Category Archives: Travel

June 6, 2013

Journey to the End, Day 3: Who Beside You?

By Drew Jacob

And after the End, what is it like? How do you get back?

One of the magic places on the way back.

One of the magic places on the way back.

The Levee

The last leg of the Mississippi River was behind us. We had biked all the way to the end, made offerings in a lonely place, ignored a sage perhaps; we were done. And it was dark, or damn near.

We planned to camp on the levee. I have written before about the problems with illegal camping, but down here was different—we were far from any farm, any house, no one was bothered, no one could find us.

We could lie where we pleased.

What pleased was the nearest, flattest, driest, quietest place we could find, with “nearest” leading the compromise. It becomes a scramble when the sun is low—I remember these days well; Jessica was about to be initiated.

Venice is built outside the levee. We crossed back over to the protected faux-basin of lower Louisiana. We took a side road that followed the levee, a high rampart above us. I spotted what looked like a service road and we went to investigate.

Below the levee’s crown was a flat spot. It was protected from view, it was grassy, and it was high up—zero danger of flooding and little of gators. The breeze helps reduce mosquitoes, though that’s a joke: you’re in a swamp, son.

We hauled our gear up by hand, to lighten the bikes. Then we hauled the bikes.

As with an air pump earlier, we had never before used the tent we’d brought. It’s actually an ingeniously designed piece of gear, but in sweaty dusk by lamplight and ear-buzz I would have welcomed something a little less ingenious, a little more familiar.

The tent went up.

Sweatbox

Inside was a nylon oven. Sweat threw itself from every pore. Itchy legs, dirty clothes, fever skin, exhausted limbs. Rationed water.

I got ready for bed.

I looked over at Jess. “How are you doing, Broome?”

She looked straight ahead. “Give me thirty minutes.”

It was the voice that brings men ulcers: the am-not-happy voice of a woman. But she was self contained. She neither complained, nor blamed, not pretended to be well: she asked for thirty minutes.

I nodded, said nothing, and gave her the time.

This is miserable, I knew. Not the trip as a whole—the trip I adore. But there is a certain malarial fatigue that happens when you race the sun to camp. You arrive exhausted, stressed and worried; you must then do physical work by little light in unsavory conditions. When at last you get into your cocoon you’re wired but deflated. You tremble, you toss around wishing you could sleep.

In 1,900 miles I had many nights like this. I never grew to like them, but I grew to manage them.

The person beside me was experiencing her very first one.

Thirty Minutes

I’ve been reading a book by Ed Stafford, the first (known) person to walk the entire length of the Amazon (thanks Sharla!). The biggest barrier to Ed’s trip, every day, was tension with traveling partners: guides, friends, locals. Learning to handle the psychological and social aspect of the adventure was far more critical to his survival than knowing how to deal with snakes, spiders or caimans.

Likewise, as I prepare to kayak the Gulf of Mexico, I’ve spoken with a wonderful doctor who’s done the same. His words about travel partners echo Ed’s perfectly.

And that was my only concern with bringing Jess (or anyone) along: we get along great, but how about under pressure?

The answer, it turns out, was not bad.

Jess calmly listed her thoughts in no particular order. Thoughts like:

  • She did not want to give up if camping out was important to me.
  • She was hot and miserable.
  • She wanted to be able to say she had camped on the levee.
  • She knew she could force herself to remain in the tent all night, uncomfortable as it was.
  • She was worried that if she slept poorly our final day of biking would suffer.

I listened to all points and suggested we go to a motel.

On the way we got lost in the fog.

Checking the phone (map) I turned us around. Jess asked me several questions: how we missed our road, why we needed to turn, how sure I was, etc. These are reasonable questions. Finally I had to answer:

“Right now my body’s tired. When my body’s tired my mind gets tired. I really need to not answer questions right now.”

She understood and we continued in silence, successfully reaching the motel.

After coffee and showers, I said: “Jess, I feel like we both did something mature tonight.”

She nodded: “I’m really proud of us.”

Ferries! (I did not make us late.)

Ferries! (Me not making us late.)

