Saturday - July 16, 2016 Grange Motor Circuit Mini Bike Racing
That right, I said RACING. Not a track day. Straight up elbow to elbow, wheel to wheel, knee to ground, fried chicken to rice... wait, what am I describing again? Its lunch time and I'm hungry.
But seriously, this is a really, really cool organization. The United Mini Racing Association (UMRA - http://www.raceumra.com/) puts on these events where you can bring your 50 cc up to 125cc motorcyle, which is originally meant for children, out to the track and you race against other people. Its kinda like the 24 Hours of Lemons except way smaller, in every way. Naturally, when Giancarlo mentioned this organization, I was intrigued. Giancarlo is another former SpaceX employee gone rogue and now works at VG. He is actually one of the founders of the group, soooo yeay Giancarlo, or "GC" as he goes by on the track. Anyhow, they give you pretty much everything you need to go racing except for a helmet and boots. Show up, pay the track fee, they give you a FEW bikes to ride AND leathers. My practice day track fee was $30. I think to race its $70 for your first race of the season and $20 for every race thereafter. Pretty stupid cheap.
The organization rotates several tracks for each of their monthly events. This one was at Grange Motor Circuit. Its in the middle of BFE Apple Valley, about 1.5 hours from Redondo, no traffic, 4 hours with traffic - no joke. Its so out of the way that there's 2 miles of dirt road to get to the track!
Grand Motor Circuit is a tiny track, actually I think it mainly serves as a go kart track. Its 14 turns with a lap of 0.8 miles. This means its really tight and twisty, perfect for these teensy bikes, go-karts, and razor scooters. On the plus side, there's a real bathroom here!
So there are 8 different classes of races that they run here, I believe. They are separated by the types of bikes there. Of the major ones that I saw, there was a Honda XR100, a Honda Grom 125, and NSR 50's. I rode all three of these, since they were all free to ride; wow what a difference from bike to bike.
The XR was a good bike to start on since its power delivery was sluggish and it had drum front brakes, which pretty much means that it had NO front brakes. I was instructed to downshift into my turns and stomp on the rear brake. Not super advisable on a normal bike, but super fun to get the back end to dance around.
Next up was the Honda Grom which is an amazing little thing. Great power response, awesome disc brakes, it feels like a normal bike, except smaller and more nimble. I did a dozen or so laps before I started to feel more comfortable and started to lean the bike over more. Apparently on these small bikes, you have to tweak your inside foot position so that you don't drag toe before you drag knee. I did not get this memo until I finished this session. I also didn't realize that I wasn't hanging off the bike as much as I thought I was. These factors combined put me into a lowside fall in the last harpin turn before start finish. I was going like 7 mph or something so it wasn't a big deal. But it was definitely my first time going down on a bike ever. So yeah, that was an experience. The organizers were very cool about it. They were like "We want you to go down! These bike don't get banged up!" That's like someone saying, "I want you to hit me in the face! I love getting hit in the face!" But they meant it, and the bike really had no damage from my fall, just a readjustment of the handle bars and the next rider was off on it.
Getting back on the horse, I tried out the NSR 50 last. Now I was super super excited to ride this bike because I have a NSR 250 at home that I love! These NSR bikes are legit MotoGP bikes that the pro's ride (when the are like 8 years old). They are crazy nimble and light but all their power is waaaaay up in the rev range and there is like a 2000 rpm wide band where there is any useful power. Also, you are basically squatting on the bike its so small. Yeah, it was a little too much for me the first time out on the track.
All and all the Grom captured my heart, enough to consider owning one. But I already have 2 bikes that don't get enough attention.... sooo maybe later?
There were a couple kids out, like pre-teenage, with legit bikes and legit skills. They made me look like it was my first time on a motorcycle. Here's one of the bikes, a replica of Valentino Rossi's (greatest MotoGP Rider of all time) 2004 YZR-M1, kinda.
These bikes are just picked up, they're so light.
I bet this thing could've beat me out on the track.
Some shots of Giancarlo showing me how its done.
A couple guys who knew how to use the brakes on the XR
This kid had to be 8 years old or something. He was dragging knee everywhere and was super smooth and fast.
This gal and her husband came out for the practice day with their NSR 50 AND their newborn. Well maybe it was like 12 months or something. But still! HARDCORE. Even better, they fed their baby a burrito!
I had the opportunity to meet Giancarlo's girlfriend, Christina. She is equally into racing and has her own Honda Grom 125. The next sequence is all her and her bike because, she was one of the only people to have some color in their leathers and her bike is super pretty. Plus, I would look like a creeper taking picture of other people that I hadn't met yet, especially if they are 8 years old. I'll save that for my HBO special, "Making of a Creeper".
That's my helmet BTW, its badass. I have grand aspirations of being able to digitally create graffiti like this and putting it on everything I own, including Miles.
I ended up just going to the practice day and skipping on the races the next day. Too tired, too unfocused, too new, and too chicken. Next time definitely though.
So every year the aerospace community puts on the Aerospace Games. Initially this sounds like a super cool event where we all participate in "Ender's Game" esque activities like building a giant rocket and launching it to a fake Mars out in the ocean or having a dehydrated ice cream eating contest or a growing potatoes in your poop contest. Instead, we play normal games, soccer, v-ball, tug-of-war, human pyramid, watermelon eating, and also shit talking (which seemed to be most popular).
I was as the track all morning so I didn't get to the games until 3 ish. That's just late enough to miss the beginning of all the events which means I was just a spectator. That's okay cause I brought the trusty camera so make these people way cooler than they really are, hahaha. After a great shuttle ride in a school bus driven by a totally random dude bumping some pretty soulful music with a deep groove, I get dropped off in the Dockweiler Beach parking lot. On my way in, I'm thinking "Man I hope that i can find where the games are..." As I scanned down the beach the crowd went: Normal amount of people, normal amount of people, normal amount of people, CRAPTON of people with matching shirts, normal amount of people. Found it.
The Virgin Galactic tent was on the south side of the event. The Spaceship Company (TSC) is our sister company and joined our ranks to form Voltron and put our numbers somewhere in the 50's. A bunch of people are around the human pyramid area so I join in and say hello to some co-workers. For this event, your team runs to these cones and builds a human pyramid as fast as they can; its timed. All I remember about this event is that when our team was called to go, we were missing one person, Alex S. While she did eventually show up to let Nicole off the hook to sub, I'm still going to point out that she almost let her team and her company down, for the sole purpose of remembering her name. Name association people, it works. Anyhow, this is their final stance with Marinelle putting up the Victory "V" or the Virgin Galactic "V" which looks cool but totally effed up my framing, not cool Marinelle j/k. SYMBOLIC SHIT TALKING!
Next up, Tug-Of-War. Its the last event of the day, but luckily, its a bracket so it takes forever, especially when you're awesome like us and keep winning. So our team had already won its first two rounds and was getting lined up for its Elite 8 round. Awesome! What a great opportunity to take pictures! Never mind that everyone that I want as subjects is wearing black shirts, standing with their face in the shadows with a really bright sky. For you non-photographers read: shitty lighting. I suck it up and get into position with my, "Don't worry, I know I'm totally in the way, but I have a camera" attitude. Luckily, I get rewarded. As they count down the start of the game, I pre-focus and lay in wait, like Miles waiting for the laser pointer to come out of the drawer. 3-2-1... PUULLLL!! I see something happening in the viewfinder and just start snapping as I slowly realize that the other team has just let go of the rope sending our team diving into the sand on our ass. LOL. Apparently, the other team was short-handed and decided to just throw the match.
Tug-Of-War win streak: 3 Silent shit talking! Let me put this next picture in context for you non-aerospace people. So most of aerospace is taken up by the big box primes: Boeing, Northrop, Lockeed, Raytheon, NASA JPL... Then there are all the subcontractors: Honeywell, GE, Parker, UTC... Then there are the private small startup style companies, most notably SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. SpaceX has been around for several years and has achieved several notable milestones. Virgin Galactic is much younger and still has a ways to go before we launch anything. Many people at VG are former SpaceX employees, their stories of SpaceX provide many an entertaining lunchtime story. So NOW... look at the picture, think about it, then get the joke.
