BIG TRIP Chapter 2

This month marks the 20th anniversary of a 6-week cross country solo camping trip I took in 2002. All alone over 5,600 miles through 17 states in a rental car, sleeping in a tent most nights, I stopped to visit a few friends along the way. -rh

Monday May 6, 2002 was a long strange day, at times very difficult. I left Birmingham at 7am and made it to Louisiana by noon. I was setting up camp at Bayou Segnette State Park just south of New Orleans in Westwego, Louisiana by 1pm.

I had a strange emotional episode when I first arrived here. I felt an unbearable urge to cry. I was quietly sobbing as I set up my tent. As soon as the tent was up, I climbed inside it to lay down and I bawled my eyes out. I was kinda freaked out about being so far from home and all alone. It is a fear I knew I’d have to face on this trip and it confronted me today, as soon as I was alone. The weekend in Birmingham with Vanessa was fun but I was never really alone. Now I was, and several hundred miles away from anything familiar to me.

I had no problems finding my way into New Orleans and I even lucked into a parking spot on Poydras Street in a safe area just two blocks from the French Quarter. Only took a few minutes to locate Bourbon Street! It was great to finally stroll around in the Quarter and I had a couple drinks in the afternoon to celebrate. My friend Bobby Nicholas from TopCat’s had told me about a couple different places where he has friends in the French Quarter, so I visited them both today and said “Hello” from Bobby. Both places gave me a drink on the house just because I was a friend of Bobby’s. They were Harry’s Corner at Chartre & Dumaine, and Tujague’s on Decatur Street where I stood at the bar right next to Harry Anderson, star of TV’s Night Court & Cheers while he talked to the barmaid and ordered a drink.

Tujaque’s entrance at the corner of Decatur and Madison opens on a long barroom – the bar is down the right hand side and booths line the left wall. When Harry Anderson first came in I wasn’t even aware that it was him. But I recognized his voice right away. He’s very tall and has curlier hair than I would have expected. He spoke to the barmaid with familiarity and called her by her first name. When she called him “Harry” I knew for sure it was him. He mentioned that he would be flying to California in a couple days for his daughter’s graduation from film school. That made sense – his kid going into show-biz. He ordered his Rum Runner in a plastic cup “to go”, bought a round for all us day drinkers in the bar, and off he went down Decatur Street with his drink.

I crashed out pretty early last night. After dark at the campsite I get bored pretty quick. I try to read and write by the light of the lantern, but I usually give up and go to sleep very early.

A mama cat and her little orange kitties were lurking around my campsite. As soon as I returned to the campground I needed to use the “comfort house” (bathroom/shower). When I returned to my site, Mama Cat was already sprawled out under my car and had two little babies with her. She appears to be a stray, but we are miles away from any kind of neighborhood.

Bayou Segnette State Park

Bayou Segnette is located way out in the swampy forest. The kittens playing around in the roots of a great big tree. I’m a little concerned that the kittens might fall prey to some sort of predator, but I really don’t know if there’s any in these parts for them to be concerned about. Large birds, mostly. I saw lots of wild turkeys pickin’ at the roadkill on the highway yesterday. Here at the park there are countless frogs and scores of armadillos. Those stupid little creatures were all over the place just after dark last night, scavenging around on the ground for insects, I presume. They must be pretty blind because you can get pretty close to them before they freak out and run. And even then they only run about five feet and then stand there looking stupid again.They look like hardshell anteaters. Throwing rocks to scare them away does nothing. They just look stunned for like two seconds and then they run to where the damn rock stops rolling. Perhaps living near so much human activity here in the park they have had food thrown at them a lot. After conflicting reports, I was happy to discover last night that the nearby Comfort Station does have hot showers! Lord, I needed it. I’d left Birmingham without a shower. Then, after a long drive, spent an entire day walking around in the sun and humidity.

*

Day 6 of my road trip, Tuesday May 7, 2002 was another long, interesting, and emotional day. I awoke around 6:30am, tinkered around the campsite for a while, scarfed down a snacky little breakfast, wrote some postcards, looked over my maps, etc. Mostly just killing time until after the morning rush hour, so I can easily cruise into town with no slow downs or back ups.