Tail Wind

All of that was the night of Day 2. Day 3 deserves little mention, because it was so simple.

We had a tail wind. We had different priorities for pace and schedule: fellow adventurers warn that this is the biggest source of contention. To her, we had reached my goal and the mission was over; get home quick. To me, we’d found one magic place at the end of the river and there were many more to discover.

We worked this out, doing mature things.

We pedaled 80 miles in a grand day, sailing on an 8 mph tail wind and strong legs. We crossed three ferries so we could follow the prettiest roads; in Algiers we faced our toughest traffic, conditions that left me with a pounding heart and an iron grip on my bike. Jessica handled it with a cool head.

We also crossed this bridge:

Highway 407 Bridge

“Report a Problem.” Problem: THIS BRIDGE!

After a rain shower and a gated dead end we reached the Dry Dock bar and restaurant (site of our first date) beside the Algiers Ferry. (For non-New Orleanians, that means one ferry ride from home.) There, no one cared about the miles we had gone or the dangers we had faced. We were just two more people with too many requests for our overworked waitress. Her adventure occluded our own.

Beer, salads, and too much food; an oddly comfortable ferry ride; a jaunt through the Quarter; coming full circle at Rogue Chateau; and 3 more miles back to Jess’ place for champagne and cookies.

This is the first leg of the Great Adventure. The first leg of a dream, a prophetic dream come true; the first leg of wresting Fate, of choosing Fate, of lightly holding Fate.

This is what it is to seek the heroic life.

This is the last part of a series. You can also read Day 1, Day 2 and reflection 2.5.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Adventure, Bicycling, New Orleans, The Great Adventure, The Heroic Life, Travel

May 29, 2013

End of the World 2.5: But Where is Spekkio?

By Drew Jacob

Art by E-M-R.

I grew up on these stories. Stories of journeys. Now I’ve made my own. 1,800 miles by my own muscles: I’m nowhere near the final step, but it sure is a start.

So with one brave heart at my side I had made the final 80 miles to the end of the river and the end of the world. Here were were, with the Great River Road vanishing into a heap of gravel before us, and the entire length of the Mississippi behind us. The “southernmost point of Louisiana,” and nothing around but marsh, backwater and the lonely towers of industry.

It’s a spooky world, southern Louisiana, because everything is alive and no one’s home. You can go hours and see nobody, stand at refinery gates at see nobody at all.

And I thought, this being the final little stretch of road, the least important length of asphalt in the whole state, that maybe we’d see no one here, either.

I was mistook.

That one man was there, one man smoking his cigarette, sitting on a stack of logs. A truck was nearby, also a boat: he was in no hurry to go.

Smoke Break

Now here is what I thought as I approached him:

What is he doing here?

I wonder if we’re disturbing him. I wonder if he’s going to disturb us. 

Well, we came all this way and we’re not stopping now.

He probably thinks it’s pretty stupid, two kids coming here on bikes. He must work around here. Here we are, doing nothing but acting like tourists, and he has a real job. 

Must seem like a pretty strange vacation.

“How’s it going?” I asked. He nodded his head.

Gaspar

In Chrono Trigger, when you reach the End of Time there is nothing but a few cobble stones, a lamp post and one old man.

That man says very little but he is Gaspar, an ancient sage.

I didn’t realize till days after I left the End of the World.

The purpose of my quest is to meet the gods. Reaching the end of the Mississippi was a milestone—and in that apocalyptic place, it seemed we truly were at a nexus beyond the universe itself.

What if the gods were waiting for me? Do they ever take human form? I always presume, learned philosopher that I am, that such things are metaphors: they speak in the heart, but they do not appear in the flesh.

Why am I so sure?

I had to admit that it seemed strange for a worker to be taking his smoke break in the middle of a bayou; that he seemed awfully stoic and that I completely ignored him.

Whom had I just ignored?

Prophets

I have no particular reason to believe that the smoking man was a deity, nor a 12,000 year old magus.

But a thought occurs.

Out of all the workers on all the refineries, how many go out to lonely wild places of an evening?

