Misc. ramblings

In their infinite wisdom, Amazon has decided to reprint my 2005 book on motorcycling in Northeastern Florida. You can buy a copy at

http://www.amazon.com/PirateJohns-Unique%C2%AE-Motorcycling-Northeastern-Florida/dp/141960872X/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213555517&sr=1-2

or, if that link doesn't work, go to http://www.amazon.com/ and search for "PirateJohn" (one word).

I wish that they had done this a few years ago when there was a demand for the book and I was sold out, but I guess "better late than never" applies here.
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Here we are, grabbing a little breakfast at a really nice little place a number of blocks away. We had the bus out in the morning for some errands and decided to stop by on the way home.

Walking or riding our bicycles around the neighborhood has become our morning routine and I highly recommend getting some exercise for those of you so inclined. And breakfast at the local little restaurants is turning out to be a great way to get the mornings started. I'm trying to wean myself off of some of my arthritis meds and am discovering that bicycling and a little aspirin in the morning go a long way towards loosening those stiff joints without taking a dose of mystery chemicals in the morning.

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In the sport touring or long distance touring (or whatever else you want to call it) motorcycling communities we do a number of "RTE" events. Ride to eat. Basically an excuse to get on the road, have a meal, and return.

I saddled up the Phantom Cruiser, a/k/a our K1200LT last night and rode up to meet some friends who were having dinner at Hooters in Savannah, Georgia. Yeah, we really did go to Hooters for the wings, but that's beside the point.

Actually, we all ran up (or ran over; most of the folks were in Savannah to begin with) to meet up with my pal Robert Munday, who has organized a number of Internet BMW Riders gigs over the years and well understands the RTE mentality.

Robert was in Savannah to visit his uncle, who is now in a rest home. Time flies, because I remember Robert's uncle as a sprightly World War II vet who had been a guide at Savanah's legendary Mighty 8th Air Force Museum ( http://www.mightyeighth.org/word/index.php ). Hard to believe that it's been 6 years since Robert's uncle gave several of us riders that tour of the museum. Uncle Stan had been aboard two airplanes that crashed during WWII and didn't have a fear of flying, but he had a bad experience on a motorcycle as a young man and wouldn't ride. Life's funny that way.

Now, at age 92, time is catching up with him. Just as it does with all of us, I'm afraid.

If the truth is to be known, I've ridden very little during the last few years. Oh, I was commuting to the office every day on a motorcycle, but I haven't ridden long distances for some time. And after being a 20 year member of the biggest BMW motorcycle national club, I had let my membership lapse as I concentrated on our motorhome and other projects.

I guess that when you have literally written The Book on motorcycle touring in your part of the country that sometimes it's tough to find new riding experiences.

Now I confess that the itch to start riding again is coming back.

So it was great fun to saddle up the LT and to ride through the rain yesterday in order to have dinner with old friends, and then to drag back into Jacksonville around midnight. It was good seeing everyone - even if I was disappointed that some of the "usual crowd" from years past in Savannah didn't materialize - but the ride at night brought back memories of the best of motorcycling. On I-95 after dark your fate is in your own hands as you mix it up with cars, trucks, road surfaces of varying quality (Georgia is rebuilding what seems to be literally every bridge and overpass in that part of the state), and that #1 terror of motorists everywhere: the Yankee tourist. Pretty demanding riding, that's for sure.

But the temperatures were perfect with the rains keeping the summer heat at bay, and the LT offers plenty of radio and communication options to keep a rider awake and interested. Last night was a perfect night for the road warrior, and the good ol' Phantom Cruiser was as happy to be out of the garage and running along as I was to be happy being the pilot.

On a cool night, at a steady 70 mph, and lightly loaded the fancy computer indicated that I was getting a really lazy 44.5 miles per gallon. Not too shabby for a performance-oriented motorcycle that was built in that seemingly long lost days when gasoline was cheap and (we always thought) plentiful.

