Real Human Moments

What an awesome city, I need to go back. We made the 1 hour drive from Key West to New Orleans all day and most of the night, arriving at 9ish into the city. We took advantage of the early hour and found free parking in the French Quarter. Driving and walking around revealed a city still recovering from Katrina, even 2 years after the fact. The streets seemed too empty for their size, and the run down and broken houses were everywhere. Often times there would be a house that was completely restored right next to a house that probably would need to be demolished, even in the French Quarter. According to a construction worker we ended up talking to for a while, basically all the work being done is privately funded repairs, he doesn’t know anyone who has worked on a project from the Katrina fund.

Just strolled through the French Quarter and took in the sights, sounds and shops. We did stop at the Voodoo museum and learned a bit about the history behind voodoo. For 5 dollars John T Martin, a druid and Voodoo priest explained Voodoo and let us walk through his museum.

Of course we had to get some Cajun/Creole food, so we stopped at a local cafe and sampled the goods. Not a cheap en devour but it was certainly worth it. After our explorations we headed too our hostel, about a 10 minute drive with traffic away from the French Quarter. We stayed at India House a beautiful and eccentric little hostel. It consisteded of 3 buildings right next to eachother, with a fourth behind all 3 which creates a little courtyard in the middle. They have a pool and even a little turtle pond. I believe its owned or atleast managed by a group of artists who just spend their days taking care of the hostel and creating art for the hostel or other things such as a skateboard for a girl down the street.

As usual everyone was extremly friendly, we hung out with a mix of people from Pennsylvania, California, Utah, England and Australia. We picked up a bottle of wine and relaxed on the porch telling stories of our travels and getting to know each other. Eventually Sasha and I headed out to experience the French Quarter at night. Bourbon Street was like Uconn Spring weekend, if every house was actually a nice bar and or strip club. We got the obligatory hurricane or handgrande and actually then went to Frenchman’s street to hear some good jazz. This road is a little bit away from Bourbon street, but just as fun and it has a less “frat boy” feel. Every bar had a live Jazz band playing, we ended up stopping at the d.b.a and saw Honey Island Swamp Band. Really great band and awesome bar.

Later that night, back at the hostel, we bumped into our fellow travelers and hung out till the wee hours of the morning. Finishing the bottles of wine, talking about British TV, Europeans at festivals, and then just plain drunk talk about accents.

I’ll be back for Voodoo festival in October.

Jimbo

Wow, I didn’t know America had beaches like the ones we saw on the Keys. The beaches are post card worthy, with white sand that almost feels like clay. We drove US-1 from outside of Miami straight into Key West, the trip took us about 3+ hours with some traffic, but it is one of the coolest drives I’ve ever done in America. There are points on the road where you have the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Ocean both visible on your right and left sides. Of course we drove through Key Largo (Montiego, baby why dont we go to the cocomos…), and went over the 7 mile bridge while keeping a sharp eye out for any Harrier jets who might want to take us out True Lies style.

Key West it self has a very strong “Island” feel even though its attached with bridges. We ended up staying at the Key West Seashell Hostel which is at the end of Duval street, 2 blocks from “the southern most point”. We walked around Key West, took in the sites and stores. There are many famous places to eat and drink, we didn’t try them all, but then again were not millionaires. Its funny, everywhere in Key West you’ll hear this strange (well i guess for us city folk) crying noise. Theres a large wild chicken population, its neat seeing chickens walking around the bars and such.

Were are finding out that staying in hostels is the way to lodge while traveling, even in the US. After we spent the day walking around, we went back to the hostel and had dinner. We met some more travelers who of course were from Australia and New Zealand. When I spent some time traveling in Europe a few years ago I noticed that any bar you went to, if you listened long enough, eventually you’ll hear an Australian accent. I wonder why Australians are always traveling, or working abroad and its so uncommon in the US?

We left the hostel with our new Mates and hit up the Duval street bars and clubs. Needless to say its a crazy town thats open till early morning, we went to Irish Nicks and then to Sloppy Joe’s. At Sloppy Joe’s there was a rocking cover band which played great modern rock. Somehow I made it back and apparently fell asleep in the common patio/gazebo area.

We went swimming the next day and started our drive to New Orleans. Florida is a big fucking state.

