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.
~~~~

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.

~~~

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.

Things that make you go ... huh?

Just got a notice from the printer of my Motorcycling in Northeast Florida book that they are sending me some money. It's not a lot, but what amazes me is that they are finally getting around to paying me for some copies that they sold in September of 2005.

Old joke that we used to tell about the truckin' bizness, but it's equally applicable to publishing: How do you make a small fortune out of the book business? Start with a large fortune.

Publishing is a tough business these days.

Incidentally, I have the Latin motto "Melius tarde, quam nunquam" on the line above the signature on my publishing company checks. That means, roughly, "better late than never." True story.

~~~

Have you seen that horrible photo of the car colliding head-on into a group of bicycle racers in Mexico? One rider was killed and something like a dozen cyclists were injured.

Being an old bicycle racer (had a Cat. 2 license once, and was able to ride a 25 mile TT in under an hour when I was 17 for those of you who ride push bikes and can relate) before I decided to grow old and fat, several things occur to me about this episode:

- Auto/bicycle collisions happen more often than we like to think, and the bicyclist never wins. Even during races with police escorts (there was a Mexican Federale's car on the right, just out of the photo) this stuff happens. Back in my day the 1971 World Champion, a Belgian rider named Jean-Pierre Monsere, was killed by an errant driver who got onto the race course. BE CAREFUL WHEN DRIVING NEAR BICYCLISTS!

- Many of us in the USA dismissed this episode as just more Mexican lousy driving. Alas, the driver of the car, who was drunk or on crack depending on who tells the story, is a gringo. So was the rider who was killed. We have got to get our drug problems in the States under control before we can criticize others.

- The race was from the Playa Bagdad to the city of Matamoros, across the river from Brownsville, Texas. The port at Bagdad was the last Southern port to fall during the War of Northern Aggression, a/k/a the Civil War. Tremendous history there, now sadly largely lost in time as the border has shifted a bit along with the Rio Grande.

- This road looks like the main road between Matamoros and Cuidad Victoria, Rt. 180. That's one hairy piece of real estate under the best of circumstances. It's not quite four lanes wide, it's more like a lane and a very wide shoulder going each way. You are expected to drive or ride on that "shoulder" as much as possible, bearing in mind that every so often something will be parked there. Traffic routinely pulls out across the center line to pass and it's pretty wild seeing a tractor trailer move over onto "your" side of the road and coming head on at you. And although this section looks like it was recently paved, that road is one of the roughest paved roads that I have ever been on.

Be careful out there, y'all. If you think that being on a motorcycle makes you vulnerable, then you oughta sympathize with bicyclists.

~~~

I just got an email claiming that CNN has announced that several of the oil companies are going to start showing porn movies at the gas pumps. That way you can watch someone else getting screwed as you pump your gas ...

Seriously, diesel here in Northeast Florida is running $4.66/gallon at the Flying J near St. Augustine, which is usually one of the more reasonable places to buy diesel.

In contrast, diesel has been hovering at about $2.27/gallon in most of Mexico for over a year.

Personally, I think that the American public has been thrown underneath the bus, but that's just me.

