Lincoln was not there in person at the Brewery Bar last night but had left a whole pile of leaflets with the bar staff in case I came in.  Suggesting all the roads I should travel on.  All of them back the way I had come and I just can't go backwards now.  Got talking with some people at the bar who turned out to be mother, daughter and daughter's boyfriend -Ellen, Ashley and Jake.  To my astonishment they had never heard of 'The Wire' which I have realised played its part in bringing me over here.  Were it not for its skillful and complex portrayal of Americans I might have stayed stuck with a negative stereotype of them.  Mind you some Americans are doing their level best to reinforce those stereotypes.  On the back of a pick-up truck today was a notice stating that the 'Founders of America created a Christian country (Not a Muslim one)'  Not only pig ignorant of the facts, the country was specifically founded on the basis of religious freedom and tolerance, but happily displaying that ignorance to all and sundry.

Sitting next to the mother of the group, we just started talking about politics and I had expressed the opinion that the Republicans were all, by and large, barking mad when she told me that she was one.  I was keen to follow this up and maybe, finally, have that elusive conversation with someone prepared to defend the US.  However I need to go to the 'bathroom' and when I returned they'd left.  They'd left me a note with their names and 'Bye. Nice to meet you! Enjoy!  There went the first opportunity; straight through my fingers.

Took non-Interstate roads eastwards for a hundred and fifty or so miles:

ONLY IN AMERICA (Should have taken this from dead in front; its an upside down house)

EASILY CAPPED BY THE TITANIC 400 yds DOWN THE ROAD

Don't you just love that little fountain playing on the bow

Again I went past houses varying from the palatial to the quite poverty stricken.  At least 3 if not 4 'Yard Sales' spotted as I motored by.  These appear to be people putting their possessions out in front of their house in the hope somebody will buy some of them.

Ellen from last night, the mother who probably scribbled the note, had been 'let go' about 3 or 4 months ago from her real estate job.  In receipt of some kind of benefits, I didn't quite follow the details, she epitomised the contradictory nature of what I have found here.  She was firmly optimistic about the future in the face of all the objective evidence that its grim.  Its a real shame, for me, that I wasn't able to spend more time teasing out those contradictions.  Mind you they were out to enjoy themselves and by the sound of the ingredients of the Tennessee 'tea' they were drinking, at least 4 different spirits in it, I don't suppose in depth political discussion was topmost on their agenda.  Probably why they made a sharp exit.

Tomorrow I meet Amy, Linda and Hall for a lunchtime reunion.  Remember the 'Crazy Baker'?  Then its back to base at Stu and Jan's in Washington DC.  Good news is that their friend with a cottage on Cape Cod has resurfaced and it looks like I'll be able to stay there in the days leading up to the wedding.  Its only about 120 miles from the wedding venue in Worcester Mass.

Some reflection perhaps then, over the weekend.  I am a bit tired of motel/hotel hopping.  Not as weary as my plastic is; but that's another story and my business entirely.

MOTORCYCLE HEAVEN PART II

What a nice day riding through the Smoky Mountains.  Sheer pleasure.  Again those winding roads through communities, and then up into the woods and around Nantahala Lake.

Before leaving Franklin though I came upon this piece of direct consumer action.  One unhappy farmer:

Just in case its not clear that is a junked Mahindra tractor.  On the left hand side s/he has written, 'less than 300 hours'.

I made an error thinking I'd missed a photo of Nantahala lake and stopped at a track where a sign advertised 'Best views of the lake and mountains'.  It was a tad too stony for me to feel safe taking the blue monster down it so I walked.  And walked, and walked until I eventually nearly got there, hot and bothered, and took this view:

 

It turned out the sign I had seen was in fact marketing for real estate. A whole pile of plots are available for sale.  Stake out your escape house in the lakes and mountains.  Because I was still wearing my hi-viz jerkin an estate agent lady stopped her massive pick-up truck to talk as she imagined I was some kind or worker and she wanted to make sure the track was clear ahead.  When she realised I was not a slave she immediately tried to sell me a plot.  They start at $135,000.  Then you've got to build a house. I gather the really rich Americans are buying up nice bits of New Zealand for when the ordure hits the air displacement machinery.

