Thursday, June 28, 2012

Ribbon of Highway - Route 1 - Leg 5


Ribbon of Highway
Leg 5
Florida to Georgia
(via Long Detour through China and Louisiana)
March 31-May 3, 2012

The leg from Jacksonville to New Orleans (hereafter NOLA) was planned to take place in March, and then April, but I was waylaid by a trip to Portland, Oregon to testify as an expert witness in a helicopter death case against GE, and then by a trip to China to take care of business with a start-up RV manufacturing company, both of which took precedence because they involved significant bucks now and for the future. Which means that when I arrived in Louisiana on April 25 to meet some friends at the New Orleans Jazzfest, my trusty steed was still rotting in a garage in Jacksonville, so technically my adventures in Shandong and NOLA are not part of the road trip. However, they w ere great adventures and were sort of proxy to the road trip, so with that confession I’m going to tell you about them anyway. If you are offended by this unorthodoxy, just skip over the China and NOLA parts! J

CHINA
Saturday March 31 through Saturday April 7

Actually, in a perverse sort of way, I am quite proud that I was out of the office – out of the country – for an entire work week yet managed to perform my work duties in such a way that my clueless employer never realized I had left Elkhart. Only with modern communications technology! I flew from Chicago to Beijing on March 31. The trans-Pacific trip is grueling even in business class on a modern jet.  No matter how you cut it, it takes about 24 hours door to door. Along the way, I switched planes to Hainan Airlines in Seattle because Hainan was several thousand dollars cheaper than business class on any US flag carrier. Hainan was fine, but the food was definitely not up to US standards, but for several thousand dollars who cares?! I arrived at 4pm the next day in Beijing, which was 4 am that day by my body clock. I was met by my host, a translator and a driver, and we immediately started across Beijing to the train station. Even on a Sunday afternoon with minimal traffic, it took us over an hour to get across town. Anybody who thinks the inscrutable Chinese are smarter than we are – not. They apparently didn’t learn much from observation of our transportation system from a 100 year advantage point: just like us, they built their airport across town from their train station, but they did that only in the last few decades. In all the world so far as I am aware, only the Dutch have got it right. Schipol in Amsterdam should be a wonder of the world, because no other civilization seems to grasp the concept that the airport and the train station and bus station should all be in the same location.

My hosts had also not bought tickets in advance even though it was a big family holiday weekend in China. When we arrived at the station, the cupboard was bare because, so we had to find a hotel for the night. Eat and crash.
Next morning, we go to the train station early to get tickets (after going through security similar to an airport) and sit around for several hours waiting for the train to leave.The station is brand new, all white tile and soaring stainless steel beams. Everybody begins to queue up a few minutes before the train arrives, and at a bell surge pushes forward through the turntables. Why? All seats are assigned! A big rush to get on the train platform to wait for the train to arrive? Human nature, everywhere. The train itself is a wonder! European technology high speed rail. Not at all like Amtrak. Whizzing along at over 300 mph, there is no noise, no shake and no rattle. You can safely set your drink on a table without concern that it will spill, or walk the aisle without having to grab the seats as you are thrown back and forth by the train. It is completely full. We need one of these between Minneapolis and Chicago and Cleveland (who cares about Detroit anymore?), and probably several other major interurban corridors.

A few hours and several hundred miles later, we arrive at Tai’an City in Shandong Province. We immediately transfer to our hotel, where I am given an opulent room large enough for 6 people, with a full wall window view of Tai Mountain, a desk, sofa, king bed, lounger, bathroom with shower and bathtub that has an interior picture window into the bedroom. Lovely except there is no time to enjoy it (and nobody to enjoy it with!), as we immediately leave for a banquet.



Many people are waiting to welcome me back to Shandong. When you are the honored guest, a Chinese banquet is a trial by fire. Everybody sits around a large round table, with the host sitting facing the door. Everybody else sits according to status around the host. The most honored (highest ranking) guest sits immediately to the right of the host, the second to his left. The second ranking host (who also picks up the tab) sits directly across from number one, with his back to the door. Everybody else fills in between in a ritualistic protocol order that is still beyond my complete comprehension. Everybody’s glass is filled with alcohol, the weaker drinkers sometimes with beer, the rest with “wine.” Chinese wine is not Western wine. It is closer to grain alcohol only with a vile taste. Every region vies to claim the title of having the best wine, which is touted in terms of proof, starting at 160 and going up from there.  In the US, we would each order our drink of choice, and when   it comes, we would each drink it at our own pace, occasionally joining in a group toast. Not in China. No mixes, no frou-frou drinks, everybody the same, the only difference is beer or straight grain. NOBODY drinks alone. Bad form. And NOBODY drinks until the number one host makes the first toast. Actually, it may be two or three toasts. In Shandong, the person giving the toast may specify how many toasts to finish the glass, one, two or three – only more likely than not, somebody will likely say “Gambei!” which is a semi-mandatory friendly challenge to “Bottoms up!” or as we might say “Chug!” Bad form to refuse, because it shows (a) maybe you can’t hold your liquor and/or (b) maybe you are not really friendly, because in China it is a great show of friendship, honor and inclusion to get roaring, stinking drunk together. In vino veritas. So you have maybe 24 people sitting around the table, all anxious to start drinking in earnest. The host’s toast is quickly followed by others’ toasts with the whole table drinking. Ahh, but that is not all. Each attendee wishes to show his respect and friendship to the honored guest by offering an individual toast, not involving the others. There are also individual toasts given among the various attendees, some required by protocol and rank, some because they are friends. But these may be 3 or maybe 4 per person. Nobody but the honored guest is personally toasted by all other 23 people at the banquet. And the honored guest is also expected to toast his host, both individually and to the group. And every time you drain your glass, a cute waitress promptly fills it with more of the vile liquid. All this on less than 8 hours of sleep in the past 42 while my body clock is still upside down. Beginning to get the picture?
And in the meantime, various strange and exotic foods appear one by one on the table. The banquet table always has a large lazy Susan so that the food offerings are constantly passing in front of you. People are also constantly placing samples on my plate, saying “Try this.” “What is it?” “I don’t know what you call it in English.” Or “What kind of fish is it?” “I don’t know, hmm, river fish.” Comforting. And especially delightful when the give you the “best part”, the head and the tail of the fish cooked whole, the parts Westerners generally consider the trash part of the fish. Hmm, hmmm good!
Much of it is truly delicious and the number and variety of dishes is incredible. (They have a protocol for that too, how many dishes you must offer based on the number of attendees. I wouldn’t doubt that there is also a multiplier for status of the guest, too). Plus those cute waitresses keep putting various cups of soup next to your plate. This is about the time when somebody scoops the eyeball and eye socket out of the sturgeon and plops it on your plate. “Best part.” Yechh.