And no, I'm not bitter. Dammit.

~~~

'tis the season. For folks who are riding their motorcycles coast-to-coast, that is.

As many of y'all know I have been active for years with a crazy group called the Iron Butt Association that encourages long distance motorcycling. Minimum entrance requirements to get into the IBA involve documenting that you can ride 1,000 miles in 24 hours. The group issues certificates for other fiendish rides, such as the 50cc, which is meant to be coast-to-coast in 50 hours or less. On a motorcycle, of course.

Anyhow, by virtue of the fact that Yours Truly actually did a 50cc ride back in 2002 or so ( http://www.bsu.edu/web/00amleduc/mtf/50cc/50ccridepj.htm ) and happens to live in Jacksonville (JAX, FL to San Diego being the two closest coastal points in the USA) I wind up signing the paperwork for a bunch of folks who are doing the 50cc ride or similar "extreme rides."

Yesterday we had a rather normal looking gent on a black Harley drop by. None of those fancy electronic things that the Euro-bikers have like GPS units or anything like that, nor was he wearing a day-glo protective suit. Rather he was wearing a jeans jacket and looked just like he was getting ready to ride to the Beaches rather than across the country.

The same day we had a couple, riding two-up on a new BMW bike drop by. They left this morning for the west coast after using my garage and air compressor last night for some emergency repairs.

Incidentally, this gentleman lived aboard a sailboat for 16 years and spent plenty of time in the Florida Keys, so we had plenty to talk about vis a vie sailing vs. motorhomes, a nomadic and Bohemian lifestyle, and so forth.

A few days ago two guys dropped by at 4 in-the-frickin' morning to get their paperwork signed. 4AM. Yawn ...

And the list goes on. The last time I checked the IBA had 30,000 members and about 1% will accomplish a 50cc, so that promises a steady stream of visitors for the summer.

There is also a small group of French motorcycling tourists that contacted me about camping out here at our workshop. When we had our house we would let folks camp out in the back yard, which inevitably meant that they either got to sleep in the living room or we'd give them the bedroom as we went outside and slept in the motorhome.

That, and we'd crank up the bar-b-que.

Anyhow, we don't have the space in the Bluebird these days for folks to crash on the couch by the dozen so this could be entertaining as the French meet up with the heat and humidity of Florida in June.

~~~

Y'all have fun. It's getting to be H-O-T here in Florida so we've been out walking early in the AM and calling it quits by dinner time. Thank God for restaurants and pubs with air conditioning!

A little post-Flagler Beach followup

On Saturday afternoon we were driving southbound on A1A on the way to the Jim Morris concert in Ormond Beach and were lucky enough to see the space shuttle Discovery launch. Sorry that my photos aren't better but, to be honest, we were in awe as we watched a bright orange flame quickly lift the shuttle into the sky.

Quite a show, especially considering that the launch site was almost 100 miles away.

I read somewhere that Flagler Beach leads the state of Florida, if not the nation, in shark attacks.

While I was surf fishin' on Saturday it was getting fairly late in the day, I was in knee-deep water, and was lighting up my last cigar and thinking about calling it quits. About then I realized that there was a 2-3 foot long shark chasing something about halfway between me and my bait, and I can assure you that my cast hadn't hurled my bait nearly as far away as I would have liked.

Yikes!

Needless to say, that was plenty of incentive for me to get out of the water.

We went down to the Flagler fishing pier twice during our trip, and saw folks catching one mackerel, a couple of small fish suitable for bait, and maybe seven small sharks. None of those sharks was 'zactly a man eater, but they sure could have taken a nip out of someone.

I might add that the pier has a sign up prohibiting shark fishin' but obviously the sharks aren't reading the sign.