Round 4, FIGHT! This was a pretty long pull for both teams; somewhere in the vicinity of 40 seconds. Not much here to say except that we emerged victorious! On to the Championship.
Tug-Of-War win streak: 4
The interns agree, thumbs are important.
Enough, enough, let's get to the championship! Winner of this round will become the ultimate, rope-tugging, master of the beach, most bad-ass, super smartest, highest paid, Nobel peace prize achieving, sand between the toes having team in Aerospace Games history, for that day, kinda.
Apparently my camera malfunctioned and I didn't get the picture of us winning the last round, so we'll just say we won and you won't know the difference unless you were there or knows that google has a search engine. Either way, congrats to our team that did 5 pulls in just an hour or so. These guys are first on my hit list when its time to move.
Here's some candids from the rest of the day. This picture looks planned, but Phil just did a good job photo-bombing Jordan's picture.
The interns! Apparently we pay these guys too much cause they all turned down free chips.
We ended the games at Rock 'n Brews where all the teams went to go have food and drinks. SpaceX came in at some point with their trophy celebrating their victory at the games. It was only fitting that Ocampo and Dennis went to take selfies with the trophy and their shirts. Shit talking complete.
VG ended up 8th overall out of 16-ish teams. Better than last year!
SO
I've been meaning to take this roadtrip for almost a decade now, and this year
I finally took it! I lucky enough to be talking to my buddy Leon about
the trip in July of 2015 and it sounded like fun to him too. A few months
later we bought plane tickets and the rest was history. We decided to fly
to Austin, rent a car, do a couple thousand miles of driving, then fly out
Chicago; easy peasy.
Wednesday
2/10/16
Its early
morning 6am and I’m out the door to catch my 8am flight. I’m hungover and sleep deprived from a night
of going to my bowling league the night before.
None the less, I drive to the Aviation Station rail stop to catch the
Greenline bus to LAX. The bus ride is
quick and I arrive to a very empty Delta terminal 5. Quickly sidestepping a group of lost Asian
tourisits, I jump into the TSA precheck line and am through security in less
than 2 minutes. I love precheck. As I check the terminal signs for gate 64, I
realize that terminal 5 only goes to up to gate 59. Crap, I’m in the wrong terminal. Okay, time to walk to terminal 6. A handful of minutes later I’m at security
for Terminal 6; a few seconds later, I’m through. Mental high five again for Precheck. The terminal has been remodeled and
everything look really nice, until I got to my end of the terminal which they
haven’t quite gotten to yet. It looks
like its stuck in the 90’s still. By
this time, the adrenaline of getting to the airport has subsided and my
hangover was in full gear. I find a
bathroom for a bit of relief and then go searching for a bottle of water. Here’s some advice, don’t buy water at the
airport unless you want to pay $5 for it.
I give in to the price knowing that I have to drink a ton of water if I
want this hangover to go away. I decide
that getting some food for the plane is a smart idea even though I couldn’t
stomach a piece of toast at the moment.
$13 later I settle in at my gate to wait for boarding. There are several people sleeping across
benches, a hippie guy that looks likes Jerry Garcia, and a college type girl
eating an apple. I decide to take
advantage of the downtime and do a meditation.
A few minutes later, boarding groups are being called. The stewardess jokingly thanks me for
bringing her breakfast. As I walk down
the aisle of the airplane I see the girl from the gate near my area. I check the row numbers, crap, I’m in the row
in front of her. Oh well, I never get
interesting seatmates on planes. I ask
my row mate to let me into the window seat and I get everything arranged. My row mate is one of those older unkempt,
super Asian types and is talking on the phone or is sending voice messages or
something. Its predictably loud and
rude. Moments later I hear her hock a
giant loogie and spit it in the vomit bag.
Then she kinda crumples it up but mainly just shoves it in the seatback
pocket. I am shocked. The college girl behind me give an audible,
“oh my god.” So now I’m slightly annoyed
than I’m sitting next to this gross lady and I put my headphones in and prepare
to zone out. Before I quite lose touch
with reality a guy about my age says that I’m in his seat. Turns out… I’m actually sitting a row back,
next to the college girl. YAY! Hahaha. We instantly had a conversation about
the gross Asian lady that is now sitting in front of me and is still talking on
her phone which she continues to do until the stewardess tells her that she
needs to turn it off… several times. So
my new row mate is a significant upgrade and is very talkly and open. We talk throughout the 3 hour flight to
Austin. I find out many interesting
things about her and I share my story
with her also. She’s on her way to
Austin for a 4 day bachelorette party.
She got booked on separate flights from the rest of the party because
they were out of seats. She has 2 kids, 4 and 9 and she’s 28, and not in
college. Her first husband was an
alcoholic and died soon after she had her second child. She’s reading literature about exercise and
nutrition because she wants to get certified as a nutrition coach since many
people asked her for advice since dropping 100+ lbs and competing in the bikini
division of competitive bodybuilding.
She shows me some pictures… they are awesome. She also tells me that after losing all that
weight, she had so much excess skin that she needed a tummy tuck which resulted
it cutting off the stems of her cherry tattoo under her bikini line. Along with the tummy tuck, she got a boob job
with little to no research. She said
that the doctor didn’t even really consult with her on what she wanted and what
her options were. Apparently her first
boob job was severely botched. She
went in to get it fixed with someone else and apparently the doctor saw a big
cavity in her chest from the first surgery. She said she auditioned for the show Botched
and made it all the way to the last round but was not selected. Apparently it was because things don’t look
that bad now. That’s a crazy story! What doctor does that shit. Anyhow, we exchange info and I promised to
keep her up to date on my travels. We're still friends to this day, yeay for meeting random people! :D
If you haven’t figured this out yet, this is gonna be a long post, because
let’s face it, if you’re reading this, you’re avoiding doing something else,
and the longer you read this, the later you get to do whatever it is you’re
avoiding. Score for you! I’ll try to make it interesting.
Austin, TX
As we fly
over Austin on our approach for landing, there is a river that snakes through
Austin that separates north Austin from south Austin.Its not very wide but it looks like it would
be a lot of fun to play in.There’s tons
of water front property out there.After
deplaning, I say bye to Justine, my row mate, and look for Leon’s gate to wait
for him to arrive in a few minutes.I
had finished the bottle of water, but hadn’t touch my breakfast.I decide that it was too expensive to not
eat so I plop down to eat it.It was a
wrap with some stuff in it… it was cold now, and a bit soggy… so basically it
sucked.But I was hungry and it was
there.As soon as I finished it, I
think, “Dammit, I’m here to eat some crazy crazy good food and the first thing
I have is a crappy airport wrap.”I pass
it off as humorous.
Dissatisfied but no longer
hungover and hungry, I meet Leon and we engage in a long but manly hug hello. Leon and I go way back and share a lot of personal growth
experiences together. So while almost all of our interactions are woven
with humor, there is a deep and solid understanding of each other and our
paths. ONTO the trip already!!!
We head to the curb as
we start to catch up on our lives.Our
UBER arrives in a white lexus is350.Its
actually pretty small in the backseat of the sedan and I’m unimpressed one
again with Lexus.The Uber driver takes
us about 20 minutes outside the airport to the Hertz rental car place.It is basically half the price for us to rent
outside the airport.What a smart idea
considering the rental car was the majority of the cost of the trip.Our rental car and home for the next 2,000
miles is a little 2 door black Toyota Yaris.LOL.No problem, though the
manual windows got annoying, we managed about 300+ miles per tank throughout
the trip.The tank was 10 gallons,
though I don’t think I ever put in more than 9.So that’s pretty good mileage especially since it was a road trip.The best part about driving in this part of
the US…. Gas was like $1.50/gallon!!!!! We never spent more than $20 on a tank
of gas!How awesome is that.As we start our drive, I realize that there
is only ONE cigarette lighter in this cheap ass car which means we can either
charge our phones OR use the Valentine One.That doesn’t really help since Waze KILLS battery life.Its about this time that I start to realize
that my camera wasn’t in my backpack when I went to grab the Valentine and the
windshield mount.Maybe its in my
suitcase?NOPE.I have the camera bag with the spare lenses,
but that’s it.SHITTY.Oh well… TIME TO EAT!Lol.