Two days in a row I had the good fortune to find a parking spot on Poydras, a busy, well-lit, seemingly safe thoroughfare for parking in New Orleans. I ignored the parking meter both days and on the second day I was rewarded with a parking ticket. I shall proceed to ignore that as well. While I was walking around town yesterday, I noticed about 40% of the cars I saw had some sort of citation under the wiper blade. I hung on to the ticket and placed it under my wiper blade on each subsequent day so that it would look like I’d already been cited and I wouldn’t get another one. Each day I was in New Orleans I strolled around the Quarter for hours, taking pictures, eating and drinking and enjoying the many street musicians.

Early in the afternoon on that second day I started to feel what I call “The Grip” of fear and panic again and the uncontrollable tears had to flow once again. I made it back to my car, started the engine, cranked the A/C, and then just let the dam burst. I sobbed heavily for several minutes, and then I turned on the radio hoping for some kind of distraction. NPR did the trick. After I calmed down a bit I put some ice on my face and hands and drank some water. Attempting to figure out why this is happening to me, I came up with two theories. Theory #1) I didn’t eat well yesterday until after my panic attack. I am walking around for hours in extreme heat, exerting myself a great deal. I am drinking tons of water to combat the heat and stay hydrated. But if I fail to eat then I will continue to be vulnerable to these episodes. I resolved to eat more and eat better for the rest of the trip. It is of utmost importance. Snacking on granola and trail mix, eating like a bird, is not gonna cut it as long as I am exerting myself so much, essentially “working out” in the sun all day, like a horse. Theory #2) I’m starting to think that these emotional episodes are just part of the price I have to pay in order to have this experience. I have been planning this trip and getting incredibly excited about it for months. Now it is actually happening and at times I get overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. Perhaps it is only natural that because I am experiencing such “highs” on this adventure, that when I come down to “normal” it feels pretty low. I am hyper-stimulated during the day by history and music, etc. Then I get back to the tent at night where I’m bored and restless. Perhaps it is then, when my mind is not as engaged as it is during the day, that I begin to panic. That’s more or less the “night time theory”... That second night was no problem at the camp. I returned from town after dark with nothing much to do but take a shower and go to bed.

With the exception of that one episode, I had a great time in the Quarter. After I recovered from my mini-breakdown I went to the Jackson Brewery Mall by the riverside. I found a nice window seat there in the food court where I went to relax and chill out in the air conditioning. I did this once or twice a day. Mom calls almost every day to see how my trip is going. I sent her Mother's Day card from New Orleans. Dad calls me every day. I think he’s enjoying this trip more than me.

After I left the mall I was walking up Canal Street and I found a wallet on the ground. It was thick with cash and credit cards and I checked for a photo I.D. When I found it, I realized that I had just passed this man seconds earlier. He was in a wheelchair being pushed by a woman, probably his wife. I turned around and started walking in the other direction and sure enough here they were coming towards me, having doubled back themselves. Looking very distressed and displaying all the body language of people who have just misplaced a wallet: patting all their pockets, furrowed brows on concerned faces, etc. I simply stepped up to them and said, “Did you lose your wallet?” They looked SO relieved when they said in loud exultant harmony: “YES!” They were extremely grateful and thanked me for my honesty and kindness. They tried giving me a reward to thank me for the gesture, but I just said, “You’re welcome. God bless you!” and I walked away quickly, disappearing into the throng of people on the crowded Canal Street sidewalk. During my emotional struggles that week I was able to draw some small measure of strength from that experience. I felt I had “done the right thing” and doing so was its own reward. Later on, I marveled at just how fortunate those people were. New Orleans is known for a lot of things, including its high crime rate, unfortunately. Of all places to drop your wallet, just to have a total stranger retrieve it and pick you out of a crowd of THOUSANDS walking the street and return it directly to you. Incredible stroke of good fortune for them. I’m glad it was me who found it, instead of one of the countless scammers, schemers, and sharks that walk these streets.

After my freak-out in the car I got a late lunch of two slices of pizza. Then I found a shady park bench behind the Jackson Brewery and sat down to write some more postcards. This was without question the most relaxing part of my day. It was late afternoon/early evening, the sun was setting behind me, and a cool breeze blew in off the Mississippi River. Beautiful. One of the cruise ships was preparing to disembark and soon a Dixieland band began to play on the ship’s deck. Fucking amazing. You could see the expressions of wonder on the faces of the passengers boarding the ship. The drummer kicked things off with a tribal rumble as the passengers were ascending the ramp. The music they played was authentic Dixieland Jazz and it comforted me as much as the shade and the breeze if not more.