It's certainly not my intention to scare anyone away from the beach, or for that matter from Flagler Beach with I consider to be one of the best laid-back areas left, but a little healthy respect for where we are in the food chain comes in handy every now and then.

~~~

Ah, the joys of full-time RV'ing. We have having "issues" with our air conditioning.

First of all, motorhome air conditioning is often a suggestion to begin with. I look at some of the smaller rigs that have a single rooftop unit and sometimes wonder how they get by with that in our Florida climate. On one of the Internet RV discussion groups last year there was some mention that, for most folks, if they could get the inside temps down 20 degrees that was about the best that they could expect. Needless to say, if you are in the middle of Arizona and it's 120 degrees outside that is of little comfort.

We aren't that bad off, but we have three "basement" Cruisair units that are of a design that you don't see on buses or RV's anymore (although they are still popular with yachts) and one isn't working.

On top of that the first owner installed an overhead A/C unit for extra cooling but in the 20 plus years that the second owners had our Bluebird that unit never worked. Yours Truly (we are the third owners of the venerable Bluebird) got it to work briefly, but after a near-fire experience last year we decided to leave it the hell alone.

Frankly, when we had our house and only used the Bluebird every so often the A/C wasn't an issue. But now that we are using the 'bird as an office, have two warm adult bodies and two heat-adverse fur-bearing cats inside, and plenty of computers and LCD televisions we are struggling a bit to keep things cool.

None of the local RV places want to mess with our Cruisair units. The local Prevost bus garage actually mentions that they do Cruisair work on their web site but, judging by the discussions that I have had with the folks over there, they know less about these units than I do. Not only is that scary, but they would practically want me to leave my wallet at the counter for any work they do.

I did have a household A/C guy come over and look at these things and he charged the working units with freon. He's interested in working with me this Fall if I remove the center unit (which weighs about 300 lbs. and will involve jacking up the bus and lowering the unit downwards) but right now it's his busy season (read: "expensive season") so we'll have to struggle through as best we can.

So at the moment Deb and I have budgeted a replacement overhead unit to our somewhat lengthy list of upgrades for the 'bird.

As I am writing this we aren't suffering too badly. The thermometer between the kitchen and the couch is showing 73 degrees and holding at Noon, so that's not bad at all. It must be 90 degrees outside right now. But our big crisis occurred when we returned from Flagler on a superheated day. After driving for a couple of hours with the basement air off (it only runs on 50 amp household-type power) we didn't have enough excess cooling to get the inside temperature down quickly so we had to set up some fans to keep the cats comfy as Deb and I abandoned ship for a few hours and went to an air conditioned bar while the bus interior cooled.

One just has to laugh at this stuff, although a friend last night did comment that his cooler at his bar was also acting kinda screwy. It may not be out of the question that we are having some exceptional weather that is putting a strain on many of these systems.

~~~

Our local newspapers are full of tales of woe with the local economy even though a pair of Chinese companies are doing a genuinely massive expansion of the local ports. If they continue with all of their planned expansions my understanding is that JAXPort will become the largest container port on the East Coast.

Local pubs and restaurants, however, are, in most cases, obviously really hurting.

Many of you have no doubt heard about Floriduh's real estate crisis. Property values dropped suddenly and dramatically, with many folks discovering that they owed more on their mortgages than their houses were worth.

Throw in a drop in income (big article on that subject in yesterday's USA Today incidentally as more and more companies turn to wage plans that pay minimal salaries but pay bonuses and commissions which are rapidly drying up lately) and it's no wonder that the residential foreclosure rate in Florida is at an all-time high.

It's a screwy game, but one of the dirty little secrets of the local real estate market is that in many cases the mortgage companies are willing to forgive quite a bit of a home owners' debt in order to avoid the costs of a foreclosure if the home owner agrees to sell the property. We are seeing quite a few properties that were in the $250,000 range a year ago drop to perhaps $185,000 in value today. But in the case of a property with little or no equity in the house the mortgage company will write off $50-$80,000 in order to let the sale occur.

Deb has been doing a really bang-up business arranging sales of this type to a number of investors, and it's been a win/win situation for everyone. The homeowner gets out of debt gracefully (nothing looks worse on a credit report than a foreclosure, and this isn't a foreclosure), investors are able to buy properties at a price that makes them attractive, and the investors are, in many cases, arranging rent-to-own deals for many of the same homeowners.

As I said, a win/win situation.

If anyone has any Florida real estate questions, or if you are a potential home purchaser or home seller in the Jacksonville and St. Augustine areas, I encourage you to email Deb directly at Deb@RinconRTO.com

And yes, this is an unabashed commercial plug. I've gotta pay for my beer, smokes, and diesel somehow ;)

It's a tough gig, but someone has to do it

We are taking a little bit of a break and fishin' in the general vacinity of Flagler Beach, FL at an RV park that is, as you can see, right on the water.

I know. Tough gig.

I'm a bit sunburnt already and this place isn't nearly as full as we would have expected. I suspect that the fuel crisis and general economic malaise has dropped attendance down a bit. We have been looking into some other ocean-front RV parks and planning to hang out a bit this summer but this place (Beverly Beach RV Resort) is one of our favorites. If they would give us a break on weekly rates we might conduct our Jacksonville-based business from here for the next few months.

We did have an opportunity to drop by and see Mark, a/k/a the Tiki Tender ( http://www.tikitender.com/ ) last night at Flagler's Golden Lion, which is one of the better beachfront bar and restaurants around.