The only night they “got” me at one of these banquets I was drinking with the Secretary of the Communist Party in Shandong Province, the highest ranking and most powerful person in the Province (who proudly told me he had attended the University of Missouri!). I am told I downed 69 Gambeis that evening. I don’t remember – why would I? I do know I had to go straight to bed and woke up the next morning feeling like shit. I also know that I took quite a few of them down with me  J  and earned an unassailable reputation throughput Shandong as a “Good drinker.” However, that is something like having a reputation as a gunslinger, there is always somebody who wants to test their mettle against you!
After dozens of these banquets, I have learned some defensive strategies, none of them fool proof. Most  common is to claim a medical condition that prevents your drinking, but the downside is that you cannot effectively engage in the ritual and have to be the sole sober person, and if you do this from the beginning, you never pass the initiation. Also good is to explain you have to limit your intake because you are either ill, or have an important business engagement that requires your sobriety. That works sometimes. I have been taught how to hold some in my mouth and drain it off into a face cloth after a toast, but sharp eyes can catch that and its sort of like being caught cheating while dealing at the poker table, bad form. What works best for me is to have an ally tell the girl filling my glass to cut the liquor with water; nobody can tell. I also have learned never to let somebody who toasts me drink less or something different than I do – a good offense makes a good defense! There is also a tradition that when the guest gives his toast near the end of the evening, he can include some words to the effect that his is the last one. Unfortunately, I have forgotten the “magic words.” That is not foolproof either, as the crafty drinkers will find many ways to get around “the last one,” but the rate usually does abate after that toast. When all else fails, you can humbly beg mercy and only have your glass filled half way – but only after you have already drunk an appropriately excessive amount or you are at risk of being deemed a pussy.
I can’t tell you a lot more about these banquets because they all kind of run together. I wonder why?
The next few days are filled with meetings at the plant and negotiations with a US equipment supplier. The main purpose of the trip is to finalize the purchase of a large piece of capital equipment, a glue spreader necessary for the Chinese to manufacture 40 foot long laminated sidewalls for the assembly of RVs. This equipment is only made in Europe and in the US, and there is only one manufacturer of this type of glue spreader in the US. The negotiations are protracted and  very, very difficult, partly because of the language barrier complicated by the facts that that the available translator is not very good with technical language and that the Chinese are unfamiliar with the process, but even more so because each side is mistrustful of the other. For their part, the Chinese are very concerned about being passed off used equipment that is not current state of the art technology – with good cause based on past history of dealings between Westerners and the Chinese. For the US supplier’s part, he is a small businessman unfamiliar with export sales, and deathly afraid of not getting paid by the Chinese - with good cause based on past history of dealings between Chinese and Westerners. So, for example, when the Chinese suggest they wish to pay by letter of credit rather than cash, because it will help with their bank financing, the US supplier’s knee jerk reaction is “No”, so I have to step in and say “Why not? Letters of credit have been used for hundreds of years in all kinds of international transactions, are perfectly safe when prepared properly and are the standard way of satisfying each party’s concerns, one of paying before the product is shipped, the other of shipping before they are paid.” Which leads to long discussions and finally an “I’ll consider it.” And the Chinese want a parts list with pictures because the English labels mean nothing to them, which of course the US supplier does not have but says he will create for them. The US supplier is very concerned about how he will fulfill his warranty obligation at this distance with these language barriers. Because of issues like these, although progress is made, the deal is not finalized during this trip.
In between negotiating sessions, I am dragged off to meetings with various government officials and bankers. I am my partner’s “bonafides,” an in the flesh token blonde and blue eyed genuine American businessman who gives their project credibility. At each meeting I parrot how terrific the RV opportunity is in China and what a good partner my Chinese hosts have been, telling them exactly what they want to hear. At each meeting, I get tossed serious questions that I have no qualifications to answer but in response to which I am expected to make some kind of impromptu speech, like “What do you think we should do to improve our traffic congestion?” -  or of the wall questions that seem entirely inappropriate, such has “How many lovers do you have?”
One day we travel several hours to another area of Shandong Province where they are intending to build an RV park When they say RV park in China, they are not referring to a farm field transformed into a KOA campground for 20 RVs. Some of these parks are 100 square miles or more, on the order of a state park in the US. This particular site is on a river where a dam was built in 1300 AD, taking about a decade and several tens of thousands of people. The dam created a huge lake for irrigation still used for irrigation and recreation, and divided the river into three channels, one of which created an entirely new river between two cities that is still used, and one of which only fills during high water in the rainy season to irrigate a dry region, and one of which is the original river channel. All done some 700 years ago! This is especially interesting to me because my father spent much of his life building dams for TVA, and then building huge concrete dams for hydro-electric power plants all the world, including Brazil, Turkey, Spain, Japan, Greece, and India, among other places. There is a big visitors’ center that explains the history of the dam and has samples of the original stone work to show how it was cut and fitted together, as well as dioramas of workers building the dam. At the entry, there is a statue of the engineer who designed and oversaw the project. Imagine that, a statute in tribute to the engineer, not the politicians! Of course, inside there is a wall paying  the obligatory homage to politicians featuring quotes from various persons, including Chairman Mao. That is pretty weird, a man I was raised to revile, who slaughtered millions of people and inflicted the Cultural Revolution on his country, whose anti-capitalist views have been pretty much repudiated but who is still very much a hero to the Chinese.
Make no mistake about it, for all of its recent economic changes, China is still much a communist country. The communist party is very much evident and in charge. Every large organization has its business leader and its party leader, and the party leader is the more powerful. It is not much of an exaggeration to say if the party approves it, anything is ok, but if the party disapproves it, nothing is ok.
It was a huge compliment that the Secretary of the local party himself rowed us across to the proposed RV campsite in an ancient style fishing boat, gave us the tour of the dam, and then joined us for lunch. Nonetheless, it is still disconcerting to share the company of  people who could in all probability make me disappear with no recourse…
Although they no longer confiscate foreign newspapers and magazines at the entry points, the press and the news in China is also tightly controlled, although it is increasingly more difficult to do with international visitors coming and going and especially with the Internet. While I was there, Bo Xilai, a very powerful party leader in the South, a member of the Politburo and a strong contender to be the next Chairman, was arrested and removed from office. His wife, Gu Kailai, the daughter of a People’s Liberation Army general, arranged the murder of Neil Heywood, Bo’s English financial advisor, because she thought he was complicit in Bo Xilai’s arrest. Bo Xilai has since been dismissed from the Politburo. This is a huge scandal with enormous implications for the future of China, and was all over the front page of the Wall St. Journal the day I arrived in Beijing, but my hosts knew nothing about it and even denied that it could be possible! During the same time and in the very province I was in, Shandong Province, Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese dissident against forced abortions as part of the Chinese family planning policy, escaped house arrest and fled to the US Embassy. He has since been exiled to the United States but his family is still being persecuted, at least one of them still under arrest in Beijing. Of course, I heard nothing of any of this until I returned to the US.