Leon takes
the driver’s seat and we decide on going to Salt Lick BBQ which is in Dripping
Springs about 40 minutes outside Austin.
We see that is a BYOB place so we find a brewery that’s on the way to
have a pint and get a 6 pack to bring to lunch.
We settle on Twisted X brewery.
They’ve got a skeleton/mexico vibe and there is a lot of really cool
artwork on their labels and throughout the brewery. Turns out, the liquor license only allows for
beer to be sold for consumption onsite, not for taking home. So we have our beers outside and enjoy the
weather. Every time the wind blew, you
could smell a mix of smoked bbq from a nearby smoker and some wheat and barely
fermenting in the brewery. It was
awesome. Leon is on the phone with a
buddy and is taking notes on where to go in Memphis and Oxford. It turns out that Leon had friends or friends
of friends in pretty much every city we went to. I need to get to that point again. But his connections afford us with not only
recommendations on where to go, but also free lodging in Austin and New
Orleans!! That would have been very
expensive. Okay, back to the
present. We finish our beers and head to
Salt Lick. Apparently yelp and google
maps have it located in the wrong place, across the street and a block down, be
aware if you decide to go. When we do
find it, the parking lot is HUGE and is a dirt gravel lot so Leon promptly
floors it and slides around in the empty parking lot before pulling the e-brake
for a nice parking job. We walk towards
the restaurant and there are open eating areas everywhere. There's a dedicated building for take out
orders only, and the people hanging out there were definitely there to
drink. Some had coolers, some had beer,
some had handles. Apparently you can
come here and get the All You Can Eat special and just stay here and eat and
drink for hours. That’s pretty badass. Its only $25 and if you tip your waitress
well you can take what you don’t eat to go.
We head to the back of the complex to a separate winery, which explains
the vineyard surrounding the parking lot, where there is a newly added winery
where you can buy wine and beer if you forgot to bring your own. We get a six pack of assorted beer for $14,
not a deal but we didn’t care. We carry
our bucket of ice and beer to the restaurant where there is this giant hood
above and equally giant smoking pit.
There are sausage hanging from the hood and rows of ribs, brisket, and
pork shoulders. I’m stupid excited at
this point. We get seated in this very
empty dining room and look at the menu.
Leon suggests the all you can eat bbq, but I remind him that we’re going
to be doing this all week and we should pace ourselves. Which in the end was dumb because we ended up
eating just as much anyhow. We decide to
share our meals. I get the beef
ribs, BEEF RIBS!!! So excited!! Also I see on the menu, burnt ends!!!!!!
BURNT ENDS!!! I’ve never seen this on a menu and I am ecstatic. So… I ordered those too. Leon gets the pick three platter with spare
ribs, smoked sausage, and brisket; when you order brisket at a real bbq place,
they ask if you want the fatty or lean cut.
OMG! Is this really
happening?!? Ummm fatty please. Okay, so a quick rundown. The beef ribs. Totally awesome, though I’m surprised that
all the bbq came wet. I would figure they’d serve things with just a dry rub
and give you the option for sauce. BTW
they had two sauces and both were great.
VERY mild and fairly sweet.
Really good, though I had very little of it. The brisket was really good too. I’m surprised how much I like the
sausage. It was insanely flavorful, very
moist and super tender. The pork spare
rib… was fine. It was good but I was
expecting way more for being in a bbq town.
Now to the Burnt Ends. These
things were just absolute heaven. So
much bark with so much flavoring. Still
very tender and plenty of fat in them. I
REALLY have to figure out how to make these.
We got sides of baked beans, coleslaw, and potatoes along with onions
and sliced pickles. Those were pretty
useful to break up the flavor profile on the palette. We got through most of the food but had a bit
of beef rib left and few burnt ends. We
sat and drank the rest of our beer and talked and eventually managed to take
all the food down. We win. Though we
take 2 beers to go.
Full and
super psyched, we load back into the yaris and head to Leon’s buddy’s place in
south Austin. We arrive at the house and
are greeted by Kevin, who I later adopt the nick name Kev-vo since that’s what
his wife calls him. Their house is a
single story 3 bed 2 bath SFR that seems to be about 1,500 sq ft, a huge back
yard, an open kitchen and living room and is beautifully decorated. Apparently, Kev-vo’s wife, Lindsay, did all
the decorating. There are white matted
picture frames all over the house of various art and photos. They have a giant green school style
chalkboard with a great liquid chalk drawing of some waves. I want to do this In my house. The kitchen and dining room is mostly white
and has accents of bright orange everywhere all the way to the orange tea
kettle, orange egg timer, and miniature orange home depot apron with the name
"two coats" on it in honor of Lindsay making Kev-vo apply a second
coat of paint to the entire house. There
is a bird theme in the immaculate guest bathroom complete with a bird
silhouette over the light switch, towel holders that look like branches, and a
piece of abstract bird art over the toilet.
The room I’m staying in had a lavender wall in it which has lines and triangles
painted in white to provide an abstract feel.
It also matches the mouse pad for their computer. So we chat a bit about house. Kev-vo shows off Lindsay’s collection of succulents
which are about 50+ plants. Apparently
she’s in the society of succulents or something like that. She’s super into it. Lindsay arrives and we call our Uber to go
out for drinks.
We get to American Beer
Garden Brewing company where there’s live music, a huge bar, outside seating, lots
of pet owners, good food and good beer.
We of course are stuffed to the gills so we don’t eat a thing but we do
start to drink. We talk and share
stories and backgrounds. Turns out that
Leon and Kev-vo grew up together in South Florida. They were elementary school friends that
eventually grew apart. They ran into
each other the last time Leon was in Austin and reconnected. Kev-vo was into martial arts and capoeira
just like Leon is. Lindsay is actually
Lindsay Anne O’Leary which I thought was funny.
Apparently they are trying to change Lindsay’s nickname to LA. Lindsay has her PE which she had to take the
test twice to pass since she didn’t study the first time. She works for an engineering consulting
company that assists lawyers in court cases to help prove/disprove technical scenarios. Kev-vo has been long employed at a
construction company where he currently writes bids for new business. They are a great couple and super super
friendly people. Lindsay has this kind
of muffled muppet voice that I really got a kick out of. After ABGB, we went to the Continental for
some live music.
So I’ve been
looking to buy some investment property and Austin has a booming rental market
and has good growth and an industry to support the population. So I spend the first 3 hours of my day with
Ryan Jamison of Keller Williams real estate.
He takes me around North Austin to look at some 4-unit places. The first one was a complete dud, plus the
seller wasn’t around. The second looked
great, and it looked like we could make our 15% ROI. The third we only saw from the outside but
wasn’t really as strong. So with
marching orders given to Ryan to get the deal going, I start planning lunch. Leon and I meet up and head out to Lockhart
which is about 40 minutes outside of Austin.
We have decided to go to this tiny tiny town because it is known for
some of the best bbq in the Austin area and it has two families that duel for the title of
best bbq. This fued is said to go back
to the times of the Montagues’ and the Capulets. So surely this is a better bet then waiting
in a 4 hour line for Franklins. We were
told that you have to get to Franklins before 7 am if you want to eat there
before they run out for the day. By the
way they open at 11:30, or something like that.
I ain’t got time for that ish.
Plus, fueding families!
Awesome! So on our way out of
town, we pick up a six pack of road sodas, because we’re in Texas and that’s
what they do here. I enjoy a couple
(maybe 3) road sodas on the drive out to middle of nowhere. When we arrive into Lockhart, I think there
is like 4 stop lights in total. Maybe
I’m exaggerating, but it’s a small town.
We are trying to decide which BBQ place to go to, and I assume that
either one is gonna be pretty damn good.
