Brenda's - New Iberia

If it wasn't for our road food guide that my mom bought us, Ragnar and I would have never found Brenda's in New Iberia. A small little shack off the main road, we weren't sure there would be food inside. It was ten minutes before closing, and we were the only customers there, but she treated us like royalty. Well sort of. I asked her if we could see a menu, and she said, "I'm just goin tell you what we got." For twelve dollars she gave us a sampler of everything she made that day. We ate crawfish etouffe, fried catfish, shrimp and okra gumbo, chicken gumbo, potato salad, rice, green beans stewed with ham hock making every vegetarian weak with envy, shrimp fettucine alfredo, and peach cobbler. Suffice to say it was some of the best food I've ever had. Also, the fettucine alfredo was incredible, and I'm pretty sure it was made with velveeta. Every time she walked by our table I would say, "This food is so good" to which she would retort, "Stop being so uptight!" You said it girl. We DID feel so uptight and kept wondering how the culture of food and restaurants has gotten so far away from just the concept of eating good food. There were no courses, timing, servers or even a menu. In fact the little old helper lady just brought all the food at once and stared at us until we finished. A defining cajun dining experience.

Lost Bayou Ramblers - take a listen

Perhaps one of the greatest moments was listening to the Lost Bayou Ramblers playing behind the Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette, Louisiana. Here is a video of them playing there. You can't understand him because he's singing in Acadian French. The first Lafayette two stepping I've ever done was to this awesome fiddling. Let the whole video load first, then enjoy.

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Meet Billy Geisendorff

This is Billy Geisendorff: carpenter, folk artist extraordinaire. We met him on the porch of the Blue Moon Saloon. He looks like Chris Cooper from Adaptation, only drinking a lot of beer and perhaps looking for some kind of fight?. He started telling us about the motorcycles he carves from matchsticks, and so we went across the way to his house to see one. The picture you see here is of the one he showed us. Keep in mind these are made solely with matchsticks and sewn leather for the seat and wheels. They are exact replicas of specific bikes, made from photographic memory, to scale. Also, the brake calipers move, everything turns, and there is even a real kickstand that props it up. Billy doesn't really use a computer, and I'm pretty sure only a handful of people have ever seen these bikes. What we loved about Billy was that he's making these bikes the way some people write love letters. He stays up at night gluing matchsticks together and then shaping them into brakes or handlebars or wheel spokes. Late at night after several beers he told me that he's waiting for the little people to come.

swamp tour - louisiana

Ragnar and I took a swamp tour near lafayette and the man featured in red is Brian champagne, our tour guide, a fountain of flora and fauna information that cascaded out of his creole mouth spliced with cuss words and local anecdotes. Apparently that morning he had found a woman who had tried to commit suicide parked by the docks with a gun, knife and pills in her lap. So on our tour, intercut with descriptions of the beautiful origami inspiring snowy herons was his cell phone conversations with friends that went something like, "yeah she wadn't breathing, had a gun, a knife, not a bead of sweat anywhere. I think she's dead. Well I got to finish up this tour - I'm working right now." Suffice to say that combined with the swamp created a certain je ne sais qua. The swamp was utterly beautiful though, swimming low alongside alligators with dragonflies landing on us every few minutes. Also, brian pulled up next to an alligator nest and pulled out an egg for us to hold. There were small spiders crawling all over it.

Out of a movie comes the Blue Moon Inn, Lafayette, Louisiana

If you can believe it, this is where we are right now. After a long day of pushing our way through brooding Texas storms, dark billows reminiscent of the nothing, we pulled into Lafayette, Louisiana for the night. Upon first glance it doesn't seem like much of a place, but discovering the Blue Moon Inn was like a fairy tale. You could not write a more perfect moment. A warm cowboy themed room with peppermint patties on the pillows. Outside in the back is this deck where local musicians gather each night and play music. We drank rum and cokes and soaked up the humidity and warmth. The dancing and foot stomping was amazing - I wish first that I could upload a video, but even more so, I wish you could have been here, whoever you are.