Breakfasts. I have concluded that the only places in the world where you can get a decent breakfast are the UK and North America. American breakfasts come in number one. A full Scottish breakfast is damn good, but they lack the variety of US breakfasts. As my daughter once famously said, “French breakfasts aren’t worth getting up for.” And Chinese breakfasts are worse than that, even when they try to imitate US breakfasts. Rice, rice porridge and cold fish. Steamed balls of dough with spinach filling. Yum. The “Western” offerings are uniformly sub-par even in better hotels. Coffee if they have it is a packet of Nescafe. Pastries are dry or stale and pretty much tasteless. Chefs have mastered how to fry an egg, but have you ever tried to eat an egg fried in olive oil with chop sticks? Getting a knife and fork is a major production. They do have imitation Rice Krispies, but if they have milk, and usually it’s by special request, milk is reconstituted, and yogurt is runny. Orange juice is too sweet orange drink. Third rate fresh fruit. Bacon is, well, strange.  I’m sure the Chinese say the same things about our ”imitation” Chinese food and the lack of vegetables in our diet.
Don’t get me wrong. I truly like almost all the Chinese people I have met. I find them to be extremely hospitable, and in their own way, very open and outgoing. And it’s refreshing to be with people who by and large like Americans!
After 5 or 6 days of meetings and banquets, on the last night in Shandong we go to a locals lamb barbecue restaurant. Some tables are scattered in the parking lot, but we go inside and upstairs to a private banquet room. On the way, we pass a toothless man putting small pieces of lamb onto skewers in the front room. The banquet room is not nearly as large or fancy as the ones we have frequented with the government officials, but it does have the ubiquitous round table with the lazy Susan and seating protocol is still roughly followed. In fact, this bequest room has a dusty tv in one corner, looks to be a refrigerator in another, and opens up onto a front balcony where the family laundry is hung to dry. But the lamb shish kebab? Fantastic! And it keeps coming and coming, washed down by pijiu (sp?), BEER! Many happy toasts among friends. Very different from the formal affairs. Best meal I had in China.
The next day, I get up early to catch the bullet train back to Beijing. Several hours later, we motor back across the city to navigate the organized chaos of a Chinese airport and begin the 24 hour trek back to Chicago. So now, dear children, you know why the Jacksonville-New Orleans leg was scrapped, have some idea what a week long business trip to China is like, and have learned two critical Chinese words: can you say gambei and pijiu? J
NOLA
April 25-Apr 29, 2012
No need to conceal my trip to New Orleans from my erstwhile employers. We parted company on April 20, just 3 weeks after I predicted they would let me go last November. Under my employment contract, my severance benefit was cut in half if they continued to employ me through March 26, 2012. I drafted a letter of resignation three times between November and January, but each time after sleeping on it decided it was prudent to continue to pretending to work while they pretended to give me something  significant to do so long as they continued to pay me. I thought my relationship with the beady eyed reptiles would end March 27, but it lasted an extra three weeks or so while we put the finishing touches on the bankruptcy of the old RV companies. So less than one week after I turn 65, I find myself unemployed for the first time since I turned 16. I have very mixed emotions about this. I am relieved to finally be rid of the toxic relationship with the private equity guys who took over Coachmen, whom I have come to totally distrust and despise. And while my severance is much less than I expected several years ago, I have been employed for a year and still have severance package, which gives me income for a while in order to figure out what the next adventure in my life will be. And I now have time to do other things, like go to my house in Vieques and on these extended motorcycle rides. All in all, it’s good thing, but it is still very strange to no longer have the responsibilities or status of running a large company, have an office and be eligible for Medicare… The last 12 months have been full of change, much of it bad: starting with the death of one of my oldest and best  friends, the (expected) loss of control of my company to private equity, the turnover of the housing business to another HIG-owned company,  the totally unexpected turnover of the bus business by my “allies” to my rivals involving the betrayal by a smarmy lickspittle son of a bitch whose job I personally had saved at least three separate times, being evicted from my brand new office wing that I had designed just as it was finished, the dismantling of the green furniture business just after we qualified as a supplier to Marriott and received an award from Architectural Products, the abandonment of the export RV and delivery van businesses just as we received orders that would have filled the plant, the descent into Alzheimer’s by a close friend, losing the start-up capital I invested in a start-up RV company that I helped get started, the dropping on the eve of trial of a case I have been involved with for over a decade against a law firm and partner whose malpractice and devotion to lucre killed some people in a fiery gruesome death, and now being unceremoniously dumped from the company that I saved from the Great Recession, all while dealing with personal issues with members of my immediate family who have been dealing with personal issues of their own – well, altogether it has been just a little too heavy of a burden to bear graciously. I hereby sincerely apologize to anybody (and everybody) to whom I have been short and testy the past few months, but I simply couldn’t help myself.
Do I sound bitter about some of this? If so it’s because I am, hellish bitter. It certainly hasn’t been all bad news, but at least from my present perspective, 2012 will not go down as banner year! But bitterness corrodes. We can do nothing about what is past. Time to push that bitterness way down deep inside and cocoon it in scar tissue. Time to embrace the future. Time to put on my big boy pants and move forward.
So now, great god almighty I’m free, free at last, and in the mood to party!
To minimize airfares to New Orleans on Jazzfest weekend, I had to buy my tickets well in advance. Of course, I planned to have my bike in Baton Rouge, so I flew there rather than New Orleans. By the time I realized I could not get my bike there on time, airline change fees and fare difference charges made flying to Jacksonville and driving over prohibitive (does anybody but me remember the good old days when you could just call up and change your reservation, usually no charge? Deregulation has certainly kept ticket prices low through competition, but it has degraded the air travel experience in every respect, to almost a misery). Flying to Baton Rouge now presented several challenges: 1) how to get from the airport to wherever I am staying? 2) how to get around Baton Rouge to visit my friends? 3) how to get to New Orleans without my bike? 4) how to get to Jacksonville to pick up my bike? Nothing that can’t be solved with money and a little help from my friends…
Getting a little help from old friends is one of the best things about this odyssey. Friends generally like to help friends, that is part of what being a friend is all about, and these short layovers give us (me and them) the opportunity to visit a little without me as the guest becoming a burden. We catch up on children and things, share some laughs and tears and generally just renew those old friendships. In Baton Rouge, I was visited with people I had not seen for decades. After the battering I have taken in the corporate wars, being with people who like you for who you are, nothing else, is a real treat. A treasure. But to protect the innocent, these friends shall remain anonymous…
Friend #1 aka Gunner had offered me his garage to store the Beemer during the planned layover. Now he insisted that I stay at his house and equally insisted that he would pick me up at the airport, get me around town, and find a way to get me to New Orleans Thursday afternoon to meet my other friends. This guy is a Marine, extremely proud of it, and generous as hell. He is also an auditor. Somehow auditor and Marine don’t seem to go together with “The few, the proud, the brave”, but I have known two Marines who are accountants, and they are both feisty bantams that you wouldn’t want to mess with. Gunner is married to a crazy Australian lady - crazy because she married and has stayed married to him despite his obvious devotion to the Corps and deployments to Desert Storm!