How many go not home, not to the bar, but to a dead end road in perfect silence?

I wonder if he comes to the End of the World daily, or only once in a while. I wonder what he thinks about. What in that rugged, buzzing, croaking backwater calls to him—and how does he answer the call?

The thought occurs, days too late, that although he was perhaps mortal flesh-and-blood he was also different, thoughtful, unique. I talk to so many strangers, and I forget most of them. This man was memorable. I barely said hello.

I no longer remember if he was white or black. By the time we left Jess says he was in the truck, but I remember him still on the logs.

I know nothing about him, but I wished I had stopped to ask.

9 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Adventure, The Great Adventure, Travel

May 24, 2013

Day 2: The End of Time

By Drew Jacob

Blocked.

The End of the World is exactly like the Zone.

Not the End of the World in New Orleans, that strip of land for late night parties at the city border. No, in the marina of Venice, Louisiana – the final city of the Mississippi River – there is a sign.

“End of the World: 1/2 mile.”

We were at the end beyond the end.

And it looks it. We had taken our time that morning in the motel, we had drifted merrily along the road, fighting a stiff headwind and stopping for scenery and pictures. We hadn’t found restaurants so we sat under a live oak near Buras, LA. There we had apples and almond butter.

But by the Venice area we were hungry. It was late afternoon. A man at the gas station suggested we try the marina; otherwise the gas station itself was the last hope for food.

Cautiously, we bicycled into Venice. That city is past the levee, a lamb on the altar of Flood. We biked up and over the final dyke of southern Louisiana. From that small height, we had a view.

A view of four dozen smoke stacks, twice as any metal-girder towers, a hundred proud cranes at odd angles; I don’t know how many ships.

Use your imagination, friend, picture it: an entire small twentieth century nation, washed hurdy gurdy onto the shore of the Gulf, clinging to Louisiana’s postern with the promise of shrimp, crawfish and oil.

We entered in silence. The road seemed never to go through a town, rather to hint at one. Every side-lane could have been the route to a village, or simply a delivery road for semis. There was no one to ask, no human – only the raptors of industry. Deserted lots, deserted roads, empty boats, empty hangars. One road had a sign: Chevron. Another: Haliburton.

We saw one black fisherman, in this lonely place. I wondered if he was a phantom. The phantom told us the road to the marina. There, he promised, was food.

Well there are two marinas in Venice and both have a restaurant. They are on opposite sides of a harbor, and the near side was closed. The owner sold us a beer, but food was lacking; it took 90 minutes to get around to the other side.

There, at last, we ate. What should have been lunch was by now dinner, and when the last deep-fried platter was cleared away the sky was gold.

It was time to do our job.

Where is the end of my journey? One small catch: the road curves away from the river. That means there are two “end” points to choose from:

  1. The end of the actual road, which far from the river. You have to go past town to reach it.
  2. The farthest part of the main Mississippi channel that can be reached by foot. This is off the road before town.

I wanted to visit both.

First the end of the road. We turned left on the main road, the last jaunt of the whole Great River Road I’ve followed for a year. Much of it is gravel, and we walked the bikes. We forded a mud pit, then rode cautiously through a lake: yes, we did. The water floods the road often, there, and is infected with snakes, gators and a variety of chemicals. Once, I scared a fish on the road. Not long after we saw a gator—he was already dead.

Flooded

The flooded road.

This stretch also had more fishermen, these ones less like phantoms but just as quiet as we passed.

So what is the End of the World like? The road becomes dry again, then smoothly paved. It thinks it’s going somewhere. A gated entrance to a refinery. Fire hydrants. As if some movie director thought up a parody of the end of the universe and had it installed in the swamp.

Facing into the setting sun, we approached the mistaken sign, the sign that welcomes you to the “southernmost point in Louisiana.” It isn’t, but it’s as far as the road will take you. The road goes past the sign about 100 yards. Tar-smeared logs to the left; on the right, bayou.

And one heavyset man, smoking his cigarette at the End of Time.

“How’re you doing?” I asked.

He nodded his head.