Best part of an hour later, ok I got some exercise but it wasn't a very exciting walk, I returned to the bike and 5 minutes down the road it descended to the lakeside and I could have taken the photo there.

Then on along great riding roads until I hit Highway 19 which travelled alongside a river whose name I cannot find. (Both Bing Maps and Google Earth seem to think no-one's interested in the names of rivers).  Much white water rafting activity and the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad running alongside.  Obviously a big tourist attraction but they didn't have a steam locomotive like we would have back home.  That would have made it real cute.  Notice the americanisms starting to creep in; oh dear.

Road on one side of the river, railroad on the other.

Here's the cheap seats:

Plenty of other riders around, these roads are clearly a Mecca for bikers.  None more so than the 'Tail of the Dragon' an incredibly twisty 318 curves in 11 miles.   Got my feet with the cornering, which means I got my feet scraping the tarmac as I leant left and right.  Not only were there scores of other bikes around, I'd guess I saw the best part of 100 other machines, but at 4 or 5 strategic locations with especially tight turns and a place to park, photographers were camped out photographing everyone going past.  Or at least photographing the ones who were trying a bit, like me.  There is a nominal 30 mph limit but unlike the Natchez Trace no hint of enforcement.  I suspect there'd be a riot if they tried it.  Both main types of bikers in abundance.  Touring types, like me, on touring machines including the ubiquitous Harley Davidsons (pimp bikes I've decided); and the flashy speed machines with names like Fireblade and Phaser with go-faster exhausts right up underneath the back of the seat.  Extremely worrying for any passengers I would have thought, but then none of them had passengers.

Towards the end this view of the lake whose hillsides we had traversed:

That's the dam on the right hand side, forming the lake.  This was at a viewpoint where a dozen or so, almost, but not quite exclusively, males riders had stopped; though all the women there were pillion passengers.  I think, but cannot be certain, that one female rider flashed past me during the day.

I am now in Knoxville where I am headed downtown to see if I can catch up with a bit of a character I met at the Tourist info shop.  Name of Lincoln, he's owned several BMWs and extolled Knoxville's music scene.  We shall see.  He recommended I tried to stay close to Downtown, at this cheap hotel where, somewhat bizzarely, two women knocked on my door 15 minutes after I had checked in to ask if I wanted some company; oh and could I lend the younger prettier one $5 to get some gas. Taxi into town, but its not too far.  Better make my escape quick.

On the way out of Atlanta, Georgia; or Phallusville as I have re-named it, I saw a sign for an art exhibition: 'From Picasso to Warhol'.   I wondered if I had missed something but then I thought; probably not.

The panhandlers were at it again this morning.  Stopped for a quick check of the map en route to breakfast and I was immediately 'befriended' by a highly plausible guy who took me completely out of my way, meaning I missed getting any breakfast, and then he gave me the pitch.  He got short shrift.

Atlanta is a soulless city of high rises which attempt to outdo one another in vertical ornamentation.  Sheraton outdoes Hilton, AT&T's tower competes with Ernst and Young.  Its a massive game of whose got the biggest dick. That Le Courbusier's got a lot to answer for.  And the consequence of all this vertical development is that the ground space is at a premium for, you guessed it, cars.  Parking lots parking lots, nothing but parking lots.  All with their dire warnings of booting (clamping) and tow away charges for any infringement.

Apart from the Biergarten meal last night Atlanta has almost nothing to recommend it.   Though the Martin Luther King Jr heritage site, whilst not an 'attraction' in its own right, did contain the 'Campesino Cafe' which was part of a nice market.  The kind you'd go to 'cause the people were nice and the fruit and vegetables were properly laid out.  So having been diverted earlier I finally got breakfast of a cup of tea and a burrito at about 11.30.

I made my way up to Franklin, North Carolina, in the Smoky Mountains.

Little Tennessee River, Franklin

Welcome to small town America.  I went out for something to eat at 8.10 in the evening, and everything was closed.  After tramping nearly 2 miles I endured a moderately disgusting meal at 'Phats' just off the interstate.  Everything here revolves around cars too.

I wouldn't have minded but I'd already had a walk, alongside the 'Little Tennessee River' that runs through Franklin.  Then I'd had a beer and assumed I'd find some food nearby.  Not so.