There was one problem. Gunner and his wife were into ballroom dancing, and had a lesson that evening. So off we went. Turns out a lady’s partner couldn’t make it that night and they needed another male body, so I danced, (re)learning the rhumba and the cha-cha with a very nice woman who was also an accomplished dancer. Then we were off to a Cajun dinner (my treat): jambalaya, crawfish pie, fried catfish and red beans with rice. Then back to their house where I crashed and burned. The next morning omelets and strong coffee, and he took the morning off. We visited his daughter in Spanish Town – one of those the last-time-I-saw-you-you-were-this-high things – before he dropped me off at the City Club to have lunch with my high school girl friend, the girl I took to the senior prom. (The City Club is one of the “high brow” private clubs in Baton Rouge where the food is superb, at the other end of the culinary scale from the Cajun dinner of the night before). She made contact with me a year or so ago after she Googled me. She had become a French professor at LSU and has been honored by the French government for her contributions to the French language. She actually worked at LSU when I lived in Baton Rouge in the 80’s, but I never knew it. She wanted to show me the Solitude Road in Pointe Coupee Parish, but no bike and no time! Next time! After a delightful lunch (her treat), Gunner met me on the front steps and drove me all the way to the New Orleans airport, where he dropped me so I could catch a cab to downtown and he could book it back to Baton Rouge for a meeting. THAT is a good friend!
NOLA – love dat town.
My friends were staying at a less expensive chain hotel outside the Quarter a block off Canal, but if I’m in NOLA I’m staying either in the Quarter or the Garden District, period. So I took my cab to the quieter East end of the Quarter to The Hotel Richelieu on Chartres Street. The Richelieu is a boutique hotel, with a small pool in the center, a small bar, very good and very reasonably priced breakfasts, and an extremely helpful and friendly staff. A good place to hang out for a few days, far removed from the rowdiness of Bourbon Street! It made for some very long walks to link up with my friend Dr. K, but n’importe! A walk through the Quarter? C’est tout bon!
The restaurant Dr. K wanted to go to for dinner that night was closed for a private party, so we went to a divey little oyster bar up the street where I feasted on a delicious dozen on the half shell buried in horseradish and cocktail sauce washed down by a local brew. Then we grabbed a cab to the Rock ‘n Bowl. Now I lived in Lousyanna for five years, and I have been to NOLA dozens of times, but it took Dr. K from Los Angeles to introduce me to Rock ‘n Bowl, a NOLA institution like no other. It is a must on anybody’s visit list. Rock ‘n Bowl is out in the burbs in what looks like a strip mall, but every cab driver knows where it is. There’s a cover and it gets crowded after the music starts, so get there early if you want a place to sit. Just like the name suggests, it is an incongruous combination of ten pin bowling and rock ‘n roll. There is a huge dance floor and bandstand up front where live bands play rock and roll, blues and Cajun zydeco, while in the back it’s a bowling alley. There a big oasis bar in between and a walk-up counter in the corner where they serve up all kinds of Cajun food.
At first it’s just Dr. K and me, sipping bourbon and  beer. We meet some new friends and protect each other’s seats so we can wander around the pace. After two or three Jacks, Dr. K’s other friends show up, two women our age from Detroit.  Introductions all around, we all catch up and share past adventures with Dr. K. One of the girls is a medical doctor (unlike Dr. K, who is sort of a doctor of all knowledge, especially pharmacology…) who rides her BMW motorcycle around the country! Gee, nothing to talk about there! We plan on making rides together! Eventually, the four of us find our way out to the dance floor. Thursday night is zydeco night, squeeze boxes, guitars and howling French lyrics, and the Rock ‘n Bowl is mobbed. Young women in short shorts, cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Old guys in snakeskin boots twirling their wives or girlfriends to the two step. A scattering of really good dancers going through their routines.  And us and others like us. Tourists from California, Indiana, Michigan, from Wisconsin and all over, in for Jazzfest, faking it and laughing all the while. Everybody drinking and dancing to great bands, one band following immediately after the other. Even the bar tenders are dancing to the beat as they get your drinks. Crazy place. A great time. And when it closes down early in the morning, no problem getting back to wherever – all the cabs know when Rock ‘n Bowl shuts down and they are constantly pulling into the parking lot to take tired party-ers home.
Next day, its time for Jazzfest. First, one of my favorite things to do, bar none: a walk through the Quarter in the quiet of the early morning, streets clean and wet after being hosed down and the debris from the previous night’s revelry all cleaned up. I head for my favorite place for beginets and cafe au lait, but find it’s gone out of business! Quelle bummere! Too much competition from the CafĂ© du Monde across the street? Determined, I go there and stand in line for a table. After fortification with beignets and deep black chicory coffee, I continue my wander through Jackson Square and down the Cabildo. I stop to buy a hat to ward off the sun and to stock up on sunscreen, make my rendez-vous and we catch the Canal Street trolley out to near the fairgrounds, and walk the rest of the way. No directions needed - just follow the crowd. We buy ice cold bottles of water cheap from street vendors on the outside, hide them in purses and backpacks before we go through the gates, and then its where do you want to go, who do you want to hear? With something like a dozen or more stages and sets lasting an hour and a half, the music menu is endless. You just gotta choose what you like! At the end of two days, I buy half a dozen CDs from great artists I loved but never heard of before. Myschia Lake and the Little Big Horns were marvelous, but you had to be there to see the pair of dancers that they had on stage for every song. Great new tunes like “I want to burn with you” and “Don’t tell them anything” that haven’t been released yet. Pure country from Kim Carson and the Enablers, honky tonk from Gal Holladay. Jazz tents (loved Eric Lindell), a gospel tents where The City of Love sang fifteen straight minutes with the only lyrics being God’s Got A Blessing With Your Name On It, everybody standing and clapping, singing along and dancing in the aisles, fantastic! At the zydeco tent with bands from around Lafayette, I learn there is a Cajun jam every Saturday morning in Eunice, Louisiana, near Lafayette, and immediately mark that as a must do destination on my swing through the Bayou State. In between the music, row after row of booths selling really good Cajun food. Fried oyster po’boys. Jamabalya. Boiled crawfish. Cold beer. Berry cobbler. You name it, they have it.
At the end of the day, the headliners like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Don’t Back Down, Lover’s Touch), and the first reunion of the Beach Boys, hits too long and too well known to list, they played them all! Huge screens make sure everybody can see it all and up close. The crowd is a mix of aging ex-hippies and rockers, barefoot young wanna-bes  in peasant dresses and halter tops, goggle-eyed 5 year olds on parents’ shoulders, and lots of tweener fans of classic rock and roll in their lounge chairs. There is no sitting when the music starts!  The unmistakable aroma of weed drifts through the crowd, but unlike the 60’s and 70’s nobody is freely passing their joints around to strangers. L Oh, well!
Wow. Great music, great food, great music, great weather! Gotta do it again next year – wanna come?
