Some long overdue pictures

Starting out at the Atlantic Ocean.
















Flea market in North Florida.












North Florida which seemed to last forever.








Finally leaving North Florida on a ferry!









An abandonned McDonald's sign on the Gulf Coast. (The building had been washed out to sea.)














Swamp land in Louisiana.










Lunch. We just get so hungry...










Southern Louisiana -- train track and farms were a famaliar sight.








Entering Texas we were still excited for our long visit, but those smiles faded as the ten long and hot days passed.






Swamp land in Texas? Apparently it is not all desert.








I didn't notice these feedlots with thousands of cattle until I heard someone else complaining about the stench. So as everyone else sprinted by, I stopped to take some pictures. Thanks Iowa!

We were trying to jump in this photo. Needless to say, we failed miserably.













Read the sign. We were not enchanted.

















A much needed break in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico.







Another scenic spot in NM but with a small hint of civilization.






Starving as usual, we had just eaten our daily lunch of PB&J plus anything else we could scrounge for, a friend and I stopped at the side of the road where an Argentinian man was grilling chicken to the beat of 1960s music.

Oh, the Places You'll Go!

Today marks the half-way distance of the trip. So, as I face the daunting hills and deserts of the West, I want to take some time to reflect on some of the places I have been.


Marianna, FL - A very generous and very Southern Baptist church took us in for the night. It was a shorter day, so not only did they provide dinner and breakfast the next day but they went out and got lunch when we arrived earlier than expected. Here was our first affordable housing presentation which was received with such enthusiasm from various members of the congregation who joined us for the evening meal. By this point in the ride, my group and I concluded that the deep South had an extreme abundance of three things: churches, dollar stores, and dead armadillos. Later in my ride, this rule of thumb has yet to let me down.


Mobile, AL - We arrived here after our first century ride. Excited from the day's accomplishments, a group of us had our first night on the town -- which ended up being surprising calm and early considering our exhausting and waking up the next morning at 6:45 (which is actually "sleeping in" compared to 4:00). But while out, I was able to meet a few people who promised that Mobile, to my great surprise, was indeed the home of Mardi Gras parties and still holds a popular and family-friendly event every year. Not a bad city considering this and the beach is beautiful and the fish restaurants are abundant, cheap, and (at least the one I tried) very good.

New Orleans, LA - This is still my favorite city in the world. And yes, I have been walking around the streets of NYC, Budapest and Rome telling whoever happened to be with me how X-city is great, but I will always like New Orleans better.


Natchitoches, LA - As the first British settlement in Louisiana, this city has a pretty rich history. Candy shops, local bookstores, restaurants, and gift shops located downtown overlook a lazy river and small park in the center of town.


Carthage, TX - Our first night in the great state of Texas, we were taken in by an '06 bike and build alumna's parents. They opened up their house for us to sleep all over and allowed us a taste of Texas food and hospitality. While there are many parallels between Texas and the South, this state is undeniably a separate entity. The tourist slogan is "a country of its own" which is no exaggeration from reality. Another slogan: "drive friendly -- the Texas way" has also proven to be true. As a cyclist, cars tend to zip by usually too close for comfort on both back roads and major highways, but cars (and A LOT of trucks) here have instead slowed down and granted us some wiggle room on the roads.


East Duke, OK - We took a break from the enormity of Texas and headed North to the border of Oklahoma for an evening. Oklahoma ... where the wind comes sweepin' down the plain ... did not let me down as it truly was everything that I imagined it to be. In this one town where I stopped to take pictures of the main street (right by the railroad tracks, of course), a local man stopped with me to tell me a short story about his town. Founded in the very beginning of the twentieth century, East Duke and West Duke had a continuous battle which had been sparked over the government granted the railroad company free land which it sold cheaply to the residence of East Duke. Enraged West Duke retaliated by occasionally burning buildings in their counter town which escalated into a thirty year conflict between the two. Finally, they came to a peace and together buried a hatchet in a time capsule under a main intersection. The true resolution, however, came when the main road in East Duke was paved in the late 1940's while West Duke was left with dirt roads and eventually perished to a sheetrock factory and a few abandoned foundations.