Jessica at the End of the World.

Jessica at the End of the World.

Jessica and I sat on a log retaining wall, dangling our legs into swamp. It was perfect, the perfect picture of the End. Just at sunset, everything bathed in bronze, dragonflies around us, intense green river plants, living brown water, the stinging reek of tar, an ancient boat parked in the reeds.

To adventure is to make love to the world.

We had our moment, we took our pictures. This, to me, was the end of the first leg of the Great Adventure; this was what I needed to see. But all was not done, all not complete. I am a priest, you know, and I had a certain rite to perform.

When we biked away from the End, the heavyset man was still there, his smoke was still there, he watched us go, he watched us go away.

Back through the flooded road, back across the mud pit, back over the gravel, past one marina, past two marinas, all the fishermen driving away—driving away to where?—shrimp boats on trailers driving in, industry smoking in silence, a city that isn’t a city.

Back past Venice and back over the levee.

I returned to the bend in the road, the last bend in the whole road. We had biked past it that afternoon like it was nothing, and it is. I followed a track of gravel, weeds and barbed wire to edge of the river, the final reachable River if you haven’t got a boat.

After that she meanders some tens of miles through islands, coastal marsh and backwaters till she gives herself to the sea.

But here, she is river, she is the goddess Mississippi. I approached that final point, a dear friend watched as I knelt down, I placed myself in her water and I spoke to her.

Her source is a lake shaped like a triskele; I once swam to its center and offered a triskele. That was 10 months ago. Now I have followed her every inch, I have crossed her many times, I have slept on her bank, I have bathed in her water, I have eaten her food.

“May you be blessed.”
Offering made by the Wandering Dragon.

Offering made by the Wandering Dragon.

I gave her the offering that I brought. It was hand prepared by the Wandering Dragon. Thank you my brother, thank you.

One stubborn fisher watched as I threw it in, one fisher and one brave woman. And the gods, maybe the gods, did the gods watch too?

Plunk.

So it ended. So the first leg of the Great Adventure ended.

But there is much more to tell.

Journey to the End of the World 096

Part 3 will be up soon. Please share this on Facebook or wherever you like to share online. Comments are appreciated.

8 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Adventure, Bicycling, The Great Adventure, Travel

May 15, 2013

I’ll keep walking, walking at the end of the world

By Drew Jacob

Photo by Chuck Coker. End of the Great River Road.

I have never seen the End of the World, but I met those who went there, and it is good.

The End of the World is in New Orleans. Did you know that?

More specifically it’s in the Bywater, a ramshackle neighborhood that used to be swamp and then plantations and only when the city really, really grew did it become actual houses. The Bywater is the ghost of Before the Flood and it is a town unto itself, a town of hand-built drum machines, lumbering vardos, secret gardens and working artists.

You know how the grinds settle out in good coffee? If New Orleans were a cuppa, the Bywater would be that last rich sip with the grit in your mouth.

And somewhere in that mouthful, right around where you make that wrinkled face, you can find the End.

It’s just a strip of riverbank. It juts past the levee, unpoliced, a place to smoke your hashish. That is the end of Orleans Parish; that is the end of everything.

Then fog, murky water, dragons, Arabi, chemical plants, bayou.

I tell everyone I biked the whole length of the Mississippi River. It’s a lie. New Orleans isn’t the end, though many an adventurer has stopped there for good. Siduri has a back door, and she says keep going. Go past the End of the World.

So Saturday I bike 80 miles. 

With me is this sly East Coast girl who’s never pedaled more than 20. In her words: “what’s the worst that can happen?” I like her accent, like Old Fashioneds and empires.

80 miles on a narrow road in a land of semi trucks, refineries and sun. There’s nowhere to camp, nowhere good that we confirmed; but there are places no one looks.

What do I do things like this? Why go into the unknown? Is there, as it feels like, some current in the land that gathers in these lonely spots? And if there is, why is it so hard to feel once you’re out in the thick of the heat, the sweat, the fear?

