Voodoo Recap: The drive

So hopefully you've read our previous posts about your trip to New Orleans and Voodoo Fest 2007. Hoosier's pre-trip outlook can be read here and pictures from the trip also up. So now, months later, it's time for my full recap and a few thoughts.

The way I see it the trip can be split into three chapters: The drive, the festival, and the city. Im going to do a post for each.

The drive was a long one, riddled with stupidity and stuttering from the start, which I take full responsibility for. We left my place heading the wrong direction, literally. I had to show Roc the bridge over the Savannah river. Besides being the source of a few good stories, it has traditionally marked the beginning or end of many a long drive. Also, on a nice foggy morning, I love driving up the bridge, as it rises into the nothingness, its the best way to begin a trip, but more on that later. After seeing the bridge, I put us back on course heading south, but not for long.

Only an hour or so later I was taking us on another detour, this time to see a friend in Brunswick. Alex, is one those people whose charm and childlike humility can only be found south of the Mason Dixon, and despite his bushy red beard and extensive tattoo collection, you instantly feel at ease and free to speak as if you've known each-other for several years. Add a few bowls,and you will end up babbling back and forth. I hadn't seen him much since he moved south of Savannah, so why not stop along the way?

So it was about 9, 10 at night now and Alex was busy convincing us how insane we were for planning on driving all the way to New Orleans that night, and I was still locked in a state of denial, saying "No. It won't be to bad. We'll pull over and sleep for a few hours on the side of the road and we'll be fine." Either way, it was time to get back on the road. And after popping our Whataburger cherries, and seeing proof that they like things bigger in Texas, we were back on 95 south. I would now like to say that there was no really good way to do this trip that would accommodate our schoolwork, wallets, and schedule. We had to be in New Orleans by Friday afternoonish and is at-least a 10+ hour drive from Savannah. Rather then waking at the earliest hours of the night and driving direct, I decided to take a more leisurely pace

Soon after, it was time to head west, and that means the Bible Beltway, I-10. For many young, liberal northerners, this would be the time to shit on the local Christians responsible for the billboards reminding us that their is only one white male God, whose politics seem to fall inline with American fascists like Curt Weldon. But these signs really don't bother me, because as fucked as they are, and as evil as the frauds are who promote and profit from spewing this bile, at-least their is a sort of honesty in them. Which is more then you can say for most, if not all, conglomerates who use their sock piles of reserve cash to create giant eye-sores of lies, false-promises, and general phonyism. This why I cant wait to drive across Montana and North Dakota, because I have this idea in my head of an open highway drive, where you can see the horizon in any direction, and no billboards for a hundred miles. Now that I have that out of my system, we'll get back to the trip.

Next stop was Tallahassee, to see another lost friend. Like Alex, Rush has those extra hospitality and easy going genes that don't seem to like cold temperatures. So, we chatted about this, that, and the third over a few beers, and not very slowly or subtly, sleep crept upon all of us. I think we got to his place around 1:45 or 2, and we planned on sleeping until 4. We were still about 6 hours from New Orleans, and about 8 into the trip. After we awoke and thanked our generous host, we were off, again. 6 AM stop at Waffle House (A Waffle House along a major highway, has to be one of the safest places ever. At the right times, its a though looking crowd in there. You'd have to be batshitcrazy to start trouble in a Waffle house.). Two hour nap at the road stop before the Louisiana boarder. Short controlled burst, think of the Halo 3 Battle rifle. Shot people in the head, take cover. Drive a few hundred miles, take a nap.

The coolest part of the drive is certainly driving along the causeways of Alabama/Mississippi/Louisiana. As I said before, theirs something bizarrely powerful about driving on a near transparent structure in the air over water; ... simply its like flying. At least it is to me. And with a low thick fog, you plunge into the clouds and you find yourself in a unfamiliar context. The last miles into New Orleans couldn't be more unnerving , and upsetting. Communities one after another in ruin, deserted, empty. But that is were I will pick up in the next part of this Voodoo 07 Recap.
Next, my time in New Orleans.

My NOLA Photos

Here is a slideshow of the photos I took during our trip to Voodoo Fest '07. Basically all the photos (unedited) so there are some crapy ones. I might end up going back and deleting some, as we need to free up disk space on our Picasa account. There is a really awesome feature on Picasa that lets you look at map of were you photos were taken. It requires a bit of extra time to add locations to your photos but for us it should be worth it. I have a link to our account in the sidebar, or yo can go right to the map of my photos here.
(Since the trip I've got a new camera which isn't 4 years old, and thus has better stabilization when not using the flash, as that aspect of my old Camera, was terrible.)

A quick not on the setup (setting up) of this blog. Being the tech guy of the group most of the setup rests on my shoulders, which I am more then happy with, however I also can be a bit picky and want the page to look better then nice. As you may or may not know, with wed design, as with many other computer arts fields, setting up the workflow can be tricky, and should not be overlooked or rushed. Making things editable and accessible to multiple contributors makes things more complex, and trying to do it all without spending a dime is even harder. Hopefully by the end of the year I will have worked out the kinks and have developed a smooth system that allows all of us to post entries, add pictures and stay updated while being in separate cities.

Thoughts

I am so sleep-deprived, malnourished, and stoned that I can barely see straight. My stomach is making fucking weird noises and my brain feels like pudding. Ah, so is finals week at Bates College. As I sit in my Medieval Art class, a Tuesday night 7:30-10:30 tradition, barely able to understand the words that are coming out of my professors mouth, I decide to just phase them out and take a nice trip down memory lane. Pictures that initially make me smile and give me an adrenaline rush to recall eventually bring frowns as I compare my current dismal situation to the whimsical, dare I say, swashbuckling? adventure that was our glorious trip to New Orleans. The only thing that sustains me during these dark times and preserves my will to live is the crystal clear image inside my head of stepping into a car (or van, or whatever, yet to be decided) on a beautiful Swarthmore summer afternoon and just going. I know there is a deeper, more profound purpose to our Odyssey, but fuck it, I'd be happy just driving around, crossing borders, smoking joints and camping out. Anyway, I posted the following pictures in no logical order. I guess it was because food is on my mind, which is drifting. I can't wait to get out of this dungeon, eat a pot brownie, watch Tin Man and pass out cold after being up for about thirty hours straight. I will have more to say when I am in a saner state of mind. Until then...peace.

Et Toufe... Our first meal in New Orleans



The Three getting their picture taken by a couple of really friendly southern ladies (who totally had a boner for me)



Stoop boys