That night, Dr. K introduces me to another NOLA institution, a local family restaurant called Mandina’s on Canal, been there forever. Simple Louisiana food, reasonably priced, worth a visit. However, unlike Rock ‘n Bowl, cabs are infrequent around Mandina’s late at night. Either drive there yourself, take the trolley (stops in front) or be prepared for a long wait! Walking back down Bourbon on my way back to the Richelieu, I am treated to see strippers taking smoke breaks outside the gentlemen’s clubs. Garish neon signs light the street, bands blare from open air bars every block, drunk college kids click quarts of Miller Lite, and the street smells of stale beer soaked deep into the cobbles for decades. Bourbon Street never changes, some nights are just more crowded and rowdy than others.
After Jazzfest the next day, most restaurants are jammed and require reservations. Dr. K wants to go to some joint up on Canal, but I am too tired to hike over there and back, so I insist on a place in the Quarter. The Royal House Oyster Bar on (what else) Royal Street is recommended by the Richelieu and doesn’t require reservations. I stroll over there past these silver or gold painted living statues that gather crowds every other street, and put my name on the waiting list. I grab a double bourbon from the bar (after a quick trip to the bathroom to make a change when the bartender is kind enough to ask me if I know my shirt is inside out, it’s been that kind of day!) and take it out on the street to listen a quartet that has set up on the corner under a streetlight. A girl sings sweetly to a small crowd over soft background music featuring a clarinet, a trombone and some sort of stringed instrument. The concert is interrupted by a New Orleans wedding celebration parade marching down the street, led by a loud brass band and the bride in all her wedding dress finery, followed by the entire wedding party dressed to the nines clapping and singing, dancing through all the streets of the Quarter. The bride and the wedding party are Asians, Korean, I think. The quartet resumes, and pretty soon a guy in a Porsche Carrera with the top down and a luscious blonde in the passenger seat pulls up and parks in the middle of the street to listen. Classic NOLA. Finally Dr. K and the girls arrive and shortly after we are called inside the Oyster Bar and go upstairs to eat. Believe me, the Royal House serves a lot more than oysters and it’s all delicious and incredibly reasonably priced. Don’t forget the bread pudding for dessert – save room and share, it’s humongous. Our meal is interrupted by another wedding march, which I watch from the balcony.
The next morning, I drag my sorry ass out of bed at the crack of dawn to catch a flight to Jacksonville, to retrieve the Beemer and begin the next leg to Atlanta. List of things have to do next time through: Eunice; Check Point Charlie’s dive bar in NOLA for late night music; Mother’s on Poydras for breakfast; Stella’s at the Hotel Provincial for dinner; Solitude Road in Pointe Coupee; more beignets!
Sign of the week: on the back of Gunner’s pickup truck, “Except for ending slavery, fascism, nazism and communism, war never solved anything.” Probably wouldn’t go over well in Hollywood. Too many peaceniks and communists there.
NOTE: I accidentally deleted all my photographs of New Orleans and Leg 5. L!! As and if I can recover them, I will add some the blog.
Leg 5
Sunday, April 29 and Monday, April 30
I arrive in Jacksonville late morning. On the way over, I have time to catch up on the ways of the world. Contest for the most exasperating and ridiculous:
·         Government statistics on inflation and unemployment. I have learned over the years that incentives work much better than we realize. There is great incentive to incumbents to keep both inflation and unemployment figures low. Low inflation means smaller increases in Social Security, less pressure on the budget, and happier voters. Low unemployment means happier voters. Thus, inflation and unemployment are low. Here’s how. First, inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics uses the principle of substitutability: if the costs of two types of chicken breast diverge, the BLS assumes that we all buy the cheaper chicken breast. Next, the principle of quality adjustment. For example, as ever more powerful computers become available for the same price, this is treated as deflation, regardless of the fact that consumers actually tend to buy the more expensive new more powerful computers because the older models are rendered obsolete. Next, “owner’s equivalent rent”, whereby the rising costs of owning a home are instead supplanted by the cost of renting the home. Oh, yes, and they ignore price fluctuations in gasoline, because that is excluded from the inflation calculation formula. Little “adjustments” like these reduce the reported level of inflation by about 7%. That’s why the government can proudly claim inflation is at record lows while the “real rate” is over 10% as we pay more and more for groceries, gasoline and home ownership. Second, unemployment. Similarly, the BLI does not “count” those who have given up and stopped looking for work, or those who have taken jobs way below their qualifications just in order to have some job (the “underemployed”), but it does count those who take temporary summer and holiday jobs. Thus, they can proudly report unemployment at around 8 or 9% when the “real” unemployment rate is over 20%. Who do you believe, government statisticians or your own observation?
·         The Gulen Movement operates the largest network of charter schools in the United States. They opened their first charter school in the US in 1999, and now have 135 schools with over 45,000 students in 26 states, all financed by US taxpayers. So what? The Gulen Movement originates in Turkey, and the school board members and principals are usually Turkish men, with many teachers on H1-B visas. During school and after school they study the Koran. On Fridays, the Muslim holy day, students are taken in small groups to the bathrooms for ritual washing, and then attend Muslim prayers. The school in Inver Grove, Minnesota, shares a building with a mosque and the headquarters of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose stated mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.” Not alarmism, fact. At the same time, media is replete with stories of schools forbidding Christian prayer before sporting events or graduation ceremonies, fights against school vouchers being sued at Christian parochial schools, and removal of the Ten Commandments from public places. Forget whether you are Christian or atheist. Ask yourself: what’s going on here?
·         Today, a record 14% of the population receive food stamps, up from an average of less than 8% from 1970-2000. 4 in 10 children are born to unwed mothers, over 72% of the black babies. The overall percentage has risen from 10% in 1970 to over 40% today. 49.5% of the US population paid no federal income taxes in 2009. Today, the country spends more on welfare than it does on national defense. Where are we headed as a country?
·         US business is steadily becoming criminalized. Virtually all new federal statutes now provide for criminal sanctions in case of violation. In February, an independent insurance agent was sentenced to 90 days in jail for selling an annuity to an 89 year old woman whom prosecutors claims had shown signs of dementia.   Hey, selling an annuity top an 89 year old is suspect on its face, but jail? That used to be for crimes like burglary. You don’t get 90 days for assault and battery today. Selling annuities to elderly persons is legitimate estate planning. Are agents now going to have to diagnose dementia before selling to an older person? Sarbanes-Oxley and the ‘responsible corporate officer doctrine” makes executives of public companies potentially criminally liable for actions of employees multiple levels below them whom they may have never met even if they don’t actually know what they have done. Not to be outdone, Chevron had a deep water oil spill last year in Brazil, and its officials are now barred from leaving the country pending criminal prosecution for “environmental crimes.” Moral: get a job in government. Today the pay is higher, the benefits are better, and there is far less risk. Is that the kind of country you want?