The journey may be gentle or ungentle. We might succeed or fail. Smoke and towers in the bayou, two hearts under the sun. It’s worth the sweat. Somewhere down there the road just stops, it stops, and I’ll see it, and keep walking, walking at the End of the World.

4 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Adventure, Bicycling, New Orleans, The Great Adventure, Travel

May 4, 2013

How to Cross Mexico

By Drew Jacob

Sea kayak training

I was a stranger and this guy had a gun. He told me he took it everywhere so he could shoot whoever tried to mug him.

I told him I was camping out at the County Fairgrounds.

“You’re not gonna wake up,” he told me. “There’s stabbings there every night.”

But the police said I could camp there. They thought it was safe. He laughed.

“Go anywhere else. You don’t know this town. You’ll get robbed!”

I asked if I could camp in his yard instead. Of course not. So I went to the Fairgrounds.

It seemed really nice. I showered, I met the other campers and I slept all night in a windstorm. It was cold but the cold wind never did try to stab me.

That was in Mississippi. A white man named Whitman said I was going to die. He knew all the black people and how bad they all were. They all had knives. I only saw their kids learning to dance in the park and then some of the teens listening to music in cars. I guess they keep the knives really well hidden.

“They’ll cut your head off,” everyone says about Mexico. A lot of Americans tell me that. They sure know a lot about Mexicans.

But the dangers of Mexico are real. The top 200 miles of that country are a war zone. Foreign travelers aren’t really targeted but someone traveling alone on the highways would really stand out. Mexico is one of the safer countries I’ll cross on my journey—safer for an American than the US is—but parts of it are not safe at all.

Options

I basically had three options for how to cross Mexico on my own power.

  1. Bike it. I can make 50-90 miles a day and if I reach hostels before sunset I can just tear through the danger zone. I think this would be a poor way to go because it’s essentially fleeing from one of my favorite cultures.
  2. Pilgrimage. I could join a pilgrimage headed toward the Shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. We’d be on foot and I’d be in a large group, with a spiritual purpose, which is probably safer. I love this idea but it would also veer me away from my course toward Yucatán.
  3. Take to the sea.

Guess which one I chose.

Something like this.

Something like this.

Kayaking

Dawn lights up the waves like crowns on enemy kings. The weather report is clear—eat quick! Slam that coffee. Up, to the water, up!

The tide is going out and our little barks with it. We face the surf, those pounding walls of water diving into shore. They want to take us back; we are not going back. Paddles in the water, struggling from the hip, struggling from the back, arms taut and hair drenched in foam. Is this to trade one fomhór for another?

There is no other way: to reach the open sea we must break through the surf.

Out on the open, science is our concern; check the compass, point the bows, re-check the weather; are all heads present?

We go so far we cannot see land. Here the water is calmer. It is slow oliphants, not charging bulls and rams; it is the heaving shoulders of sleepy giants.

20 feet up on the swell; a glimpse of horizon, a blast of wind; drop back to the trough 20 feet below. A few paddle-strokes will do you but stay together mates, stay together.

We go like this for some time. There are snacks at sea, cameras come out of drysacks, distant boats are sighted and avoided.

Dolphins jump beside us. Did you know that dolphins will escort kayakers on the open Gulf?

Perhaps it’s sunset, perhaps the GPS says it’s time to make our camp. A hard starboard and we cut toward land.

Now the surf is with us, that hammering crashing wall will carry us to our beds—but it is not tame, no it is not tame. It is on the backs of bulls now, the churn of the stampede that we ride. Like Pamplona we make our run.

The final hundred yards. What speed! The beach looms pink before us, come in at an angle now, turn it to the side—there is no reason to rough up your boat.

Come aground, stow that gear; who’s scouting town and who’s making camp tonight? We need street food, we need cold agua. Welcome ashore, bold spirits, welcome ashore.

How?

The plan is this: reach Texas. Get a sea kayak. Learn to use it. Kayak 1,000 miles from Texas to Coatzacoalcos (see map), stopping every night at a different town or beach.

