This Makes No Sense At All

Walking through the French Quarter A few posts ago I wrote of This Ain't No Mouse Music and our Louisiana addiction that was displaced by long distance hiking. We've been restless this year, grounded from hiking, no walks through Spain or France. When we spotted a cheap flight to New Orleans, that old obsession beckoned. Five days. Arrive Weds midnight and return Monday afternoon. Our plan was a musical pilgrimage with days to be determined. A 3 day Jazzy Pass for $9 gave us unlimited trips on buses and streetcars (provided they came). Thurs 8:30pm Rock & bowl Chubby Carrier - did this  Fri 6pm dba Tuba Skinny       8pm Snug Harbor Maria Muldaur 8 and 10pm - did the 8pm Sat 6pm Three Muses Hot Club of New Orleans - did this     10pm Tipitinas Art Neville and Treme Brass Band - did Mulates instead Sun 5:30 Rock & bowl Bruce Daigrepont fais do do. - did this This all coincided with a few days of sun and an arctic blast of wi...

When Susan and I are training, or these days, when Susan is still recovering and my body needs to walk, we have a local walk of about ten miles. The incentive is a local bakery, five miles away. A croissant and a coffee primes us for the return. The bakery is at 300 feet elevation, we are at 1100, so mostly down for the first half, and up all the way back. This is a two or three times a week trip, so we seek out little variations, always keeping in mind the distance to the nearest restroom. That means keeping tabs on any construction going on midway either direction, and the associated porta-potty. One of the variants goes down the bear route, where three wood sculptured bears are to be along the way.   This last walk was my day for yards with character or at least interest: They continue up the driveway, representing many happy hours We are having a drought year, so this brown metal sculpture blends right in. A block or two further on This rout...

This sock had elasticized top Chances are, you hot weather hikers have seen something like this. That's my leg you're looking at, yesterday's view, and not much of a concern to me since I knew what it was. The first encounter was a scare - on Susan's leg while hiking in France, and we had no idea what it was. Just it came on while hiking in very hot weather, and was right under the elasticized band of her sock, warm to the touch and puffy, but not painful. A wider, more brilliant band than you see here on my leg. A few days later, the whole foot started swelling in a major way, all the way from toes to half way up the shin, and extremely painful. That ended up with us going to emergency, where a severe infection was diagnosed, treatable with antibiotics, but we had to cancel the trip and it took two weeks for the swelling to subside. The doctors were unable to determine point of entry for the infection. They did x-rays for hairline fractures - none. Final though...

I love hiking and traveling. Each trip brings experiences I want to remember forever. I'm sort of shy though, about assuming others will share the same feelings. Galapagos is the exception, and possibly Torres del Paine . If a trip to the Galapagos Islands is in your realm of possibilities, do your best to make it happen. The Galapagos part of our expedition was an organized two week trip by Wilderness Travel . We added on Otavalo and Quito, Ecuador on our own, since we had gone so far anyway. Since we've got back, I've looked at a number of Galapagos trip offerings from various companies. There is a huge range of content, and I'll make some comments later on what to look for in a trip. But... first look at a video I put together that is just a series of images from the trip, set to music. Watch it and then decide whether to read further: Galapagos 2014 - two weeks on the Mary Anne Almost the entire Galapagos Islands are in the National Park, and tourism is stri...

More tales from grounded hikers. Susan can walk a few blocks but our normal long distance treks are temporarily on hold. So... our meantime activities. Take my word for it, youngster rats are sort of cute. They're also pretty fast, so don't have a photo to prove it. Roof rats are endemic in this area, at least since the white man arrived. The city even has a department to help control them - vector control. I used to be fairly tolerant if I saw evidence of rats outside. However a number of years ago we got back from a trip and found them inside our house, happily co-existing with our two cats, and sleeping in our bed under the pillow. Susan was definitely not happy. I was not pleased either. That was the end of tolerance. Vector Control came out, pointed out my failings, but gave me instruction. I've thoroughly rat-proofed the house, and rigorously inspect it several times a year for any evidence of rats. This year the neighbors report rat resurgence. Our compost pile, ...

Susan and I have been together twenty-seven years now, and since 2001 have been almost obsessively caught up in long-distance hiking, writing about it, doing it. All these twenty-seven years though, we have had a shadow life, caught up in Cajun music, later in Zydeco, and have always loved the way music is embedded in the culture of Louisiana. In 1987 we took Cajun dance lessons from Diana Castillo and Irene Tenney in the SF Bay Area. Irene founded the Cajun Creole Cultural Center. That organization gave us insider information and in our early years together Susan and I made many trips to Louisiana, seeking out the dance and music events in those little French speaking communities in the  Lafayette area.   2009 Those events were hard to find sometimes, particularly when looking for Zydeco music. In 1990 forget about checking with town tourist bureaus. Their response was "we wouldn't know about that. You need to ask the black folks." Once we got to the dance ...

We just cancelled our Sept. flight to Northern Spain a week or so ago (Norte route). First time in some twenty years that we have not done a major hike or backpack of some sort, and first time in 10 years that we have not been walking a Camino route. Susan has intense leg pain if she walks any uphill distance at all beyond about 10 minutes - according to her doctor, just something that needs rest, but we are more than three months into it at this point. Susan has blogged about it: backpack45.blogspot.com/2014/08/where-does-one-find-answers-vagaries-of-life backpack45.blogspot.com/2014/09/in-fog , but this post is mostly about I am doing instead.  The positive thing about this is that I have days, weeks, months suddenly available. Those never ending house chores sitting on the to do list are suddenly being accomplished. The back fence is repaired. Formerly on the edge of a down slope, it now sits on a three foot wide deck, farther away from the house than it once was, and with a ...

We are having a strange year, with an absence of our usual hiking, thus no posts for a while. Still, we took in the Galapagos, and some of Ecuador. That may be a future post, but this one is about our friends Tom and Patricia, and his video of Chuck's annual Zydeco birthday party. Tom has a gift for faces, and skip my text to watch it if need be. However, I can give it more context. In January of 2004, Susan was giving a Camino de Santiago presentation at the San Francisco Sierra Club's annual dinner meeting. After the show, Tom and Patricia came up and told about their own experiences walking the Camino, and we have been friends ever since. One of the things we share besides the Camino is a love of Cajun & Zydeco music. Two cultures, sometimes the identical songs, but a different rhythm. Heads bobbing up and down at a Cajun festival, and fairly level at a Zydeco festival. Separate venues in most cases, but a lot of Cajun dancers going to Zydeco events, and here in the SF...