a great, yet struggling Memphis bluesman, who we saw in a dive bar on Beale Street, and whose CD we now obligatorily own)

 

I guess it’s only fitting. We started this morning at Al Green’s All Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, where Bishop Green himself saved our souls with a two hour, all-singing, all-dancing, tongues-speaking, Lord-praising, barn-storming hallelujah of a Sunday service. So I suppose it’s appropriate that we should be drinking beer and making Faustian pacts at sundown.

Al Green's Church

The Reverend Green will be glad to see you, if you haven't got a prayer...

We don’t have any photographs of the inside of Al’s church – we didn’t feel it appropriate. That said, how are you supposed to behave when VERY large VERY elderly ladies are moshing in the pews to the power of a funk Gospel breakdown? Bowed heads? Applause? CPR? It was like nothing either of us had ever seen. Bishop Green was deeply, deeply charismatic, if … erm … slightly hard to follow in the logical thread of his preaching. Just go with it – Church of England this ain’t.

Clarksdale Mississippi, on the other hand, is home to the Shack Up Inn (thanks for the intro LouAnne!) – a motley collection of renovated shotgun shacks down by the railroad tracks (der DER da da DUM!) surrounding a bar / impromptu performance space. Our shack for the night used to belong to Robert Clay, another long suffering blues man whose spirit suffuses the place. If Lucy leaves me, and if my dog up and dies in the night, I will know who to blame.

Shack up Inn

The Shack Up Inn - how exactly does one "dust a broom" anyway?

——————————–

On today’s journey from the deeply holy to the merely spiritual, we paused for a few hours at the National Civil Rights Museum. Built in and around the motel in Memphis where Martin Luther King was assassinated, this was yet more deeply powerful stuff. Seeing the iconic images of race hatred and determined struggle set in their proper historical context (it was unbelievably recent) was a two-wide-eye-opener for a couple of measured Brits, and a reminder that modern day New York and 20th Century America are two very different places.

And On the 7th Day, God Made the Creation Museum

America is a diverse country. Full of the bright, the beautiful and the downright bonkers. Having covered off bright (Washington) and beautiful (Skyline / Blue Ridge), we felt it high time for something a little less serious. We already knew where might fit the bill and in fact had spent some time in NYC working out how to fit this particular gem into our trip: the Creation Museum just outside Cincinnati, Ohio. Yep, that Cincinnati, Ohio. The one about 300 miles north of our ending point coming off the Blue Ridge Parkway. And also about 300 miles north of Nashville, Tennessee, our next scheduled hunting ground. Small detour then … but worth it we thought not only for the museum, but for the opportunity to pass through the famous Kentucky bluegrass country afterwards.

For those of you who haven’t yet heard of this esteemed establishment, it is, simply speaking, a museum which portrays the views of the Creationist movement – an increasingly prevalent movement in the United States which believes in a literal interpretation of the Bible. Amongst the key truths espoused by Creationists are that the world was created by God in six days (well earned rest on the seventh), and that this Creation took place about 6,000 years ago. Those of you who know James and I may by now be suspecting that our attitude towards this may not have been without a certain amount of tongue in cheek-ness. Indeed, several days later, my tongue has only just about begun to straighten back out again.

Yep, we went in prepared to mock.

And yes, we did LOVE the diorama of Adam, Eve and the dinosaurs. AND the depiction of the mammals that COULD have been the starting point for all future mammal species (tiger stripes plus giraffe spots plus a lion mane, anyone?). The learned discussion on how Noah might have designed his ark to avoid too much hard work in the way of pesky animal poo cleaning (well, that’s a pretty important consideration when you have dinosaurs on board) was inspired on oh so many levels.

And no, fundamentally, my mindset hasn’t been changed. I still hold onto that good ole’fashioned view of evolution spurned by the museum in favour of a theory primarily reliant on apparent fossil aging caused by the catastrophic effects of the subsidence of Noah’s flood. Blame it on my scientific mother, engineer father and a maths degree, if you will. Or perhaps on the fact that STILL no-one has been able to explain to me what the carnivores ate on the Ark when two of each animal came in and two came out (I’ve given quite some thought to this one, believe me. Yes, pregnant animals will get you some of the way – though isn’t that kind of cheating? A life is a life and all? – and some frisky bunnies would certainly help too. But enough to be able to satiate the appetite of at least two large and hungry DINOSAURS? I just don’t buy it).