In fact several things are oddly disturbing about Franklin.  I arrived in town only to be stopped by a female police officer who I thought was simply directing traffic. No, she had a phoned in report of a possible drunk driver, me.  I laughed, actually, and assured her not a drop had passed my lips.  Were you weaving between lanes? she asked.  No, not especially I replied, just going with the flow of traffic; as I usually do.  Finding your rules on speed confusing but otherwise doing as others do.  She smiled and let me go having made no attempt whatsoever to ascertain whether I had, in fact, been drinking.  She seemed to simply take my word for it.

Having checked in I then wandered along the river pictured.  A very manicured country walk the path ends abruptly but obviously used to continue as beyond the single wire fence there is a flat iron bridge over a stream.  Then undergrowth.  Returning to the blue monster by way of some insubstantial bird watching I am reading the noticeboard of the country walk, just scanning the list of local sex offenders published there, when I hear a helicopter and turn the binoculars on it.  Its a police helicopter I deduce.  They deduce some stranger dude looking at them with binoculars and procede to circle me for the next 5 minutes as I get onto the bike and ride back to my motel.  A bit disturbing, have they really nothing better to do?  The damn thing was out again in the evening.

Recalling debates back home about the Northumbria Police's helicopters and their cost of around £1m each; which has led to the force downgrading to one machine.  I wonder what on earth they need one for here.  This is the middle of nowhere, as it were, I cannot believe the crime rate justifies anything so draconian as ariel surveillance.  Then I remember that much of the modern day psyche of Americans' day to day experience is fear.  If you keep telling people they are under threat, that they live in a dangerous world, that the monster around the corner is going to eat you; then people react by being afraid, suspicious and looking for the unusual, the out of the ordinary, to cast their paranoia upon.  But what it must cost them, money that could be channelled into far more constructive socially useful activities; education for deviant males might, just, be a little more productive than sticking their mugshots up on noticeboards.

Anyway I had some proper motorcycling on the way to Franklin, off the interstates (motorways basically) and onto some proper twisty roads.  Past small hamlets, farms, the ubiquitous wooden shack homes that I have seen now in every part of my trip.  Motorcycle Roads USA, a website, promises some great driving today, as I begin to come to the end of this section of the trip.  Back to DC at the weekend before heading toward the wedding.

I am up early today.  Got caught out on the time zones in Atlanta, thinking it was high time for bed at 12.15 a.m when it was in fact 1.15 a.m.  So after all that walking yesterday I was early to bed.  The mist has been burned off by the sun, my digestive system has just about sloughed off last nights meal.  Time for a spot of breakfast and then the long and winding road.

So its farewell to Mobile, and this extraordinary building I discovered this morning.  The Lodge Temple of 1927:

You can't see them very well but that is a couple of Sphinxes either side of the doorway.  There are a dozen slits along the right hand side of the building and that's it for windows.  And you can see the scale from that car in the foreground.  The front doors must be 20 ft if they're an inch.

And its Hallo to the finest hairdo in the USA at a service station just outside Montgomery.  Aleetia was her name:

Ain't that some shit.

While I was at the Nature Reserve yesterday, the one with the beware Aligators sign, I followed the trail, which was quite short, out onto a wooden decking pier at its end.  Some 100 metres or so out into the sea. There the Pelicans flew overhead and I hoped to capture one on camera but became involved in a conversation with a bicyclist, probably in his late 60's, who was admiring the view.  By the time that conversation was over so were the Pelicans, for the time being.  It was one of his favourite spots and he was curious how I had found it.  Chance I said, plays a part in our lives, and we talked about where I had been, where he wanted to go, and so on.  He dreamed of a motorcycle tour of Europe.  He had visited that place where the first ironclad ship was built, in the north east of England.  We agreed on Hartlepool.  I think I'm right there.  Tyneside and Wearside meant nothing to him.

He told me another tale about the Natchez Trace Trail.  Tennessee was rich in resources both manufactured and natural.  One of the important natural resources was its trees.  People from Tennessee would build great wooden raft-like boats, fill them with goods to trade and sail them down the Mississippi to Natchez which was an important port; although its the best part of 100 miles inland from New Orleans where the Mississippi (god I love all those consonants) meets the Gulf of Mexico.  Goods would be sold en route and at Natchez.  But then the boat would be dismantled and the timber sold, as its like could not be found thereabouts.  The intrepid sailor / traders would then return to Tennessee loaded with money; and no doubt hope to build another next year.  And their route was the Natchez Trace Trail.