Holy Bridge Bats, AUSTIN

This is a picture of the thousands of people who gather every night each summer to watch the bats fly out from underneath the congress bridge in Austin, Texas. We brought beer and bread and cheese and waited until it got just dark enough. When they came out they flew so fast it was like a warm rip tide of fluttering fabric in the sky. The following is a picture I found online of what it looks like under the bridge - cozy! By the way, besides bats Austin seems like a pretty cool place to live, but you can already feel the yuppie types taking over. Ragnar and I had a beer at the new tiniest bar in austin. The sign said puppet show skinny puppy two dollars. We thought we were going to get a two dollar skinny puppy puppet show. Alas, only the great joy of two dollar drinks! We also ate at this fancy italian restaurant, where the cook mistook Ragnar for a local purveyor of sorts, so we got all kinds of free food even though we kept insisting that he had the wrong guy. So far Ragnar's been mistaken for a small town celebrity everywhere we go! Even though it'd be impossible to look anything like him. Best traveling companion ever!

rest in peace with the wildflowers lady bird

Here is a picture of me posing as Lady Bird Johnson did in a patch of wildflowers. Apparently her passion was preserving native wildflowers and what a cool ambition that is, really. Out here in Texas she founded a wildflower center, and it is just rows and rows of endless wildflowers. I let the butterflies flitter past me, and i thought of everything she must have been through, civil rights, vietnam, and that at the end of all of that, what she thought was most important to her was fields and fields of untamed nature for people to lay down in, smell, and feel at peace.

surprise #1 - Amarillo, Texas kicks ass!

First of all texans aren't really hicks. Despite the fact that the first two Texans I encountered as I crossed the border were a married couple pulling up at the gas station on their horses drinking beer. They then proceeded to get 700 dollars worth of money orders. The wife had a tattoo in cursive that said "fancy lady". Oh the sincerity with which they did it! Beat that urban posers! After that we headed into home for the night - Amarillo. Amarillo is some kind of gem. Streets make no sense, and everyone Ragnar and I talked to kept asking us to repeat ourselves - they didn't understand what WE were saying! We actually had to ask for a plastic bag four times. We cozied up to a great bar called the golden light, which had dogs and older ladies singing "i'm a bitch, i'm a mother, i'm a saint, i'm a lover, i'm nothing in between you know i wouldn't have it any other way" and then proclaiming, "this is the best song ever!". I'm pretty sure that song came out in like 92. We stayed at yet another roadside motel run by Indians who thought Ragnar was some kind of criminal. Or maybe they just hate Americans. And then, we had the greatest experience of a lifetime - the amarillo motor 66 speedway car racing. Fucked up beat up cars racing around a track in the middle of nowhere sponsored by Budweiser. Parents were giving their babies strawberry crush to drink and ladies were chewing on huge turkey legs. Someone asked Ragnar if he was Randy! Points for fitting in! Not a person over 21 who wasn't married! I felt embarrassed by my H&M tote bag and sweater. Oh well, next time i'm wearing a crop top, getting a fake tan, and wearing jeans. I love you Amarillo. Also, I got a rattlesnake tail to hang on the rearview mirror - pictures of that coming up.

route 66 be run down

I had some kind of dream of lit up fluorescent diners calling to me in the middle of the night. I thought girls on rollerskates might come up to my car with a vanilla milkshake. I actually assumed I'd see tricked out roadsters driven by cottonheads (my new term for old people) down the road. Instead I found lots of DUI checkpoints, a Denny's and lots of remnants of what once was. But, my waitress at Denny's Jacqueli kicked ass, and we stayed in Elvis's room at this odd motel with an old Indian guy who kept mumbling outside our room. So, if you're interested in remnants of americana, old road signs, and driving down the road seeing defunct, defunct, defunct, then this is it.

sweet driving machine

This is our sweet driving machine. We bought it off craigslist on the side of the road in san mateo. It had no license plates or original title, but the price was unbeatable and it's in flawless condition. And it's gold. You'd be dumbfounded by how good this thing drives. We opened the sunroof and drove down the street, smiling to ourselves, dreaming of the open roads and vast stretches of time before us.