So we pick one, and I’m right. We
head into Kreuz BBQ and the first thing I see is this hilarious sign on a door
that says, ‘Vegetarians enter here, Normal folks down the hall.’ You basically sidestep the bbq and go
straight to the sides and dessert. As
you enter the back of the restaurant, you realized that the room you enter is a
giant smoker. All the walls are covered
with a layer of black ash, there are a dozen or so holding areas for the meat
and a chalkboard with the days offering.
I see beef, and pork, and sausage, and something else. I’m confused.
So I ask, if they have brisket.
The guy goes, "Which type of brisket would you like?"
"THERE ARE DIFFERENT TYPES?!!?"
[I know that that there has been a lot of words in caps and exclamation
marks, but I was really excited for all of this.] "Yes, there's a lean cut and a fatty
cut" OH right, I had just learned that the day before. So at this point, Leon and I
start discussing what we should get and about halfway through, I realize that
the guy is already cutting meat and serving it to us. We go for a half pound of the lean and half
pound of the fatty brisket along with some smoked sausage. In my head I’m thinking, ‘Man, that’s not
really a lot, but I won’t be a fatty and order more.’ The guy puts all the meat on some butcher
paper and rips open a bag of white bread and grabs a handful and wraps
everything up with some super special folding technique and hands it to
us. We move out of the smoker room and
into the vegetarian area which is a bunch of sides. Leon decides to pass on the sides and
reluctantly I agree. We grab a table and
dig in. HOLY CRAP. This shit is good. Not just really good, but in the, omg it’s
everything I was hoping it would be, good.
Hands down the best brisket I’ve ever had. And yes, of course, the fatty brisket was the
best. Surprisingly, the bread was an
excellent accompaniment.
After making a lot of moaning noises and awkward faces, we finish our BBQ. I’m sad. No kidding. Sad. Then Leon says, “Cool, lets go to Smitty’s”. What?! Two BBQ places back to back for lunch??!? Awesome! Smitty’s door open directly into a dark hallway that is connected to their smoke room. Everything in this hallways is super black from smoke. There is a few roaring fires at the base of several smokepits. There’s an old dude there tending to the meat. He opens one of the pits to show us hundreds of pounds of meat. We get the fatty brisket, a pork sparerib, and the smoked turkey. The turkey was moist but salty, the sparerib was unimpressive, and the brisket was excellent. Not as good as Kreuz though. So in the family fued battle for BBQ, survey says… Kreuz is the winner. We roll ourselves out of Smitty’s and into the Yaris for some much needed car digesting time.
Its a beautiful day out in Austin which
makes it the perfect time to walk outside and help make us not feel like we
polished of the meat counter at your local Ralphs. We head over to the
Hope Outdoor Gallery, also known as Austin’s graffiti park. Since this is
my first blog post, I’ll take the time to tell you that I LOVE graffiti art.
You see some in almost every major city and some of it is REALLY cool.
I wish I had spent some time in Greece looking for the subway station
that was covered in it. It was so good, Greece’s transit system made an
ad from it. Anyhow, Austin’s graffiti park is basically open to the
public and anyone can come and put up their art. According to Kev-o and
Lindsay, you’re supposed to make a reservation so that there aren’t too many
people tagging up the place at once. This is definitely on of the
situations where pictures are worth a thousand words, and considering I’ve
already written a lot, and this is supposed to be a photoblog with stories, not
a rambleblog with photos, here’s a bunch of the art that I found pleasing.
Cool stuff huh!?
Next stop, Driskill hotel. Its
a super old fancy smansy hotel in downtown Austin that is covered in antlers
and leather couches. The plan, is to go molest as many leather couches as
possible… and drink some whiskey. The execution goes flawlessly, aside
from some old dude laughing at us while we awe in the softness of the hides.
There are a lot of really cool elements to his hotel, you should go check
it out. One of my favorite parts were the lamps at the bar. They
are old Smith and Wesson 6-shooters with a lamp shade on them. Very cool.
If I hadn’t messed up the 6 pictures I took of them then I would show you
the picture here, but I did mess them up. So instead, imagine it.
What do you do when you’re still
full from your double dose of meat lunch nearly 3 hours later? Drink
beer. But you go to a brewery so that you feel fancy about it.
Enter Austin Beerworks. The brewery is pretty famous among the
locals and there was definitely the after work happy hour crowd along with the
– I just was at a conference all week – crowd and the – I have a super cute dog
and want to drink beer with it – crowd – and the all important – I’m just
visiting Austin for two days and am super full cause I ate too much BBQ for
lunch and life is hard – crowd. For you not so sharp readers out there,
that last one is Leon and me. Anyhow, the beer here is pretty good and
there’s a lot of space. You get a free glass with your beer tasting along
with 2 full pours (I think it was 2). After a , couple hours here, Leon
and I left with two glasses, each. Though Leon ended up giving me his
pair, so I have a set of four! So if you ever come over and use one of those
glasses, you can say “Hey! These are the glasses from that trip you took
and wrote that thing about!” Then I’ll say “I told you that you’d say
that!”
We head back to the house to meet up with
Kev-O and Lindsay only to find that Lindsay has resorted to PJ's and binge watching netflix with the cat. After a
few minutes of unsuccessfully trying to convince her to come out with us, Kev-O
returns from martial arts practice to perform his traditional naked run from
the garage to the shower routine. Kev-O
comes out to dinner with us, we head to Curra's Grill where Leon all but
cringes at his food since he is now to the discomfort part of eating tons of
meat and no vegetables for 1.5 days. The food here is mexican, because we're in
texas, and the mexican is supposed to be good here. But I'm from San Diego, so I'm super snobby
about my mexican, which is weird since mexican is no way a fancy food. Needless to say, I wasn't impressed, lol.
No matter, on
to more drinking! (Insert Leon's groan
here) Kev-O is a responsible adult, so
he offers to drive us somewhere but he is headed home. However, I am neither and my stomach doesn’t
hurt (yet), so I push to go out to Austin’s 36th street also known as “Dirty
Six” St. This place is a mess, it makes
Westwood look like Sunset Blvd. Cops shut down 6 full blocks of traffic most
days because there is so much foot traffic.
From what I could tell, 90% of this crowd is University of Texas
students. Go Longhorns! Sike… go Bruins! The other 10% are lookie loo’s or people from
out of town that have come to Austin to party, hard. I think my closet comparison would be Burbon
St. without any of the historic culture and 1,000 times more Texans. I love shit shows, so it was definitely a
sight to see for me. Leon had already
experienced Dirty Sixth St once before, so he wasn’t having any of it, but he
encouraged me to go for it. As much as I
wanted to, it was night 2, and I was still sane enough to realize that I still
had to pace myself. Instead, we went to
a bar at the very end of the area and had a very low key pint of beer and
played some ping pong. Yes, ping pong,
not beer pong. I drag Leon out of that
bar to go find another spot that is more encouraging of overindulging, but by
that time, things were somewhat intimidatingly out of hand everywhere. Girls with no shoes, people sitting on curbs
rubbing the backs of their vomiting friends, and Vegas sized lines for almost
every bar. I give up my hopes for a
party night and settle for people watching.
Queue the next story…
So when we
first arrived at Dirty Sixth we did a walk through so I could get a lay of the
land. About halfway through we ran
across the classic girl trying to take care of her uncooperative drunk girlfriend. It goes something like this.
“Come on, we
have to get you home, you’re way too drunk.”
“No! I don’t
want to leave, I’m totally fine. Why do
you have to be so mean to me?!?”
“You can’t
even stand up, I’m using my own money to put you in an Uber!” (remember these
are poor little college kids)
“No! Let’s go
to another bar”
In the mean
time the friend is chasing the drunk girl like I chase Miles when I’m trying to
corral him back into the house. The
drunk girl does the beautifully classic ‘Not looking where she’s going and
walks off the side walk and almost completely eats shit,’ and some way to old
to be partying dude rushes over to help her.
Ooooooooh the awkwardness… its so
good; I can’t tear my eyes away. So mind
you, this happened as soon as we got here.