I often feel that motorcycles and good motor vehicles have a soul. Perhaps they have more soul in them than some of the people that I have met over the years. Last night was a perfect example of that as the Phantom Cruiser so obviously rejoiced in being cleaned up and set free to do what she does the best - eat those miles like an athlete.

Yesterday was good, indeed.

Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana

During our last trip to the New Orleans area Deb and I drove down into Plaquemines Parish, which is where the road runs out roughly 100 miles due south of New Orleans.

Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans with Cat. 3 winds but it is widely believed that the southern tip of Plaquemines was actually hit with Cat. 4 winds. No one knows for sure, because the wind measuring instruments were destroyed. A tidal gauge in Plaquemines did, however register a storm tide in excess of 14 ft. Yikes!

And with a height of 3 ft. above sea level in the little hamlet of Buras, Louisiana, there wasn't any place to go to if you were foolish enough to try to ride out the storm. The place is quite like the Florida Keys in that there is only one road in. And one road out.

Plaquemines is an interesting industrial area. Petroleum production is king, with several refineries in the parish. Further out and closer to the southern end of the parish you run across shipyards and helicopter fleets dedicated to servicing the offshore. There is a small commercial fishing industry, and there was a small sport industry before the hurricane. At the present time there are plenty of fishing boats up for sale and the sport fishing industry looks pretty dead. We had trouble finding gasoline and didn't see anything that looked like a working motel, so you can tell that things are dire economically unless you are workin' for one of the oil companies.


Plaquemines is basically a narrow peninsula, with the Mississippi River on one side and an inlet of the Gulf of Mexico on the other. In many ways being out in Plaquemines Parish reminds me of driving through the Florida Keys, but with a cajun flavor.


About the first thing that caught our attention was this big gambling boat in a scrapyard:

Down here the ships are pretty durned close to the houses and the highway. We drove over the levy and watched the pilot boats heading out to guide this ship into the Mississippi River:

Like I said, there were some pretty impressively sized ships not far from the highway. This part of Plaquemines Parish reminds me quite a bit of Savannah, Georgia where ocean-going ships cruise down the river near downtown, but in the case of Plaquemines the ships are much larger; there were some big muthas out there in the Mississippi! :

There are a couple of VERY large refining complexes in the parish. Ironically, this one small pump was one of the few pumps that we saw; most of the oil is coming from the offshore platforms which are out in the Gulf of Mexico:

It doesn't take you too long before you start seeing the first FEMA trailers. The trailers are everywhere. Find a nice looking house and as you get closer you realize that the house is trashed, the windows are out, and there are two or three trailers in the yard.

And there are communities of FEMA trailers everywhere:

Basic services were trashed. We got concerned that we would run out of gas after stopping at several stations that didn't have gasoline in the tanks. Finally we put a couple of gallons of regular into our SUV, which was, painfully, meant to run on premium fuel.


There were few groceries open on the end of the parish, and restaurants ... well, forget it. There ain't none.

I thought this was interesting because the fire department was still trashed, several years after Katrina blew through. In my semi-limited experience with disasters, I always thought that the Feds repaired the emergency services fairly early on:

Finally, we got down to the end of Plaquemines Parish, literally where the road ran out. When we crossed Haliburton Drive we knew that oil was in command here.

At the end of the state highway the road was flooded (the Mississippi was unusually high for that time of year). Even though there is supposed to be some sort of nature park at the end of Plaquemines Parish the only visible aspect was a small compound (and by small I mean maybe 200 ft by 200 ft.), fenced in, with no personnel, the gates locked, and a gunboat inside.

Clearly petroleum production gets the nod down here, although, in fairness, it appears that the bulk of that preserve is out in the water somewhere and presumably accessible only by boat.

If you look closely at this display of wildlife posters, you can see the gunboat anchored behind the signs:

Wedged between the various oil patch operations there are some commercial fishing operations:

But make no mistake about it. Plaquemines Parish, and the people that live there, are all about the oil production industry:

It's just too bad that the workers living down there seem to have been forgotten in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Keep the faith folks, and don't forget that, years later, Louisiana is still rebuilding and that the folks down there are still struggling.