What, me worry? It’s no longer my concern. I am out of the public company hell hole and the corporate rat race. This Sunday, I also get my first lesson about no longer being a CEO or even a GC controlling a book of company business: nobody rushes to pick me up at the airport, so I have to catch a cab out to Ponte Vedra Beach. $100 cab ride. Lesson number 2: no expense account to charge it off to. L And when I get there, I find that the battery in my Beemer has gone dead. After hours of trying to charge it, I give up and go to Plan B: finding a BMW motorcycle shop to replace it. Found a shop. Next problem: they are not open on Sundays or Mondays. (As a result of this I have checked with several BMW shops, and Monday closing is quite common among them. Note to self: don’t break down on Mondays.) So Monday, I search for another shop that might have a jell battery that fits. None of your standard auto parts or battery stores have such a thing. Finally I find an old-style bike shop out by the Mayport Naval Station that works on metric bikes, and what do you know, they are open on Mondays! And yes, they have a battery that will work as a replacement.   So I impose on my host to drive me out that way, which happens to be in the same direction as the dive shop where he wants to get his scuba tanks charged up for a trip they are taking to the Bahamas later in the week, so not too much of an imposition. The shop really is old style, where the owner works on the bikes himself and his wife (girlfriend?) runs the register. No fancy show room. Parts hanging everywhere, and dozens of bikes are parked out front in the dirt lot. Great people. Owner used to work at a BMW dealership and is very familiar with the bike. Tells me this battery has been a piece of shit since day one and he has stopped replacing it with the OEM version, instead has another which has proved to be much more long lasting and reliable. Expensive but worth it. Besides, what choice do I have but to sit around for another day and make another trip to a BMW dealership? And I like him, and feel good about helping a small independent business guy. Wish he was closer so that he could service my bikes!
Back to the house where I have to install the battery. Hey, of all parts on a motorcycle, the battery has to be one of the most often switched out, especially in colder climates where you often remove it each year during the winter months. In my Yamaha, the battery is right out there, very easy to get to, maximum 10 minute job to swap a battery. Not so the German engineered BMW. The battery is wedged in a tight cavity you can only access from the top. Part of the motorcycle frame extends above one of the bolts on the bracket that holds the battery in place, so that you can’t get your screw driver vertically on top of the bolt, and you can’t get it to bite right and have to try to screw it at sort of an angle. And the bolts go into holes at the bottom of the battery platform that you can’t see, so you have to fumble around trying to get them in the holes. And the bolts are have a sleeve that pads them from rubbing against the battery. These pads tend to slip down the bolt and even off as you try to get the bolts in the holes. And of course there is hardly any room in the battery cavity to hold the nut on the tiny bolt that goes through the battery pole to connect the wiring while you use your other hand to hold the wrench, and with both hands and the wrench wedged in the battery cavity you can’t really see what you are trying to do, complicated by trying to avoid being the electrical connection between the poles after the first wire is connected (read, shock!) Herr Schnitzel, I am zupposed to do dis vearing de rubber gloves?  Naturally  the nut falls off – and ends trapped somewhere inside the frame where I can’t find it. Luckily, I saved the nuts from the old battery and they fit. In the meantime, there is no room for a man’s fat fingers in there but plenty of sharp metal parts to scrape them on. Despite all this, I do get the first pole attached, but as I am connecting the second pole, sparks start flying. What’s going on? I take a closer look, and the poles on the replacement battery are exactly 180 degrees opposite in location from the poles on the original. I just placed the new battery with the poles on the same side as they were on the one I removed, and now the positive pole is where the negative pole should be and vice versa. Shit, I hope I didn’t fry the battery or blow a fuse! I have to take out the new battery, turn it around, and re-install it. But it works! After an hour or more of colorful language and bloody knuckles, the engine starts right up. But the net result is that I have lost a day on the road and have to spend another night in a hotel in Jacksonville  (with no expense account to write it off)!
Hey, get over it, dude! An expensive day of motorcycle maintenance on the road is better than a good day in the office! J
Tuesday, May 1
May Day! Finally on the road again, because of the lost day I decide to skip the side trip to Savannah – been there many times already anyway – and head straight toward Hotlanta. At my friend’s suggestion, I take the A1A North through Atlantic Beach to the Mayport Naval Station and catch the ferry across the St. John’s River. Then along the palm tree and live oak shaded twisty road next to the beaches of Little Talbot Island State Park and the wetlands of Timucuan Ecological Preserve, across the Nassau bridge to Amelia Island. Man, this is such a pretty drive and a beautiful area, I really wanted to kick back and lie on the beach. While I was pulled over  on the side of the road looking at the map and contemplating doing just that, a friendly fellow pulled over in his pickup truck just to make sure I wasn’t  lost or in trouble. Nice. I continued on up toward Fernandina Beach, where I cut West to pick up Highway 17 heading into Georgia and points North. Driving across the flats North of the St Mary’s River is also very pretty, spreading in all directions and cut by curling channels and edged with pine forest in the far distance. I turn off  at Brunswick to head over toward Jekyll Island.
Jekyll Island is a very, very cool place. Pre-World War II, the private hunting lodge and winter vacation club for the ultra-rich industrialist families that at one time in the aggregate controlled something like 80% of the country’s entire wealth. Their “cottages” are all multi-storied and some have walled and brick paved courtyards. They would be considered mansions anywhere but Newport, Rhode Island. Andrew Carnegie applied for membership to the Jekyll Island Club, but was snubbed, considered too nouveau, so he just bought another island of his own down the coast. The story goes that early during World War II there was a plot by the Nazis to land a force of commandos by U-Boat to capture and kidnap the families on Jekyll Island, and gain control of our nation’s wealth and foreign policy by holding them hostage. Supposedly FDR himself called the residents and asked them to abandon the island because he could not guarantee their safety against this plot. Within 24 hours, the place emptied out, the families leaving belongings and silver settings behind them in their haste to evacuate. After the war, it became fashionable for these families to instead go to Europe, where they could pick up estates and properties very cheaply, and Jekyll Island fell out of fashion and into disrepair. Eventually the State of Georgia took over the property, and now you can play golf, swim or walk and bicycle in protected woodlands, staying in an elegant hotel that was originally the hunting lodge or in the “cottages”  where once only the “quality” like the Astors and the Vanderbilts were allowed to tread. Very cool place.
And speaking of very cool and stupid and extravagant expense, there is the marvelous and beautiful suspension bridge to almost nowhere from almost nowhere rising high above the marshland over the Brunswick River, between Jekyll Island and the City of Brunswick. My camera could not do it justice. It is a real work of art and a monument to excessive government spending. But it’s there, so you may as well enjoy it!
Driving into Brunswick, the “Gateway to the Golden Isles” you get a real feel of has-been. Old mills and abandoned buildings everywhere. But I had a wonderful meal with some very friendly people at Salvador’s Deli before heading out on State Highway 27. Highway 27 proves that Brunswick is somewhere, after all, because there ain’t nothin’ else for miles up that highway but piney woods, except for a dusty little manufacturing town of about 10,000 souls named Jesup and even that you would miss in two blinks. Straight and flat. Through Gardi and Odum and Graham and Hazelhurst, plenty of time for contemplation. There is no need for any route sign because crossroads are few and far between and it’s clear none of them are going anywhere near civilization. As I was coming into one of the bigger towns, I think to was Hazelhurst, a big otter was trying to cross the road with two kits. She got about half way across, decided the traffic wasn’t looking so good and nipped the little ones right back into the brush where they all came from. The mother otter had to be almost 4 feet long from the tip of her tail to the tip of her nose. I’ve never seem one that big before.  In fact, I was so surprised by seeing it and its size that I researched the Internet on otters living in Georgia. Sure enough, the river otter thrives throughout Georgia and can reach up to five feet long. The male can occupy up to 50 miles of a stream, and is no help in raising the kits, whereas the female, 25% smaller on average, rarely occupies more than 7 miles of a stream and does all the work. Clearly, otters and humans share some genes!