Still, at the end of the day, what the Museum basically sets out to do is to provide a venue for the representation of an alternative viewpoint of how we all got here to the big bang / evolution based model shown in pretty much every mainstream natural history museum you can think of. And you know, I can’t bring myself to laugh at that.

After a heavy day we landed up at our campsite for the night – you’ll already recognize this from one of our backgound pics. A gorgeous setting in the midst of rolling Kentucky hills, surrounded by race horse stables. Eating ribs then settling down for a night by the fire with marshmallows and fine malt whisky, life felt pretty good … And waking up the next morning to send out final leaving emails to our (ex) work colleagues from this beautiful spot in the middle of rural nowhere is a memory that will stay with me for a very long time.

Kentucky Sundown

Another background picture, this time from the most picturesque campsite in the world (at least so far – we currently seem to be finding the most picturesque campsite in the world about twice a week!).

Kentucky sundown

Camping in Kentucky: marshmallows, strawberries and fireflies

 

Jan Johnson Day

We had two bites at Nashville. We arrived lateish on a thundery Thursday evening, went out for fried chicken at Monell’s (meeting a lovely couple – Richard and Karen – whose college-age son is considering a career in investment banking, even after speaking with us). We then hit the town, which was staging an extended Amateur Drinking Hour. After a couple of hours listening to interminable sound checks and getting pushed around by all-beef-fed meatheads (male and female) we went to bed somewhat frustrated. Nashville hadn’t really been what we had hoped for, and we were due in Memphis.

The next morning we decided to indulge in The Ultimate Luxury, which is – of course – time. We didn’t have to be anywhere we didn’t want to be. We would take a mulligan day and do Nashville all over again, Jan Johnson style.

For those of you who don’t know Jan, she rocks. Before we worked together in New York, Jan had spent a little time in Nashville, no doubt being talented, and awesome, and awesomely talented. She had given us a long list of recommendations, which we had initially not paid enough attention to, and we decided that this was our problem – we would spend our extra day in Nashville purely following Jan’s advice.

First stop: pancakes out by Vanderbilt university. Piles of fluffy deliciousness, with maple syrup, and sausages (just go with it, OK?).

Pancakes!

Next stop: daytime drinking and live music. We eventually worked out that the key to excellent country music is fiddles. And old dudes – old dudes are to good country music what fat chefs are to good cooking.

Day drinking in Nashville

Next up: Country Music Hall of Fame. Rhinestones, twangy guitars and hillbillies. Actually deeply engaging, even for an Underworld fan such as myself.

The main event: Bluebird Café. In suburban Nashville in the least pre-possessing strip mall you have ever seen. Cue two hours of finely nuanced, carefully crafted, funny singalong singer songwriting.

So Wrong For You, by Treva Norquist (a great, yet struggling Nashville singer songwriter)

 

Then we strayed. We were weak. We slipped from the path of Jan. The next recommendation was a fried catfish and hushpuppy joint (Caney Fork) a $65 round trip taxi ride from where we were. Jan, we are truly sorry, but we balked, went to a crab shack you didn’t recommend … and were rewarded with the worst meal we have had in the USA. Truly terrible, and not in a bad New York Zagat review kind of way (“it was my birthday and they only gave me one glass of free champagne” etc.) but actually really hard to eat. We retired hurt to Doritos in our hotel room (actually they weren’t Doritos, but we have a friend who works for Pepsi, Doritos are a Pepsi product and we are under pain of death not to eat anything else, so they were Doritos, OK?).

Despite the weak ending, we had a lovely time, and came away with the obligatory CD – nothing says “I was in Nashville” like owning a CD of a struggling singer songwriter. Yee haw!

Jan we miss you.