2 hours after this, after a couple laps up and down the street, drinks,
ping pong, and a terrible band, we run back into the SAME GIRLS. The routine has not changed except that the
nice friend has lost her patience and is dragging her friend by the arm to the
side streets to call an Uber. They are
totally yelling at each other in college drunk talk. Then the drunk girl grabs a sign post and
refuses to leave with her friend “I’m staying here!”. Exasperated, the nice friend yells out “Fine,
I’m leaving you here! I can’t take it anymore” and walks away. Leon and I are about 20 steps away and I’m
calling our Uber while watching this all go down. I’m fully entertained. The drunk girl ends
her romance with the signpost and begins to take a very zigzagged walk towards the street. At the same time,
our Uber arrives and over shoots us by half an intersection. As soon as the Uber stops, the drunk girl
makes a beeline for our Uber, open the door and gets in! “Ummmm… that’s our Uber isn’t it?” I go over to the passenger window and go,
“Hey man, this is our Uber, this girl isn’t with us.” From the distance, the nice girl is shouting,
“Hey, that’s not ours! You have to get
out!” She comes over to assist us. Her friend is completely oblivious to
anything being said to her. I tell the
driver to just take them home and we’ll pay for the ride, it was hard enough to
get her in an Uber, this way she’d be safe.
The friend is super grateful and offers to Venmo us money to cover the
ride. Hahaha, oh how the times have
changed. We tell her that is totally
cool, cause we aren’t poor college kids.
The driver then interrupts and tells us that he doesn’t want her in the
car cause if she boots then he’s going to charge me $300 since its my ride. The
nice friend assures him that her friend NEVER vomits. He suggests that we all go together and that
he drops them off first, kills the meter, then drops us off so it’s the same
price for us and they get a ride home.
Leon seems to think it’s a good idea and get home sooner than calling
another Uber, though I didn’t get how it helped the drunk girl from throwing up
during the ride. Nevertheless we head on
our way with me in the back with the drunk girl in the middle of the seat. At this point she is rag dolled and I’m
helping her wipe up her own drool. Her
friend and I are talking across her and are cracking jokes. We pose for a pic of the three of us, with
one of us not looking to hot. Its hilarious.
The friend then explains how she didn’t understand how her friend got so
drunk so early. “But don’t worry, she
never throws up,” she says. Then she
recounts that her friend has a stressful day with midterms and may have started
drinking as soon as she got home from class.
Oh the problems of freshman in college. LOL. As we near the end of the
ride, the drunk girl goes “I don’t feel good.”
The driver goes, “What was that?”
The friend assures again “Oh she’s fine, she never throws up”. The drink
girl immediately follows up with “I’m going to throw up” and leans over into my
lap… WTF! So pick her up and point her at her friend, hahaha. The Uber pulls
over and he checks on us in the back seat.
The drunk girl seems to have kept it together and her friend continues to
assure everything. As we get going
again, she starts explaining to the drunk girl that they were almost home and
she just had to keep it together for a few more seconds. Surprisingly we arrive at their place without
anyone losing their cookies. As we do, the
friend tells the drunk girl that all she has to do is make it past their house
mom without looking drunk and she can throw up as much as she wants to in a
great toilet.Hahaha, that’s a great
consolation prize!We drop them off and
drive away as the friend tries to right her disheveled friend.And that, my friends, is my last memory of
Austin.
Friday
February 12, 2016
Early morning
finds us back in the car headed to Lake Charles for lunch and stopping in New
Orleans. But first, brunch in Houston,
because its been like 17 minutes since we’ve last overeaten. We go to The Breakfast Klub who is known for
their chicken and waffles. It’s pretty
much early lunch and there’s a sizeable line, though it moves along
quickly. I go for the baby version of
chicken and waffles and get wings and a biscuit. My first healthy choice of the trip, well at
least I’m counting it as healthy, so leave me alone. The food is great, no disappointment to my
super judgmental palate, so we depart Houston via the massive amount of traffic
and gps confusing dual level freeways.
Houston, I’m not impressed.
Onto Lake
Charles! Why Lake Charles you say? I said the same exact thing. Leon says, Lake Charles has some great
people. That’s about all Lake Charles
has, well that and the best boudin and crackins ever! Lake Charles is super tiny and the only
reason we were there was to meet up with Leon’s friends who were of course
wonderful people. They had invited us
into their “commissary” which served as a base for their food truck and as a
take out window for their gourmet tacos. The restaurant/food truck is called
The Sloppy Taco, and they have very LA’esque gastropubby style tacos which were
very good. But Lake Charles is so small,
that The Sloppy Taco is Lake Charles’ very first taco truck. Its so new that the city didn’t know
what was required to issue the business
license. So basically the restaurant and
the city is just kinda figuring it out as they go, in the meantime, they
operate normally because everyone knows everyone in this city and it doesn’t
really matter whether they have a license or not. Tiny town.
So we hang out, trade stories, and eat free tacos for an hour or so then
we get a tour of the food truck which is awesome! The owner tells us of a story about one of
the first times they took the food truck out.
The countertops didn’t have ledges, which is ideal for a counter that
doesn’t move. However, when said counter
is on wheels and you take a fast left turn, everything that is on that counter
ends up on the floor. Just one of the
many lessons they got to learn being the very first food truck in Lake
Charles. Pretty interesting lunch from a
very unassuming stop along our road trip.
But before we leave the city, Lake Charles has 3 more treats for me and
Leon. The first two being from Famous
Foods. Boodin and cracklins. Boudin (pronounced boo-dan) is a mixture of
rice and heavily seasoned ground pork and liver which is then prepared in
various ways, stuffed into a sausage casing, balled and deep fried, steamed,
pan fried... we had it stuffed into a casing and steamed. This was easily my most surprisingly
impressive and tasty food of the whole trip.
It is definitely on my ”I had this once and I can’t find it well done in
my area so I need to learn how to make it” list. This is a long list. Now, cracklins… Imagine if you took a 2 inch
cut of pork from the skin then deep fried it.
Its basically that. Similar to
chicharon, or lechon, or carnitas but with its own texture. Also very, very, very good. MMmmmm fried pork. We get two styles of cracklins, the original
which is dry, and one that is covered in a salt and vinegar sauce. I prefer them both. Lol.
And now for the finale. A DRIVE
THRU daiquiri barn! Let me clarify, you
drive your car up to a building, you tell them what flavor of frozen alcohol in
a cup you want and they give it to you, the driver, of a car. I guess, if they put tape over the lid, then
its totally legal, because you know, you can’t possibly remove the tape and
drink it. But wait, it gets better, the
tape isn’t even over the straw hole, it just tapes the lid to the cup. So really the tape is there to make sure that
you don’t spill it; that's really what the law is all about, keeping stains off
your clothes. It’s a this point that
Leon tells me that many people in Lake Charles refer to the length of a car ride
in terms of how many beers you can drink in the time it takes to drive
there. “Oh Johns house is only one beer
away, but Kevin’s place is like a 3 beer drive.” So naturally, Leon and I continue to do as
the roman do and drive to NoLa eating boudin, cracklin’s and drinking our
frozen daiquiri’s out of our stain resistant cups.
After a solid
10 hours in the car or so we arrive in New Orleans. Leon’s friend, Orchid, has been so gracious
to set us up in her living room. You’d figure that in New Orleans, the
apartments would be small. This is not
the case with this apartment, 2 big living rooms, 3 bedrooms, a patio, a yards…
much more space than expected, and we are super grateful for it! She later tells us that she’s moving to a
bigger apartment for the same money in just a few weeks, who knew!
Oh, one thing
to note, we are in NoLa the weekend AFTER Mardi Gras. Leon and I totally missed that, but you know,
to be fair, its not like Mardi Gras is a big thing. It’s okay, I’ve been for Mardi Gras, it’s too
insane.
The day’s
driving required an extra few hours of sleep, unless you’re Leon and you get up
at 5 am everyday regardless if you’ve just gone to bed hours ago and changed
time zones and have been drinking and have been behind on sleep for weeks. Which means Leon was out of the house to walk
the streets of New Orleans while I tried to hide from the sun. By the time I got out of the house, Leon had
put 2 miles of tracks down; I had some catching up to do. Insert the New Orleans trolley, $1.25 gets
you a ride down Lafayette. Its slower
than watching paint dry but it’s incredibly nostalgic and I got a crack outta
it. Walking around the neighborhoods of
New Orleans, outside the French Quarter, I noticed that it’s kinda crappy and
it has cemeteries every, like EVERYWHERE.