Just past that crossing incident were a series of lumber mills. Trucks loaded with logs coming in. At one end of each complex huge piles of logs, and at the other end huge stacks of two-bys and plywood. Must be very satisfying to see that raw material turned into finished product right before your eyes, and comforting to the community to have the stability of those jobs growing literally right out of the pine forests that cover the area. I stopped to take a break from the heat and get a drink under a big live oak by the side of the road, across from a chicken shack. The smell of that fried chicken wafting across the road made salivate. I was sitting on my bike studying the map when a young black kid walking by stopped to start up a conversation. Pretty cool,  America, an old white guy and a young black guy just chatting in the shade about motorcycles.  Everywhere, people seem curious to talk to itinerant bikers, what kind of bike you’re riding, where you come from and where you’re going.
More and more often I drove through stretches of road saturated with the smell of honeysuckle. After a while it seemed the whole state was perfumed with honeysuckle. Delicious. I stayed on US 23 all the way to Macon, where late on a hot afternoon I stopped at the Ocmulgee National Monument. Too many people don’t know what this is. It’s the American pyramids, one of several archaeological sites for an ancient American Indian culture often referred to as the mound builders. Ancestors of the Creeks, Ocmulgee was an advanced civilization that thrived for a 1000 years before the English arrived in North America, but which pretty much died out somewhere around the time of DeSoto. Ocmulgee was a center of this civilization once populated by thousands of Indians, and features several of their pyramid-like mounds. You can walk into one reconstructed meeting room, and see the dais where the throne sat on a sculpted figure of an eagle. The entrance was placed precisely so that the sun sends a shaft of light down the entrance corridor to shine on the dais only twice a year, on the equinox when the sun crosses the equator. The similarities between the architecture and animal images among the Mayans, Aztecs and Egyptians is striking, and eerie. You can climb another, larger pyramid, and see for miles, including the modern-day skyline of Macon just a short distance to the West. I also learned that this was the place where Confederate armies defeated Sherman’s army twice in its efforts to capture Macon during his infamous March to the Sea. Macon remained in Confederate hands throughout the Civil War.
Too tired to ride further that day, I opted for a Courtyard by Marriott so I could lounge by the pool and read while imbibing a big glass of iced peach flavored vodka! Free room on points, comfortable bed, AC and TV covering the Occupy protests against the international monetary fund summit and for May Day, May 1st, outside the US the international day for labor parades. They had pictures of Occupiers carrying signs and chanting “Down with Capitalism!” and particularly catchy, “Capitalism isn’t in the Constitution.” According to one demonstrator they interviewed, their strategy was to damage capitalist system by clogging thoroughfare chokepoints so that employees couldn’t get to work. I wonder if they asked any of the workers how they felt about a day without pay? Fox interviewed some professor from Columbia University who claimed to know many of the New York protestors, and described them as “ just playful”, not at all dangerous. He also claimed there were more than 10,000 of them in the streets – although the pictures looked more like 1,000 at most. This was followed by a report from Cleveland that two Occupiers were arrested while trying to blow up a bridge across the Cuyahoga River as part of the same strategy. Playful. Nothing much seemed to have changed in the past few months!
Sign of the day; exiting Ocmulgee, “All things are connected.”
Amen.
Wednesday, May 2
This day was planned for sightseeing. You know what they say about God and plans. I think I am going to quit making plans and just see what happens. Whatever will happen will happen anyway, right?
I got up early and headed  North on US 23, headed for what was marked as a scenic highway to Jarrell Plantation, imagining Tara sitting on a high hill overlooking  pastoral field. I was on the lookout for a local greasy spoon to grab some coffee, grits and eggs for breakfast. Pretty soon after I passed up several chain restaurants I figured out that I wasn’t going to get breakfast any time soon!  Ma and Pa greasy spoons seem to have become an endangered species, likely driven out of business by “free” breakfast at the likes of the Hampton Inns and by chains like Bob Evans. Oh well, the highway was very pretty and riding in the cool of the early morning always seems to be the most fun. The roads North of Macon are no longer straight and flat, curving and twisting up and down Georgia hills so you really have to pay attention. I stopped to take a picture of some mailboxes (!) standing in mute testimony of the need for our Post Office, Rural Free Delivery. No way that private enterprise would want to service these remote locations with minimal mail traffic, couldn’t do it efficiently at a profit. I turned off US 23 on highway 18 into the Piedmont National Forest, and came to a spectacular river crossing. I stopped for a while to watch a fly fisherman quietly work his craft in the middle of the stream. There were some telephone linemen working at one end of the bridge, but even they didn’t  know of any place in the area to get breakfast. So I soldiered on, turning North on an unnumbered forest road toward Jarrell Plantation. Surely they would have a cafeteria or something for tourists where at least I could get a cup of coffee. 
I arrived at Jarrell about 10 minutes before the gates were scheduled to open. However, it was not what I expected at all. Tara it was not. Jarrell was a backwoods timber plantation, a lumber and logging operation, and from the looks of it, a hardscrabble one at that. I sat by the gate for a few minutes reading about the history of the place. The mill started in 1840, only 14 years after the “removal” of the Creeks. Doesn’t take long for settlers to fill a void! After a while, a car drove past me into the parking lot. A dumpy old hag in a park ranger uniform got out of the car and headed toward the log cabin that looked to serve as a welcome reception area, but she paid me no mind. I called out to her to ask when the plantation opened. She stopped briefly and looked at me like I was pond scum and said, “We’re not open today. We’re only open Thursday through Saturday,” and continued on inside. Hmm, welcome to Georgia State Parks. Well, Ms. Grumpy State Employee,  what do you do in that log cabin all day on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday at a non-operating  lumber operation that does not allow visitors?
There was nothing to do but continue on the great breakfast quest, so I turned North on the unmarked forest road, figuring it had to lead somewhere, right? The road stayed very pretty but became increasingly less maintained and eventually became a washboard from the wear and tear of logging trucks. I shared it with nothing but a couple of wild turkeys. And a woodpecker. A big red and white one, maybe a pileated woodpecker like Woody Woodpecker? I should know because we got up real close and personaI when we almost collided, but I was too startled. He came flying out of the woods right toward me at head level, then averted a crash at the last moment with a sharp right turn, ending up flying right next to me at eye level for a few seconds. If I had a mind to (and could have let go of the handlebars!) I could have reached out and touched him. Heck, I saw his eyeballs! I don’t know which of us was more freaked out, I kept trying to look the curving road and at this bird flying next to my temple all at the same time. Then suddenly he took another sharp right and disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. Things like that just don’t happen to you when you’re in a car!