Considerations:

  • I will be a fluent Spanish speaker before crossing the border,
  • I will cross legally and abide by the 6 month maximum stay in Mexico.
  • I will train extensively in sea kayaking before making the voyage.
  • Assume I will procure all reasonable navigational and safety equipment.
  • Some cartels have boats, however as one experienced Gulf kayaker said: “Kayak jackings are distinctly less common than carjackings.”
  • I would prefer not to go alone.

I leave New Orleans in late June, and will arrive in Corpus Christi, Texas around August 7. I plan to practice on kayaks until late 2013 or early 2014, then begin the voyage.

I invite you to join me. 

The Open Call

I believe the myths are real. I believe we can do great things.

Adventure is my path to that. Adventure tests me, frees me, shows me to shatter past my limits. We are capable of great things: to adventure is to breathe them every day.

It’s not always pleasant. It’s not always safe. The adventurer shies away from unnecessary risk, makes every precaution, but when risk is unavoidable—we grin into the wind.

But it is to live, it is to know, it is to know the self, it is to know the self triumphant.

Often I say: there is no call to adventure. There will be no owl with your invitation letter; no wizard will abuse your door.

Today I prove myself wrong.

I invite you to adventure. I’m giving you notice. The true call is silent, it is urgent, it is in the blood: you feel it if you have the call. You must decide for yourself.

But today, one adventurer is reaching out to you. Come with me. Meet me in Texas, we will find you a boat; we will train together; we will do something great. It may not set records, it may not change history, it will challenge every limit we have, we will throw ourselves to that challenge because—

To adventure is to experience myth.

If you feel a call don’t put it off. Email me to discuss it; whether it’s right for you, individually. We don’t need to make a firm plan just yet. Let’s just talk options.

I’m drew@roguepriest.net and I would like to adventure together.

-

If you’re a new reader you may enjoy the report on the adventure so far.

24 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Adventure, Mexico, Sea Kayaking, The Great Adventure, Travel

April 30, 2013

Friend, you are talking about yourself

By Drew Jacob

This is an excerpt from a piece from Vodou Priest/blogger Gary Howell at Knitta Please.

Chapo m tonbe nan la Mer.

I have, for most of my life, enjoyed change. In whatever fashion Saturn reared His bearded head, I greeted him with a smile. “Burn the field,” I’d always say, “to make room for the seed.”

…As we sat over a tasty rose, I started to talk, and the more I talked, the more I sounded logical, sane, and strong; not traits that I think I carry on a day to day basis. Was it the wine? Was it the air of gotten stronger from not getting killed by the troubles that have been plaguing me the past months? I can’t honestly say, and I never want to find out.

But, as I was doling out my soothsaying, I more than realized that half of what was coming out of my mouth was meant for me. “Get up!” “Understand that you don’t need to go a long way, to find out you are something!”

Along my journey, many people take on themselves to deliver to me this sagely wisdom: you don’t have to travel to find what you’re looking for. I’ve learned to turn a stony eye to the arrogance of it: invariably, the words spill out of someone who has done little traveling, who lives a completely settled life. They sure feel confident in their evaluation of travel as a practice.

It might carry more weight if Gilgamesh said it.

But more than that, it’s just inaccurate: the journey has changed me. I am not the same person today that I was July 3, 2012—and the changes are an immediate result of how I have pushed my boundaries, far away from home and friends; and the continuous psychological challenge of being the only one to keep me going, toward a dream, toward a horizon I can never reach.

It’s a beautiful heartbreaking practice. It’s what defines me.

Out of all the people who have said “you don’t have to travel” Gary is the first person who then added that what was coming out of his mouth was meant for himself. And as soon as I saw those words, I understood every person who tells me the same advice: they mean it for themselves.

 

So, if you think I’m going to go 8,000 miles only to discover that I had what I needed the whole time, well, maybe you are right or maybe you are wrong, but certainly—definitely—you are talking about yourself.

Or, as Gary says:

“You know who you are, not all the time, but most of the time, so FUCK everyone else!”

I hope you’ll read the rest of his piece and share it widely.

7 comments   |  tags: , , | posted in Adventure, Spotlight, Travel

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