Well of course it did not take long for the bad guys to cotton on to this and the trail became a hot bed of thieves and robbers.  So a private protection industry grew up in Natchez to escort these traders back home up the trail.

Walking the streets of a modern American city isn't quite so risky, but it does bring you face to face with the poor, the unemployed and the homeless.  I have tried to adopt a strict rule of; happy to chat with you and sympathise but NO.  No money.  

Nobody really walks anywhere except the poor, especially in big cities.  And I have arrived in a big one:  Atlanta, Georgia.  So inevitably when I got lost on my way back from a really rather tasty German Biergarten meal, and was struggling with the map under a streetlight, a homeless man was very keen to help me out.  He escorted me a quarter of a mile to the right place and then the pitch: he needed a bus fare to look for work in the morning.  $2.50.  Now this is about £1.50; he wasn't asking a lot.  I pulled out my wallet but had only two $20's.  A bit too generous I thought.  So he happily tagged along with me to reception where I changed one, and I handed him $3. Thank you Mr Peter, thank you.  The receptionist remarked that even working people were poor these days.  I could only agree.

Not sure I think much of this place but I believe Martin Luther King Jr came from hereabouts; certainly there's a 'National Historic Site' not too far away.  So maybe's a visit before leaving.  This hotel/motel is at the expensive end of what I have been paying and there's NO FRIDGE.  Its the first one with neither fridge nor microwave.  It costs the thick end of $100.  Compare that to the budget motel for the last two nights in Mobile @ $45 with fridge and microwave.  OK there was no breakfast there, but hold on, there's no breakfast here either.

And to think we gave Jimmy Carter the freedom of Newcastle.  

I've still got a silver visiting card case with the City's arms embossed on it and a few cards saying 'Cllr Peter Thomson: Lord Mayor'.  I should have brought it and gatecrashed the Town Hall.

The camera alas is dead; I am not.  Saturday's treatment consisted of:
10 grms of vitamin C, a fair bit of whisky, a few beers, and as much walking around in the humid air as I could stand.

The Spotted Cat had another fine band; too disorientated to remember their name.  Clarinet, accordion, banjo, upright bass and drums.  A range of styles that encompassed Klezmer and Bulgarian as well as the traditional jazz repertoire.  Led by the clarinetist with a calm and self-effacing style.  At one point he deftly got rid of a strange interloper who wandered in with a snare drum and sticks and proceeded to join in.  As the band drummer was playing without sticks, ie using his hands, this was intrusive. But the kid wandered out again without looking too quashed and we all got on with playing and listening.  Went for a meal across the road and they were into their final three numbers as I returned.  That was all I could manage and I took my flu racked body to bed.

Sunday brought the realisation of the death knell for my camera.  The camera is dead - Long live the (new) camera

Well I couldn't let the rest of the trip go without a photgraphic record and plastic always feels so painless. 

The 'French' Quarter is in my view at least as much a 'Spanish' Quarter.  As the street sign above, one of many, makes clear, the Spanish were in control for forty years (just in case you can't read this its 1762 to 1803) and laid out the quarter. 

What I cannot quite work out is the relationship between the Americans, who'd kicked us Brits out in 1776 through their war of independence, and the French and Spanish who were obviously still major players.  One for further study.

So, a little later than hoped, some New Orlerans buildings:

Try as I might I just cannot control the placing of pictures on this blog.  

So one at a time.  Musicians abound in the streets of Sunday; here ouside the law courts:

Here's some more:

And here's a nice bit of tilework close to my Hotel

I bought some fairly disgusting Cherry flavoured Wal-Flu to deal with my ailments.  Before going out to take these pictures I also had a long hot bath to sweat it out; and read about half of Tom Hendrix's book.  Its simply written and I found I was tearing through it at a rate of knots. 

Finally here's a piece of street furniture:

The hotel were reassuringly understanding about my illness, telling me to take my time and ensuring housekeeping left me to last.  Nevertheless I did not want to spend another, relatively expensive, night there so I steeled myself for moving on.