~ Jimbo

Originally our plan was to get down to Key West and party 2 nights down there, however we ended up getting a late start leaving SC and decided to find a closer stop for the night.  A quick search found us http://www.jazzhostels.com/ a very nice clean hostel right down in South Beach. Its about 4 blocks from all the clubs and a block away from the beach. We ended up getting in around 10:30, we shared some cheap whiskey with some other people hanging around the hostel. There was a unique mix of people staying there, the majority of them were European or Australians seeing America. There was also some Americans just looking to get a start in Miami and were staying here while trying to find a job.

We went out to the bar street and really weren’t feeling a club so we found a nice Irish bar “The Playwright”. Its the sister bar of The Playwright in New Haven.  Good place. Anyways the moral of the night is, even if its raining and two girls offer to share a cab, they still could be prostitutes which you have to run away from.

To Key West,

Jimbo

Keeping things fresh in my mind I figured I’d make my first real post. We just got into our sleeping bags in the KOA of Charleston, South Carolina. How did we get here? Well we ended up leaving my parents around 730pm on Tuesday night after having dinner at the “Athena II” in Wallingford CT. After that we still needed to get our GPS/Laptop working so we B-lined for Comp USA in Milford. Around 8pm we began our trip for real… skip ahead 15 hours and we made it to Charleston SC.

Our reason to stop in Charleston was to visit a good fried of mine, Ryan Okeefe. He had joined the Navy and is currently in School near Charleston training to be a nuclear engineer. He’s been gone since late december when he shipped out to boot camp. His school days are from 5am to 4pm so we had to entertain ourselves for a few hours. We found some free parking at White Point Gardens and just started walking. Charleston is an interesting city it has a style very similar to what I saw in Old San Juan. Very bright colors with cement or plaster walls. It was a 91 degree day and we quickly got parched so we stopped by a local brewery, restaurant for a cool one. The beer was mediocre. We walked through an open air market that sold various crap, and then we got bored and drove out to Sullivan Island outside the city.

Sullivan Island is looks and feels like Hilton Head. Word of warning, “Wild Dunes” is an expensive resort, not a sweet place to play on sand dunes. We parked our car and went for a swim in the piss warm water (in a good way). By the time we got showered off it was time to go pick up Okeefe at his base.

In quite the coincidence, Greg Weinrod’s friend Rapple called me on Greg’s phone pretending to be Greg. Me not recognizing the number gave my phone to Ryan who pretended to be me. Two pretenders on the same phone. Any ways, we spent the evening in downtown Charleston with Okeefe. We had dinner at an Irish pub called Condon’s and visited various bars and reminisced and caught up on recent gossip. For all those who have heard from Oderf in a while, he is doing very well, really enjoying his time in the Navy and is actually number 1 in his class, which helps him avoid severe punishment for his antics. We dropped Ryan off back at his base around midnight (after another pitcher at the base bar).

Our campsite was a few minutes away, we pulled in a little after midnight and met our neighbor, “Chuck who dont give a fuck” . We had a beer and chatted with Chuck for an hour, he was an extremely nice guy and told great stories. Chuck is a modern day lumber jack who trims and cuts down trees for a living. He camps were there is work and knows how to make quite the complete campsite. Chuck even hooked us up with a roll up green turf to keep in front of our tent and to keep our shoes on. In the morning he even gave us his home made hammock which should be a sweet addition at High Sierra if we find a place to put it up.

As usual I haven’t uploaded any pictures yet but I may be able to tomorrow morning. Right now we are on I-95 just south of Daytona heading to Miami for the night. We are staying at the Jazz Hostel in South Beach.

Cheers,

Jimbo

Well the road trip has begun. Sasha and I managed to leave Wallingford around 8 pm, only 2 hours behind schedule. Of course nothing has really gone to plan. Well thats not entirely true, we packed the car very well and seem to have not forgotten anything yet. However our GPS for the laptop didn’t work so we had to buy one at Comp USA, also our power inverter wont work to power the laptop unless the car is moving at signifigant speeds.

Nothing really interesting to report yet, we managed to get in contact with Ryan Okeefe by Charleston, SC. We plan on being in Charleston around 11 ish, and meeting up with Ryan after his classes at 4.

I’ll get some more substantial things up here once we get settled.

~Jimbo