However, I did get to see so neat stuff, like a couple cats on leashes,
a car with one of those super old school color changing paint jobs, and a rec
center with some socially responsible graffiti which I found super refreshing
and inspiring. Do you know what I did at
my rec center? Basketball, boy scouts,
swimming, bake sales… Do you know what
the kids in New Orleans get to do? Walk
on stilts!!! How cool is that?! It makes sense with all the freakin parades
they have there.
I caught up with
Leon at a coffee shop and we took an Uber to lunch at Tartine which away from
the center of the city; it’s nice to see all that NoLa has. Unfortunately, my hangover decided to make a
late morning appearance which means I had to pass on the insanely great French
food. They had a tart bean soup which
was surprisingly good considering it was cold.
They also are famous for this baked brioche dish thing that has an egg
cooked into it. Leon didn’t get it so I
don’t have a picture, but luckily there are plenty of pictures on yelp. It’s definitely a dish that’s going on my
list of things to make.
With Leon
fed, and my hangover in full swing, we set off to walk this neighborhood. We find our way to the outside of the
neighborhood and end walking on coarse rocks along railroad tracks because
apparently sidewalks weren’t invented yet.
Have you ever walked on or near train tracks? It’s a no win situation, the rocks are
impossible to walk in and they hurt my feet and the railroad ties are too short
for a normal stride and too long to skip ties.
It makes something that we take for granted, like walking, and makes it
stupid difficult. It’s pretty much like
my feet are saying, “Hey! Pay attention unless you wanna trip and fall on your
face!” However, Leon had a
plan for walking on this stupid route and we hit a paved walkway and climbed a
little hill. Viola! We’re on the
levies! If you’ve never seen one, they
are basically a trapezoidal wall. Pretty
good design that distributes the load of oncoming flooding water in a way that
doesn’t push the wall over like a springboard.
Makes me wonder how exactly the levies broke when New Orleans flooded,
well one of the many times it flooded.
This one looked pretty solid and I couldn’t even imagine how it could
break. Maybe this was the upgraded levy, maybe I should’ve googled this topic
before blogging about how I didn’t know anything about it, and maybe I should
pay more attention to writing this blog instead of watching movies on the
airplane. Anyhow, I do remember signing
that Led Zepplin song that goes, ‘When the levy breaks, have no place to go…’
Some please tell me what that song is.
At this moment it becomes extremely evident that not having internet on
an airplane (or being too cheap to pay for it) is going to be problematic to
looking up facts. Back to the
story. So the levy, well at least this
section of it, seems to be Nola version of a running/walking trail. It’s a good place to see the local residents
get their fitness on. It almost makes me
feel better, if fact, I feel about 5% better.
Woohoo! Not really. So here’s the thing about the Nola versions
of a running/walking trail, it’s really still just a levy, which means that
there’s no way on or off the levies aside from walking right off through the
grass. What does a levy do? Keep out water? What happens when water is kept out? It
puddles at the boundary. What happens
when water puddles over grass? It makes
mud. What happens when Rob and Leon get
to said mud? We jump over the mud. Correction, Leon jumps over the mud, Rob
fails epically at jumping over the mud and goes two feet ankle deep in mud in
his brand new white leather Polo shoes.
Grrrrrrr. Sad Rob. Now I have a hangover and crazy muddy white
leather shoes. Next mission, find
someplace to wash my shoes; CVS to the rescue, and at the same time we double
up and get a couple bottles of water, tums, and pepto. Clearly we’ve been eating and drinking and
we’re not 22 anymore. With kinda clean
shoes, a belly full of water, and a pocket full of rainbow colored disks of
chalk, we head to attack my hangover the old fashioned college way, drink it
away. Luckily we are right next to
Lafayette College and what do college towns have a lot of? Bars. Thankfully we walk right into a bar sign
that has something funny written on it, and that’s enough of a reason to go
into Brunos. Our bartender turns out
be a hilarious guy and on top of that, he makes a killer bloody mary. In fact,
he takes an olive, pushes out the pimento, and hand stuffs it with fresh
horseradish then puts that along with a normal olive on a toothpick and dresses
our bloody mary with it. He then tells
us that we have to eat both olives at the same time, he calls it a simultaneous
orgasm. Actually he just made that up on
the spot and told us to make up our own name and to not steal his. He then told
us that he liked to do idiotic things like name his dog a Japanese word that
means dog food. Entertaining guy.
One of Leon’s buddies meets us at Brunos and takes us to meet up with a few other guys at Bulldogs. He drives an immaculate black Audi S5. Now I’m not an Audi fan, mainly because I
bleed BMW, but the S series has some serious poise on the streets. I’d never own an Audi voluntarily, but I was
excited to be in the back of an S5, especially a manual transmission one. The bar we went to, had a bunch of outside
seating where we proceeded to meet a bunch of people and down a few pitchers of
beer. After all that recovering, we
rebuilt our appetite. Locals suggestion:
Superior Seafood, Oysters, and crawfish.
Great quality, super affordable.
The crawfish definitely has a different quality than the Boiling Crab
style. The flavor of the crawfish is
much more sweet and prevalent in Nola preparation and the spice is a late
breaking back of the throat spice.
Really changes my expectation of really good crawfish, but I still
wouldn’t turn down Boiling Crab.
Now back to
the house to recoup and to gather some recruits for our night shenanigans,
however Orchid had a tough day so instead, we ate
again. Which is cool with me! So we went to a super locals only spot, Cajun
Seafood, which is outside of the French Quarter, naturally. Lemme explain this place to you. It’s pretty much like a Chinese takeout
place, except instead of shitty kung pao chicken, you have crawfish, gumbo,
jambalaya, boudin, and whatever creole delights you may desire. But really, its got zero polish, hence I had
high confidence that it was really good.
An indeed it was spectacular.
Super accessible prices, really fast service, huge selection, and some
serious locals. So Leon got more
crawfish, Orchid got crawfish and gumbo, and I got gumbo and another fried
oyster Po Boy, cause I needed a Po Boy that I didn’t drop on the ground.
Surprisingly,
we were able to make it out of the house instead of giving in to food
coma. Our destination, Twelve Mile
Limit, where more of Leon’s friends were having a little party. However, this little party was pretty
unique. You know how when you to go a
wedding, and the DJ is complete and utter shit?
Where you hear the same 20 songs regardless of the venue or the couple;
the chicken dance, unforgettable, the Macarena, YMCA, Celebration, We are
Family, and every single damn disco song ever.
So this party had the same exact DJ, except completely the opposite. Basically, it’s every
70s/80s/early 90s song that everyone knows but DOESN’T suck. It really hard to explain, but pretty much
with every song, I go, “I know this song!
I haven’t heard this at a dance venue before! It’s awesome!” I guess I only have my parents to thank for
me knowing all these random but great songs.
Even better, everyone was full on dancing to it and not like polite
dancing, more like end of the night and I don’t give a damn who sees me
dancing. It was great, and there were a
couple REALLY good dancers and several terrible dancers, both who I love
watching. Though I did watch for a while,
Leon’s friends eventually got me come and dance, which really didn’t take a
whole lot of effort. After about 5
Negroni’s and dancing solo for a couple hours since Leon decided to, ahem,
entertain different company, I decided to head back to Frenchman Street. Then, after an hour or so, I realized it was
already 3 something am and decided, you know what’s easier than getting up at 6
am and driving to Memphis? Not going to
bed AT ALL! So with the assistance of
the French Quarter, I managed to get into enough trouble to stay out till it
was time to leave NoLa. Yeay! Good times.