I decided on a fairly short hop eastwards to Mobile, 120 miles or so.  Around 70 miles in I started to get that drowsy feeling you may be familiar with from car driving. That feeling where your concentration starts to wander.  In a car you open the window/turn up the blower/put on some abrasive music or some such.  On a bike its a different problem.  I've done 10 hour bike rides and never felt like this.  So I pulled off at the next available exit, found a store closed on Sundays, got off the bike in its shade, put my gloves beneath my head and lay down.  Dozing happily I heard a car draw up nearby and suddenly a voice spoke to me. Opening my eyes I look up to see an entirely toothless, but not old, female face enquiring into my welfare.  I explain.  "OK Honey, just so long as you are alright.  We don't get many people lying on the ground round here" I expect they don't.  The bizarre angle from which this brief conversation was conducted left a vision of her face in my head, hard to shake.

As the second half of the journey to Mobile elapsed I began to notice the 'flu had moved into a new stage, one of phenomenal flatulence.  There  are times, I reflected, when its a good job to be travelling alone. 

In Mobile, after turning down two hotels even more expensive that New Orleans, I find just down the road from them the cheapest of the trip so far. A Budget Motel.  Wi-fi but no breakfast.  Which was fine as it turned out, I found a nice breakfast cafe.  On Sunday night, still in poor form, I did find Hopjacks.  Here is their selection of draft beers:

Thats right, about 50 or 60 draft beers.  And it being Sunday they were all half price.  Oh er missus.  I couldn't manage more than two pints sadly, but they washed down a pizza very comfortably.

Not the best of nights sleep but in the morning I found 'A Drop of Tea' where I had one; and on enquiring about a National Maritime Museum of the Gulf, marked on my map, was given a brochure for someting entirely different; downtown Mobile heritage.

Turns out that the history of Mobile is remarkably similar to New Orleans - Spanish followed by French control and development.  And although it is not so intensely preserved it is nevertheless preserved as a heritage site.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE: A BUILDING IN DOWNTOWN MOBILE

 

 

AND ANOTHER

Before taking these I discovered that although my map confidently predicted the National Maritime Museum was due for completion in 2008, it was in fact still under construction and now due for 2012.  I had been quite looking forward to finding out just what kind of state the Gulf actually was in nowadays after B.P. Horizon's unwanted contribution to the environment.  Not too brilliant I have gathered from other sources. In the event no info there so I went across Mobile Bay to explore beaches and so on; having decided to take it easy for a day and not move on.  I found a nice looking spot, a bit of a nature reserve, and was about to get my swimming gear together when I noticed this:

OK Perhaps not.  Later though I did find a swimming spot.  So I can add Mobile Bay, which is part of the Gulf of Mexico, to my list of South China Sea and Indian Ocean.  It was a bit breezy and therefore choppy, but then again there were pelicans flying overhead and a fish flew too, not just once but twice, so I was sure not to miss it.

Exploring downtown Mobile in the late afternoon I came across a strange flag flying outside a hotel. Enquiring within I was confronted with a totally amazing, and I think reconstructed, lobby where the four corners referenced the US, France, Spain and UK, as the four owners of the territory on which the hotel stood.

This was our man - George III  But the flag they associated with him, which brought it to my attention in the first place, I saw in a shop window later.

I'm not sure I have ever seen a flag of St George and St Andrew as one; but that seems to be their take on the British flag of the time.

So a quiet and restful day to allow the body to recuperate.  Feeling nearly better and ready for the next stage.  East and North, back up to Washington for next weekend.

Alas, gentle reader, your correspondent is a little under the weather here in New Orleans, Louisiana; and sadly so is his camera.  I don't believe these to be related; but the chi moves in a mysterious way.

I have established myself in a hotel very close to, but not in, the French quarter.  I managed to find one for around $100 a night including parking, taxes and so on.  My mistake in Nashville, quite aside from it being shitesville which I could not reasonably have predicted, was that it was 2/3 miles away from the 'action' and incurred taxi fees there and back, thus wiping out the advantage of lower charges.   So I am well placed here and get a good breakfast.  I'm trying to just eat out once a day, so a good breakfast helps no end.