Memphis, TX - Everything was closed on Saturday afternoon when we got in. Their is a town square with all the main stores with a court house in the middle; this set up is becoming a familiar sight. But the emptiness of a weekend when in Charlotte or Grinnell people would be hustling about was almost eerie. A friend who went out last night also informed me that it is a dry county. And the library, to my dismay, is closed on Sundays AND Wednesdays. But the people are beyond nice. First Methodist treated us to a potluck dinner and a soon to come brunch. And the man I asked for directions to the post office offered to mail my letters for me since he was already heading that way.

Disclaimer: This list is very incomplete as I am running out of computer time but I hope to fill more in later.

Lose your house ... lose your teeth

My group and I just finished up our time in the Gulf Coast. Our final days were spent building, rather than our usual biking, with one day in each Mobile, AL and Biloxi, MS plus four more in New Orleans, LA. The region is estimated to not fully come back for 10-15 more years. And although things are looking better in NOLA and almost back to normal by the coast, there are still some obvious repairs waiting to be made and most definitely a long road ahead.

One elderly man in New Orleans stopped to talk to a group and I while we were gutting his neighbor's house. True to the nature of most people in the city, he was quite friendly to us strangers and even more glad to hear that we were volunteers from around the country. He quickly launched into his story, since like many others, he is eager to share the pain and trouble which he and many others have silently been enduring since hurricane Katrina.

He didn't evacuate. He didn't explain why and many people stayed for different reasons. Some, no many, literally could not afford it. It was the end of the month, so the last pay check was long ago and money for the necessary gas and food to get out of the city was low or not there. Others didn't have the transportation necessary. Pre-Katrina New Orleans had a pretty good public transportation for a city of its size, and so many people didn't have cars or ways out of the city. (Both the population and the bus lines have dramatically decreased after the storm.) It was too late, Mayor Ray Nagin hesitated to call a mandatory evacuation supposedly due to fear of economic backlash or possibly even disbelief in the weather predictions. Many residents, like their mayor, didn't think that Katrina could be that bad. The older ones had survived Betsy in '56 which only caused minor wind damage and a little flooding in the ninth ward. (Of course, Betsy was not termed minor at the time, but in comparison to Katrina, now most except it as such.) And finally, some just didn't want to leave something they loved behind. I am guessing that the old man I talked to was in the latter two camps. He didn't say.

The storm was fine. The sun was out. They made it! Right? Oh, I wish. He lives near the ninth ward where instead of trickling flood waters, he got a gush which allowed him just enough time to run to the highest story of his house and watch as his neighborhood was covered with more and more water. He wisely had loaded up this top room with water, food, and other supplies so that he was able to survive alone for days. A boat finally came to get him -- a family which was also stranded it in this newly-formed vast ocean, covering their streets, schools and almost all other signs of the pre-existing city. He took about five minutes to go over all the animals that he saw -- lots of snakes and basically everything else.

He joined this family and shared his hoard of stuff. Providing protection for each other at night in a two-story apartment complex they had found (as in were borrowing to put it nicely), they used their boat (also borrowed) to rescue other victims during the day. The old man estimated that they took about 200 people from roof tops and second stories to what he called "the ferry land" with boats shuttling people to safe ground.

All the while, he is talking about losing his dentures. He took them out one night to wash them after four days of not due to lack of clean water. When he did rinse them, it was with soda and set them down. In the middle of the night, someone came with word of the last ferry leaving. He rushed out fearful of the mayhem which might occur when they send in the military and increased disillusionment of the remaining survivors. He left his teeth and when he was allowed back in to look for them weeks later, the apartment complex could not be found. Of course, he only had a general idea where it was since all the street signs were covered. But he tried. And finally asked a random waitress who mentioned that the place had burned to the ground sometime after the storm. They were gone. Eighteen months later he is telling me his story and he still had no teeth. He lives in a trailer outside his house -- probably waiting for road home money to rebuild his house and certainly hoping his street and the city will recover.

We must have been talking for almost an hour. He never really went into much detail about his life since returning to the city. But it is hard to ask some one who has no teeth and 1/10 the neighbors they had 2 years ago how they are doing when the answer is too clear.