Sunday
February 14, 2016
As soon as I
get into the car to drive north I completely zonk out… for like 3 or 4
hours… thanks for driving Leon! Seriously, the only reason I woke up is
because I had to pee super bad. As soon
as I finally decided to participate in our road trip again, I realized that we
were not on a highway. Leon was told to
get off the freeway and take the road less traveled which took us along the
Mississippi River. Oh man, what a
treat. Everywhere you could see was a
vast nothingness except for farmland and the occasional house tending to that
land. Once in a while we would get near
one of the many outlets of the Mississippi, but most of the time it was just
various greenness everywhere. Oddly, we
run into a tiny tiny town, which is more just like a neighborhood and we stop
so I can pee. We had parked right next
to this old ass house that had been abandoned for some time. I thought this was weird since there were
occupied houses on either side and across the street. The decision? Let’s go inside! You know that Eddie Murphy stand up special,
Delirious? He talks about the difference
between white and black people, referring to the movie Poltergeist. Go watch it.
Basically, he says black people
don’t like ghosts. Of course, Eddie
Murphy back in the day was a comedic genius so it more entertaining than
that. ANYHOW, this is exactly what I was
thinking about when we were exploring this house. Leon was not about it at all. LOL.
But the house was a wreck, the stairs had fallen apart, the kitchen
floor had fallen through and the fridge was down by my knees, it was crazy and
super creepy. The outside of the house
was covered in overgrown vine and had the whole horror movie effect. I’m super glad we saw it during the day cause
I wouldn’t have been able to man up and go inside if it was dark out. After exploring, we went across the street to
look at the banks of one of the Mississippi River outlets. I guess everyone on the other side of the
street had their own boat dock. Super
fancy and it made for some great landscape photos.
After a few
more hours of driving and several games of would you rather live here or in
that house, we arrived in Clarksdale which is home to one of the some of the
last Juke Joints, like Red’s Blues Club and Ground Zero Blues Club (co-owned by
Morgan Freeman). The clubs were all
closed while we were there for lunch but they were definitely still in use. Another great story about Clarksdale, is that
its home to the Devil’s Crossroads. This
is where Robert Johnson was said to have sold his soul to the devil in return
for acquiring crazy blues guitar skills and touting him as the man who invented
the blues. It’s referenced in a bunch of
songs, but you’ll probably know Crossroads by Cream (led by Eric Clapton).
Right next to the Devil’s Crossroads is Abe’s
BBQ. It was a little dive bbq place
filled with oddly fat white people who seem to all be coming in after
church. The food there was
terrible. The only exception was there
‘tamale’ which really was a tamale smothered in chili, so really it was more
interesting than it was terrible.
Anyhow, skip it.
It a quick
hour or so to our next stop, Oxford, where they make words, and vocabulary, and
dictionaries, and stuffy shoes, and stuff… not really. We stopped in town to see someone who Leon
knew at a record shop, End of All music.
We chat up his friend, get some suggestions, and do some shopping for
some authentic local blues on vinyl. I
also make note of a pair of sweet Grados headphones that go on my xmas wish
list and a Green Day – Dookie album on tape, limited edition print of 200. Being that its Sunday in Oxford, pretty much
everything was closed. After a quick
drink at some place on main street, we head on out to do more driving.
We finally
land in Memphis where we get to our first airbnb, the host is super nice but
super ditzy. She had asked me what time
I’m coming into town like 6 different times.
We spend all of 30 minutes at the apartment for a shower and to drop our
bags and get some advice about where to go in Memphis. Apparently there’s where the tourists go,
Beale St, and it where the locals go, downtown.
Also, she tells us that Memphis is super not safe and not to walk
ANYWHERE. Fun fact. Don’t move to Memphis. So the plan is, check out Beale St for a
little bit, then to Gus’s for fried chicken, then over to downtown to go rub
elbows with the locals. Beale St is
definitely touristy, kinda like a really clean and small version of the Las
Vegas strip, minus the hotels, and the casinos, so really it’s just a lot of
neon signs, but you CAN drink on the street!
We walk into the first door that has music coming out of it and it’s a
big place with two sections. The front
of the room is a decently large stage with a 4 piece blues band on stage. They. Are. Good. Its drums, bass, guitar, and vocals. They have tons of soul and carve out a deep
groove. The set ends with a badass bass
solo where the guy plays the bass with a soft mallet. But that part was really just a gimmick. I got a video of the last half of the video
but really the first half was amazing, just some awesome slapping and
plucking. It literally brought me to
tears, kinda the same way I feel whenever I see the UCLA marching band march
past me at the Rose Bowl. After the set
ends, we go 3 doors down to the next door with live music. It’s a much smaller place with like 5
tables. There’s a tall dude with a
matching seersucker outfit: jacket, pants, vest, shoes, and hat. Leon is impressed. I’m confused.
The band is 4 piece band but the vocalist has a case of harmonicas, A
CASE, as in multiple, many multiples.
This may be my favorite band of Memphis, mostly because the harmonica
player was so good and the format was completely bluesy. Okay okay okay… great music, check, now let’s
eat!!!!
Gus’s Fried chicken is Memphis’s
most reviewed restaurant. Its fried
chicken, and they do it well. Like really well. Like, OMG, can I have some now please, I’m
sooooo hungry, not really, but that fried chicken was really good. Along with that we got fried okra, fried
green tomatoes, and pecan pie (not fried, I think).
Sufficiently
full of wonderful fried chicken, we head downtown to go rub elbows with the
locals. The first stop is The
Lafayette. At this point we are reminded
that it’s Valentine’s Day and every table is set with red hearts and red roses…
randomly awkward. Never mind that, the
band is some ridiculous 12 piece band with a bunch of brass and a couple
sax-a-ma-phones. The leader is on the
piano and reminds me of a John Mayer type.
They have a great big band sound and they jam out hard. Unfortunately we got there at the very end of
their set and only hear their last song.
No worries, on to the next club.
Except, that everything was closed, everything. Leon finds a bar that supposed to have a
blues DJ and we head there, Top Records.
It’s actually a really cool venue where there’s a lot of great band;
however tonight, it just a dj playing some weird music, but there are a few
people there that apparently are regulars and met up to dance. Not just any dancing, but pop and
locking. So cool to watch. But without the proper energy, Leon and I
decide to call it a night and head back to the apartment. As we scramble into the building through the
pouring rain, I realize that we never got a key to the apartment, only an access key to the building door. We
spend about 30 minutes trying to get a hold of our host and end up having to
uber down to her on Beale St just to get the key. Yeah, fun stuff.
Monday,
February 15th, 2016
Another super
early morning on the road as we head out for a super long day with 2 more
stops. The first, Lynchburg, Tennessee
where we are just about 30 minutes late for a tour of the Jack Daniels
distillery so we just walk around for a bit before heading downtown to Miss
Mary Bobo’s Boarding House for the most authentic southern meal I’ve ever had,
twice. I first came to Lynchburg back in
2002 with my AIAA team from senior year at UCLA which included Brandon and
Jeff, who I still hang out with today. I
have been wanting to come back since. So
the deal with this place is that you don’t order your meal, they just bring out
what they have. You also share a table
with a dozen other people. We happen to
share our table with a couple people that used to work for Boeing/McDonald
Douglas. Small world. Anyhow, we had corn bread, meatloaf, fried
chicken, black eyed peas, cabbage stuffing casserole, fried okra, mashed
potatoes, sweet pepper relish, and of course, sweet tea. It was everything I remembered it to be. I highly suggest that you go visit, or you
can come over since I bought the cookbook. :D
Just a couple
hours up the road is our next stop, Nashville, Tennessee where we find
super-secret parking at the public library for way cheap. We walk to Tootsies which is at the very
beginning of Broadway and is a
Nashville country music icon. Tootsies
is a 3 story club with a different band and style of music on every floor. The bottom floor is most rowdy while the top
floor was pretty laid back. Naturally,
we set up shop on the bottom floor. So
what I noticed about all three of these bands, they all didn’t have drums, and
they all weren’t very good, even though we were in downtown Nashville which
surprised me.
Okay, one more place
before we go. We go across the street to
a ribs place called Rippy's, because well, I wanted to try the ribs in Nashville. Hey Leon, wanna split a few ribs? They only sell full racks? Yeah, sure, we just ate a ton of food 2 hours
ago, let’s eat more. Lucky for us, this
restaurant also has a live country band.
