The Big Easy.....?

Mobile by day....

the view from my room in the morning....paid $10 extra for the view so you are getting it again!!!

Phil...here is one I made earlier.....ok ok the Battleship Memorial Park on the way into Mobile

So I am in the middle of 3 lanes this morning doing about 40mph as I leave Mobile and I glance to my left and see this woman in a car next to me waving at me frantically (don't really think she was frantic.....a tad excited maybe but you know what I mean...).

Now, women waving at me isn't an everyday occurence (well not using all of their fingers anyways) and so I instantly start thinking that something has fallen off the bike (visions of my underwear flying onto the windshields of following cars) or that I have a flat tyre or something.......so I look back at the woman to see what she is trying to tell me..............................

........and all I can see is her and her husband (a big assumption I know....simply a bloke in the car) who was driving both smiling like idiots and both giving me the thumbs up!

She then rolls down her window and she asks me what type of bike is it.......and as she is a girly I shout back (am wearing helmet and earplugs) "Candy Orange!".....no I didn't really, I told her it was a Honda blah blah blah.....remember we are still tootling along at 40mph on a busy thoroughfare here.......so she tells me the bike is really beautiful.....her window goes up, I get another big smile and off they went!

Now given what I saw of her, her husband and the car they were driving I doubt if I would behold the same levels of beauty in too many things as she would but I took the compliment with the warmth and generousity of spirit it was given with.......you see....nice people everywhere!

some views of Biloxi.......does it get any better?

Speaking of nice people.....I got to New Orleans this evening.....another nightmare trying to find my hotel (I must repeat that the last thing I need after a day on the bike is to hit a city in the afternoon sun and the afternoon traffic and then have to find a hotel when I haven't a notion where to go and I spend a couple of hours overheating and asking locals who have no idea where anything in their home town is!) and I stop on the street the hotel is supposed to be on and then I see it down the street and I start to position the bike to get back into the traffic and somehow my rear wheel finds itself in a pothole (when I say pothole I mean I was expecting two blokes in climbing gear to appear from within it) and I am stuck....the rear wheel is not in contact with the bottom of the hole.....I am freewheeling.....the bike is too heavy to force out of the hole.......PROBLEM!!!

Found a sandbag.....lying in another pothole (!) a couple of yards away and try my best to engineer an escape but it is not happening........am now having visions of Ice Cold In Alex (old B&W movie set in desert....lots of wheels stuck in soft sand)......and just as I am wondering what to do next, out jumps a guy from his 4x4 while the traffic is stopped....gets his shoulder behind the bike and helps push her out......he jumps back in his truck and he is away (probably before I could get the chance to kiss him)

Well I hadn't intended on visiting New Orleans in my initial thinking about my route but every American I have met has said 'you have to visit New Orleans...' so I succumbed and here I am. Please God tell me that they didn't all send me here because they thought Bourbon Street is a blast! I do hope they were thinking of other stuff.....although I am unlikely to see it......whatever it might be.

Bourbon St......the place many of us have seen on tv when they do pieces on Mardi Gras and New Orleans....and yes it is Mardi Gras season (it lasts about a month these days) and yes there were women walking around with beads (and mum, basically.....women show men their boobs and the men give them a string of beads.....I can't explain it.....accept that it happens......am sure it doesn't happen 365 days of the year....just during festivals)......(even though Mardi Gras started in Mobile, Alabama.....and not here in NOLA)......how is it that the rest of the world gets Mardi Gras....beers......topless women......bikini'd women.....dancing women......women!.....New Orleans.....Rio......you get the picture.......and we get Pancake Tuesday......how does that work?

Bourbon St......a lot of strip joints...which I was surprised to see....lots of t-shirt shops blasting out too-loud music.....lots of neon....lots of bars selling overpriced beers in plastic glasses......lots of second rate bands (they were not all second rate but I couldn't be bothered to wait to get served in the places where there was a band worth listening to).........yes my european friends....this sounds like every nasty package holiday you have ever heard about........San Antonio (as in Ibiza, not Texas)...Fuertaventura (never been)......but you know what I mean......ok ok.....it is like a little streeet festival.....the good thing is that bars allow you walk in with a beer that you may have bought elsewhere......but it is basically middle-aged americans 'going wild' and walking down the street with a beer in their hand (albeit in a plastic cup)......I admit by beer 5 it didn't seem that bad......I think I needed to arrive with beer 3 already inside me.....or at least have a few buddies with me!

(ok ok I accept that I cannot judge a city by seeing where they feed beer to the tourists.......like visiting Temple Bar on a Friday night and saying that it is Dublin........isn't that Dublin though?)