Later tonight we hope to see Jim Morris, one of the absolutely best of the tropic rock musicians, play nearby. You can check out Jim at http://www.jim-morris.com/home.htm

The last few weeks have been very exciting, even if I haven't had much of an opportunity to update the blog or otherwise write much online. While we were traveling we incorporated a new business and have been putting a ton of effort into that. In addition, the never-ending upgrades to the venerable Bluebird Wanderlodge continue, with a bizness telephone system and satellite television with multiple LCD monitors being recently installed, and some dents pounded out following a little "clash" that we had in Mississippi. But that last point is classified so let's not talk about that one. The co-pilot claims that the little "oops!" was caused by driver error but the pilot wants to argue that point.

My novel, a tale of lewdness, UFOs, 100-year old Nazis, bars and bar maids, mentally-unstable geriatric Internet stalkers, natural disasters, corporate corruption, , clown-phobic Texans, ex-cons, truckers, life, death, hookers, and the other things that make living worthwhile, continues. I recently noted that a well known author took an advance from his publisher on a novel that he promises to finish within the next 6-7 years. I can relate. For those of you who aspire to write, all that I can say is that you have to start somewhere but it's a frickin' slow project.

There are a number of things from our New Orleans trip that I hope to show y'all in the next few weeks, but, alas, I haven't had an opportunity to organize my photos yet. We took a drive down into Plaquemines Parish, roughly 100 miles south of New Orleans and basically Ground Zero for Hurricane Katrina. As much as I feel that we as a nation have let New Orleans and parts of Mississippi down when we should be helping them to rebuild, the residents of Plaquemines Parish appear to have been totally forgotten while the oil company interests down there are looking awfully healthy. The contrast between the haves and the have nots is stark indeed. In comparison, New Orleans has at least gotten some relief funding.

And then there's the subject of casinos. Ah yes ... casinos. The retirement home for many of us baby boomers. As much fun as I found the casinos in Mississippi to be I still find it strange that I have reached that age when a casino with a good buffet and a nice RV park is looking mighty appealing.

Speaking of buffet(t)s ... for you Parrotheads have you heard that Jimmy Buffett is involved in not one, not two, but now three Margaritaville Casino projects? Count 'em - Biloxi, the Mohegan Casino in Connecticut, and now some group has just announced that they are buying one of Donald Trump's Atlantic City properties and will be redeveloping it in conjunction with Margaritaville, Inc.

What is this world coming to?

Oh, and to totally skip around this planet and to see how quickly things are changing, check out CCTV-9, or English Language Chinese Central Television. We can pick CCTV-9 up on Dish System satellite TV on Channel 265, although I think that you have to request it at no add'l charge. DirectTV surely has it somewhere. Rural China reminds me of rural Mexico or, for that matter, rural Kentucky from the time of my birth - pretty backward. But the major cities - WOW! Very pretty. Very modern. And very much the economic powerhouses of the next generation. I hate to say it, but it kinda makes me think that we here in the USA have been asleep at the wheel (or perhaps our government has been concentrating on the wrong things) when China looks so modern, most of Europe can supply their citizens with retirement and health care and still have a currency that is increasing in value as compared to ours, and Mexico can be building new universities left and right and still have diesel at $2.27/gallon (diesel is about $4.29/gallon here in Floriduh as I write this).

As many of us olde phartes like to point out the Little Johnny of today often cannot read, and here in Florida neither he nor Little Jill seemingly can drive worth a damn, but they do have their rap songs memorized. I am not optimistic with their abilities to compete with the Euro and Chinese kids that I meet who have excellent math skills.

Then again, who from our generation would have ever thought that Jerry Rubin would have gone from being a Yippie to being a yuppie and would have become a big promoter of multi-level marketing, right?

But we do have great bar-b-que, I'll give you that. The USA leads the world in good pork bar-b-que.

And football.

But not Formula 1.

