Mile 1,822: Austin, TX

After Mardi Gras, we took an extra day of rest on our way out of New Orleans with a new friend Shane. I'd met him outside of a bar a few nights prior, and got to talking about Detroit- he's an urban explorer/ photographer and knows the city well. So well, in fact, that it turns out that he'd spent time with my old roommate Geoff, and even BEEN TO MY HOUSE in Corktown. He lives in New York, and we're chatting outside of a bar at 3am in New Orleans. Such a small world.

Wednesday also marked the beginning of an unanticipated feature of the journey: sickness on the road. Midday I was feeling especially haggard and laid down for a nap, which grew into five-hours of sweaty, achy, nauseous rest. The sleep, coupled with a host of home remedies (tea, garlic, apple cider vinegar, cayenne pepper, etc) snapped me out of the worst of it before we hit the road in the morning, but it's been tough to rest and eat right, and I'm still feeling it today.

On our last day in New Orleans, we also picked up two new travel companions for the road to Austin, Tschuai and Rich. They play in a brass band in Seattle, are old friends of Leslie's and were on their way to the HONK! Texas Festival. We had to abandon two of the bikes we'd brought from the Midwest to fit them in, but even still it was a tight squeeze to get four musicians, plus horns and gear into that Ford Focus.



The road to Austin was cool, sunny and pretty pleasant. We scored some incredible Cajun food in Jackson Mississippi (I'd never seen a gumbo that BLACK!) and stopped in at the bleak, oddly elegant Rothko Chapel in Houston. The sun was setting and the failing light filtering into the grey room played tricks with the eyes. We were the only ones there as a classical duo played piano and sang opera in the empty space. It was an invaluable stopover on a long day of driving, and appropriately otherworldly for a day when I was traveling, still a bit ill, into my first leg of the trip full with unknown places.



I was expecting these days would be a bit of a lull after the endless incredible music we experienced in New Orleans, but that's hardly proved to be the case. As soon as we made it into town, we made our way out to the Swan Dive, a sophisticatedly raw bar downtown to see Petrojvic Blasting Company. Easily my favorite new band I've encountered on the trip, they played Dixieland jazz and Balkan brass in front of shimmering white curtains, on a stage flanked by white radiators.



I slunk in the back of the bar with a drink and watched the music, before retiring at a bleary 2:30 in one of many interesting sleeping arrangements I've walked into in Austin, crammed in with 5 members of Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band in an unheated trailer in some one's back yard. It was cold, my sinuses hurt, it was tough.

That's what's made this leg of the trip so interesting though- in New Orleans, we had open access to our cozy hotel room. Now, a bit ill, a bit more hard up for places to stay, everything is beginning to seem more poignant, more immediate. The following day I posted up at a cafe with an abundance of tea and fruit to soothe myself, and came back feeling so energized! By the time evening came around, I made it out to the east side to see the opening performances of HONK! Fest. Brass bands stormed through the night under strings of carnival lights, brushing up against dimly lit encampments of Austin's legendary food cart parks. The whole world felt dark, and loud, and unreal.

Today, I'm still feeling off. I ate hot dogs on the river last night at 1am, slogged through the adolescent inanity of a Saturday night on Austin's 6th Street and slept at a friend's house in an arm chair. It's good though. I'm getting better, and you never see anything staying at home.