I decided to turn back West to Highway 87 at the first intersection. This time re-crossing the same river upstream I came upon a very pleasant surprise, a little hamlet named Julietta. There was a dam, a railroad stop and an old restaurant/saloon, and several signs in front of old timey buildings and shops that proclaimed welcome to bikers. Looked like a really fun place to spend a Sunday afternoon. Only problem, it was still Wednesday, and nothing was open! The only sign of life was a fellow riding his tractor down the street, leading a pair of mules. Incongruous.
So I continued North on US 23 and saw no place to eat breakfast for another 20 miles, until I got to Jackson. By then I was famished, craving biscuits and eggs and – God works in mysterious ways, SUCCESS! I pulled in to Big Jim’s Wing Shack, sort of an all-purpose tavern that served breakfast, wings, beer, music and dinner. I took one look at the menu and had to order the Hillbilly Breakfast. This is such a monument to breakfast I took a picture of it. Eggs, hashbrowns, bacon and sausage, all drowned in white gravy and cheddar cheese. Incontrovertible proof that only in America do they really know how to fix breakfast! (No, Mom, I didn’t eat it all…)
So stoked on caffeine, belly happily full, I skirted South of the City of Atlanta headed for my next tourist stop where I intended to spend the entire afternoon, the Civil War battlefield of Pickett’s Mill where my ancestor fighting with the Georgia cavalry was captured by the Yankees and sent North as a prisoner of war. As I was leaving Jackson on Highway 16 to Griffin, a very exuberant biker coming the other direction wearing a skull mask began swerving in his lane, standing on his foot pegs and waving at me just to say hello! He was having a good day! It’s the kind of thing you see when you get off the Interstates to where life is happening.
At Griffin, I turned North on 92 and followed it all the way to Dallas, listening to Emmy Lou Harris, Brad Paisley and Miranda Lambert on The Bear 92.5 fm – great station! The roads became more and more curvy, and every mile closer to Atlanta there seemed to be more people, everything seemed incrementally more tended, more prosperous, and yet somehow more and more the same. It struck me when I passed yet another shopping center and big sign advertising a new, planned, fully zoned and gated housing development – precisely the attributes that would cause me to live someplace else – that only in America can you pass the same store 20 times in 20 different locations on the same day! Very pretty, very ordered and very much the same.
Coming into Fairburn, there is a graded railroad crossing, nothing unusual in that, and no special warning signs or anything. But it looked a little more peaked than normal, so I slowed from about 55 to maybe 40 as I approached it. Holy smokes, you want a thrill?  It went up and down at the same grade on both sides, steep! Try playing Evel  Knievel launched on an 800 pound touring bike at 40 mph. I was completely airborne, landed square with a big ka-thump, and kept on motoring. What else was there to do? My heart was beating just a little faster, though…
I took a short side trip to downtown Dallas, Georgia. This was the town where my family on my Mother’s side lived when the Civil War started. They moved West right after the war was lost. I walked up and down the main street, and around the courthouse square, thinking that 150 years ago my ancestors most certainly walked these same streets. I stopped at a few roadside historical markers commemorating where the boys in blue and gray clashed on ridges surrounding Dallas as Sherman kept flanking Johnston on his inexorable push to Atlanta. The Union Army outnumbered the Confederates almost 3 to 1, and Johnston kept taking strong defensive positions in front of the Northerners, trying to bring them to battle where the hilly terrain would offset his disadvantage in numbers and munitions. Sherman only tried a few all out assaults, which were bloodbaths. Instead he kept stretching out Johnston’s lines as he tried to slip around the Confederate flanks. I set out to find Pickett’s Mill.
Which turned out to be very difficult! I could only locate it in general terms on the road map, so I stopped at a filling station to ask how to get there. A woman behind the counter and an old guy who was a customer got into an argument about where Pickett’s Mill was and how to get there. Finally they decided that he was trying to send me to the subdivision of that name while she was sending me to the battlefield, and then  they discussed where the main entrance was because the one up the road was closed a lot for some reason. He relented, and I followed her direction to go West, turn here and turn there etc., which didn’t seem right to me, but what did I know, I didn’t live there and I was the one asking for directions. Pretty soon, I found myself backtracking where I had come from and heading toward Atlanta. I checked the directions just to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake, so I decided to check at another convenience store. They didn’t know either, but a UPS guy happened to stop in and while he wasn’t sure, there was a subdivision with the same name North of the filling station where I first stopped (!). So I went past the same filling station heading in exactly the opposite direction from where I had originally been sent, and sure enough up the road there was that subdivision, so I turned in. Nope, nothing but twisty streets and lots of nice houses, actually just what you would expect in a subdivision. So I turned around and drove back out. Just as I was leaving, I espied a small brown and white park sign that said Pickett’s Mill! This led me to a twisty country road that wrapped around the subdivision. The whole area was a mass of heavily wooded steep ravines. I followed the signs for a few more miles, and sure enough, right in the middle of several subdivisions  was an unobtrusive entrance to the Pickett’s Mill National Military Park, lined by a split rail fence – leading right up to a closed gate. You guessed it, the park is only open Thursday through Sunday, and this was Wednesday! So I sat in the shade of the bulletin board and read a little bit about the battle. The Yankees became trapped in one of these dead-end ravines with Confederates lining the top. The fighting only lasted about 5 hours, but it was so intense that survivors nicknamed it the Hell Hole. Of the 25,000 men who fought over this gully, almost 10% were casualties, the highest percentage in Sherman’s Atlanta campaign. More than 3 Union soldiers fell for every Confederate. Today people who live within 2 or 3 miles can’t tell you where it is or what happened there. The Battle of Pickett’s Mill was a resounding victory for the South, but it had no lasting effect. It only delayed Sherman’s advance on Atlanta by three days. Somehow my ancestor got captured there, maybe ten miles from his house, to be shipped hundreds of miles North to a prison camp. Maybe I’ll get to actually see the place another time.
From there it was a short drive in gathering rush hour traffic to my sister’s house in Marietta. She and her family have moved back to where our family once fled. Marietta is a beautiful town on the Northwest side of Atlanta that weaves in and out of several of these battlefields, and her house was the perfect place to store the bike until the next leg.
Sign of the Day: Open to the Public Only Thursday through Saturday.
If you would like to read a really good book about a crazy motorcycle trip, a true story about a trip that even in my wildest imaginings I wouldn’t dream of attempting, pick up MotoRaid by Keith Thye. It’s out of print but you can find it if you look. It’s the story of two twenty-somethings who drive their motorcycles from Portland Oregon to Pucon in Southern Chile in 1963, spending some time in jail in Peru along the way. Amazing story.
And while recommending reading for your library, try The Hiding Place by Corrie TenBoom. If you are not afraid of her religion, it’s a disturbing (and inspiring) story of living under the Nazi occupation of Holland, and how she came to be part of the underground helping Jews escape, found God where she had every right to see only Hell, and survived the death camps. Recommended to me by a friend in Jacksonville, thank him very much!

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