Did anyone watch the race in Monaco last weekend? No traction control on the new cars and it rained - yikes! It was looking like Ferrari was going to run out of body parts for their cars before they stopped the race a few laps short. Now that was exciting, even if the new F1 cars have so many wings and tabs and aerodynamic surfaces that you halfway expect the cars to start flapping and fly away on the start/finish line. NASCAR it ain't.

As I said, times change. Ya gotta roll with the punches, and keep on smiling.

A great billboard slogan that I saw a few months ago: "If you don't have dreams, then all you have in your life are your worries." So true.

Pursue your dreams. Whether they involve travel or doing something positive for you, your family, or the planet, pursue your dreams. If there is one thing that isn't in short supply in this universe it's negative people, and that's such a pity since there are indeed "so many nice things happenin' out there," to quote a lyric from a Buffett song.

We're baaaaaaaaaaack! And the state of the hurricane ravaged areas

Got into our workshop space around Noon on Tuesday, actually. Just been too frickin' busy to write regularly. Or too laid back. Or something along those lines. Sorry 'bout that.

A few quick observations:

We were gone for three weeks and had a great time, but no matter how you slice things it's always great to be back among friends and familiar surroundings.

We stopped in Panama City, Florida, the area around the Florida and Alabama lines on the coast, journeyed over to the casinos at Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and then headed over to the KOA Campground in Kenner, Louisiana for a week. Kenner is a convenient jumping off point to downtown New Orleans and I have stayed there many a' time over the last several years.

We considered continuing our trip for another few weeks and heading down toward the Tex/Mex border but a combination of illness, Land Rover maintenance, and business obligations scuttled that plan.

Several folks have written and asked how the rebuilding is going in Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricane Katrina.

Honestly, in my opinion, it's going pretty piss poor in many places.

The French Quarter and the other touristy areas around New Orleans has largely recovered. Remember, the French Quarter was above sea level and suffered little damage from Katrina flooding.

The casinos in Mississippi have been rapidly rebuilt and expanded since our last visit 15 months ago; however, residential properties and small businesses have, in most cases, not rebuilt if they received more than minor damage.

This is a small modular home that was built as a permanent replacement for a FEMA trailer. Notice that it's not very large. Also notice that it's REALLY high off the ground in order to meet the local Waveland, MS codes. These things are springing up left and right as replacements for the fancier traditional beachfront resort properties that have not been rebuilt:

Vast parts of New Orleans remain largely uninhabited and local businesses are all gone. Hardest hit that we saw were East New Orleans along the I-10 corridor coming in from Slidell and downtown along Rt. 90 as you get within sight of the Superdome and downtown. Both of those areas range from being largely devastated to completely trashed for blocks and blocks.

In our discussions with local folks and small business owners the consensus was as close to unanimous as could be - business was down from pre-Katrina levels, and for many small business owners keeping the doors open was a daily struggle.

Largely overlooked by the media would seem to be Plaquemines Parish, which is the southernmost tip of Louisiana and extends over 100 miles south of New Orleans. The town of Buras was reportedly the first town hit by Katrina and possibly received Cat. 4 winds as Katrina impacted southern Louisiana (in contrast Katrina was "only" a Cat. 3 when she hit NO). While the petroleum industry would appear to have rebuilt quickly, most housing in those towns in Plaquemines has yet to be rebuilt. What were once prosperous small towns are now ruins as groceries, restaurants, and so forth have not been rebuilt. Far and away the most prevalent form of housing out there is the travel trailer, and you can see those suckers for miles and miles, scattered out along what is otherwise a relatively rural area.

While we were in Kenner one of the local parishes was pushing to get the FEMA trailers out by the end of May. Don't let that fool you into thinking that things are fine; FEMA was acknowledging that they still have quite a few folks in trailers whose applications to rebuild their properties had not been reviewed three years after Katrina struck. NO, Mississippi, and Louisiana still have vast communities comprised of nothing but FEMA trailers tucked in and slightly out of sight. And, perhaps most shocking of all, New Orleans is developing a large community of folks who are living in tents - if they can afford a tent - underneath the highway overpasses.

There were some sobering sights during this trip. But for the grace of God go you or I.

That's funny. I would have sworn that I turned those lights off ...