This one, way better, but also, no drums… what’s up with that?!? The band had a little bit of country but was
more mainstream top 40. Moments later,
we had a pile of rib bones from our only rack of baby back ribs of the
trip. These things went like meat
lollipops. Super tender, really
flavorful, really good, however they didn’t really have a lot to them. It was like the meat was cotton candy, that tasted like pork, really
weird.
At this point
we’re really late for our arrival in Louisville. Back into the car and we start motoring
north. So far into the trip we’ve had
great luck with weather, but Mother Nature still had the ying to her yang and delivered
us a full storm on the remainder of the drive.
There was a section of the drive that was really curvy, downhill, 3
lanes, and crowded with semi-trucks.
Have you ever driven next to a semi in the rain? Basically it makes seeing, impossible. It’s a good thing that we haven’t been
driving all day long and aren’t super tired, oh wait. Well at least we haven’t had a few drinks
throughout the day to tire ourselves out, oh wait. I mean, at least we didn’t eat a TON of heavy
food today that is making us sleepy, OH WAIT.
So since I’m the one driving, I say to Leon, “Man, I really can’t see.
This is really scary.” Leon’s reaction
to this is to encourage me to push through is and his version of supporting me
is turning it into a scene out of a movie where we are both screaming our heads off in Hollywood-esque terror as he yells at me to go faster. Meanwhile, I’m half laughing, half screaming,
half scared shitless as my one and a half selves can see only one tenth of the
road and I try my best to pass between two semis at 90 mph since they are both
going 85 mph. Spoiler alert, we
survived.
After only a
few more minutes of driving, we cross the state line into Kentucky and the rain
is replaced by snow. Lots and lots of
snow. We stop at an empty gas station to
fill up and change our soiled underwear.
It looks like this is the first snow in a while, or at least that this
storm decidedly changed the landscape of the area, well this gas station. Everything was completely white and untracked. There was this car in the lot
that got into a huge wreck and was just parked in the lot, or someone hit it
while it was parked there. It had broken
windows that were just filling up with falling snow. Made it scene look very dramatic, you’d think
that I would’ve taken a picture of it and put it here, but I didn’t, so I
can’t. However, I do have these pictures
of Leon in the kiddie’s race car ride at the gas station which are equally
sensational. Time to exit the gas
station with a perfectly executed hand brake U-Turn in the snow. Hot Damn!
As we settle
into our 3rd story Airbnb apartment which has an outdoor staircase suitable for
a 3rd world country, Leon find us a live band to see. We head over to The New Vintage just in time to catch
the last two songs of the Jessica Lee Wilkes Band. They are a great Rock band with Jessica at
bass and a very sultry lead vocals, drum, guitar, and an awesome tenor sax
player who is from Panama. The two songs
we hear are good enough for Leon and I to each buy a copy of her record, which skips
on my record player since it is warped.
After a couple of drinks there and chatting with the band, we head next
door to another famous live music venue called, Zanzabar.This place is really cool because they have a
bunch of pinball machines along with a great stage, which was empty
tonight.Luckily, they had a bar that
served alcohol and a change machine for pinball.Needless to say, we had enough alcohol to
warrant good decisions like going to white castle, buying a box of 50 white
castle cheeseburgers, posing like an idiot with said cheeseburgers, then
attempting to each all of them.So yeah,
that was the rest of that night.
Tuesday, February 16th, 2016
The next
morning started with the first, and only, healthy meal of the trip at
Gralehaus. It was not really healthy
though, but it had veggies, topped with an egg.
Amazing, and it didn’t make me feel sleepy, or sluggish, so yeay for
veggies!!! LOL. And because we did have
something healthy to start, the remainder of our day was ripe for distillery
tours!
If you didn’t know, Louisville is
Bourbon Country. There’s Jim Beam, Knob
Creek, Buffalo Trace, Woodford reserve, Four Roses, Barton's, Willet, Jefferson's, Wild Turkey, Maker's Mark, Old Forester, and many many more. We started with
Buffalo Trace. I didn’t realize this but
this distillery is also responsible for the famed Pappy Van Winkles, along with
Blantons, Eagle Rare, Sazerac Rye, W. L. Weller (which is the reject barrels
from Pappy Van Winkles), and several more.
The grounds of the distillery itself are expansive and the tour is
definitely worthwhile. You learn a lot
about the history of the distillery and how they make their bourbons. There’s also a giant recipe for Colonel
Blanton’s Burgoo which is what Colonel Blanton and his men would make everytime
they stayed up all night when they were at war.
I’ve been meaning to try it. We
also raced over to Woodford reserve to catch the very last tour of the day
thanks so some serious charming of the ticket lady. Woodford is a much more formalized tour and
everything is very very pretty. I’d
definitely go back to Buffalo Trace, I liked how in depth the tour was. We got to go the bottling room, we got to see
them open a barrel, we got to seem the bottles being packed and marked
individually, there was a barrel crossing… pretty thorough tour. Unfortunately, the rest of the distilleries
were pretty spread out so we didn’t get to go to any others.
So we headed back to Louisville for some
craft cocktails at Garage Bar. Its motif
was fun and done fairly well. The
selection of brown liquor was outstanding.
For dinner, we went next door to get some Hot Fried Chicken. I love hot things, so I order the spiciest
chicken they have. I get the warning
from the register guy, “It has ghost peppers and cayenne” I’m like, “Yeay, yeah, I love spicy
food.” Basically I got my ass handed to
me. I’m pouring tears as I try to eat
the first piece. It’s so hot that my
whole mouth goes numb and I bail on my second piece of chicken. What a waste.
After
recovering from that blow to my pride and tastebuds, we head out to Stevie
Ray’s Blues Bar where Leon and I sign up for open blues night. I play a couple songs on the drums and Leon
gets on the mic to sing some Stevie Ray Vaughn.
Yeah, we played live on stage a at a blues club in Louisville, no biggie. It was awesome! And also, I need to practice a fast swing
beat.
We end the night at some bar. Now,
I really shouldn’t tell this story, but it’s too good so I have to share. So we are drinking at this bar, and we end up
talking to a couple girls. One is super
bitter at life, and the other is really drunk.
The drunk girl basically picks up Leon and he goes home with her. HOWEVER, like 2 blocks into the drive she’s
swerving all over the road and Leon has to grab the wheel to keep her from
hitting a parked car. All the while,
this girl is super all over Leon and Leon is just trying to get her to pull
over and take a walk with him to sober up.
He finally manages to get her out of the car where she throws up. He puts her in her own passenger seat and
gets her to unlock her phone. Leon
figures out where she lives and drives her home. The then fills me in on what’s going on and I
redirect my Uber to go pick him up. I’m
passed out in the back of the Uber when suddenly the door opens and Leon gets
in. He’s like, man that was super
sketchy, I just left the girl in her car in her driveway and I’ve been hiding
in the neighborhood trying to figure out what car you were in. I just took a chance on this car hoping that
I wouldn’t scare anyone. I’m super dazed
and have almost no clue what’s going on other than the fact that I’ve been in
an Uber for almost an hour running all around Louisville.
Wednesday, February 17th, 2016
Our last stop
for the trip is Chicago where we fly out of.
We get to downtown Chicago and Leon introduces me to Portillos Italian
beef dipped sandwiches. I was confused
why we weren’t getting deep dish pizza, but Portillos was pretty damn
good. Get it dipped in au jus with no
cheese. With a couple hours to kill
before our flight, we head to Cloudgate for some pictures of the Bean and a
brisk walkthrough of the Chicago Museum of Art to see my favorite painting, A
Sunday Afternoon at La Grande Jatte by George Seurat. For good measure, Leon and I very loudly
ogled at a nearby blue structure near the Bean at Cloudgate to see if we could
confuse some people as to what was the real attraction was. It didn’t work very well.
And that
about wraps up the trip! Overall a long
time coming and very satisfying. Leon
and I decided our next road trip would be of the deep south where we would go
to the marching band competition of all the southern schools.
I finished my first post!!! I promise subsequent posts will be shorter, cause this took a long time!