A further insight came to me yesterday as I drove from Jackson down here, about the cop who busted me.  Early in our interview I was trying to point out how hard it was to keep the blue monster at a quiet and reasonable speed.  Yes, he said, it is a very nice bike.  Then towards the end of the incident, as he handed me the documents detailing the offence, he said it again.  Note the word 'very'.  I'll bet a pound to a penny that he was actually quite jealous.  I suspect he would just love to go down that road at that speed on a bike, but he knows he can never do it.

As New Orleans approached, a surprising 35 miles out, we hit water.  That is water became all around us as we moved along an elevated roadway.  There was land too but mostly what I take to be shallow water.  At one point a series of electricity pylons marched, not over the ground, but out to sea, all supported on concrete pontoons.  They stretched as far as the eye could see, which as I recall is about 5 miles; the distance to the horizon when looking over a flat sea.

Its really quite hot here, but then look at your atlas, its about on the latitude of the southern Sahara.  As I came into the inner city, stopping here and there, as one does for traffic lights and so on, I realised my arms were beginning to burn.  The wind at 70 mph cools you down; now I had slowed, they glowed; in an ominous way.  I had thought myself to be pretty well tanned, after all I've had two spells in France already this year and this is the third day I have been riding in a T-shirt, but the southern sun is strong.

A two hour stroll around the French Quarter's advertised attractions was not exciting.  Like most major tourists venues its full of 101 shops and stalls all selling the same overpriced tat; with the location's particular twist.   But I did discover an area with a pile of music bars, more spread out, but not dissimilar to Broadway in Nashville.  Chatted to a couple of black, very smartly turned out doormen at one eating place who assured me that come 8 p.m., the joint would be jumping.  Which by and large it was.  Unfortunately, 15 minutes before I got there, the cafe in question was taken over by a huge party who took every seat going.  So I had to look elsewhere for food and it was not the exciting culinary adventure  I hoped for; without being awful I hasten to add.

Most of the music bars seemed to have bands playing a standard R n B format; variations on guitar, keyboards, horns and female singers.  The latter seemed uniformly mediocre, enthusiastic but ordinary; maybe it was just a bad night.  Then I found the Spotted Cat Music Club where a trio led by a black washboard player, Chaz I think, with white steel guitar and harmonica players.  Bit more like it.  After a wander around when they finished, confirming not much else seemed interesting, I returned to the Spotted Cat to hear the New Orleans Cotton Mouth Kings.  With, wonder of wonders, a bass saxophone player.  A Cotton Mouth, by the way, is a very poisonous Louisiana snake they told me.  Fiddle, trumpet, sax, upright bass and guitar.  I left at the end of their second set at around 12.30 as I was ready to fall over.  They confidently predicted they'd go on until 2 a.m or so.

As I walked back to my hotel I was surprised by a bout of sneezing.  At 5.30 a.m. I awoke with another and felt that tell tale irritation at the back of the throat that pressages a cold//flu/throat infection.  I blame the fact I am staying in a hotel with air conditioning, but who knows.

I woke up just in time to get breakfast, bring it back to my room, and watch the Toon's glorious defeat of Blackburn Rovers 3 -1. [As I appear to have a US audience now Toon = Newcastle United, a soccer club about which Geordies are just as passionate as Americans seem to be about their football teams].  My forearms were approaching lobster pink in a couple of places so they've had to remain under wraps today; well lubricated with lotion.  Otherwise I generally feel 1 degree under, as the old advertising slogan has it. 

Went out to the Louisiana State Museum to see an exhibiton about Race.  New Orleans is the the most mixed community after Washington I have experienced.  But very different of course; as this is the South.  The white people who fought for a Confederation, not a Union, of States; so that nobody could tell them to stop keeping dem niggers as slaves.

Lincoln's address, carved in the wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, makes it quite clear his fight was to maintain a Union of States and that it was not a war for the emancipation of blacks; although in many ways that was, of course, the effect.

I was not mightily impressed with the exhibition; nowhere, for instance, did it tell you where to start which I personally find helpful as it demonstrates some clarity of thinking.  There was a quiz about the issues an 'ol bighead scored 10 out of 10.  What it did do for me, although it never said it simply and clearly, was to emphasis that our concepts of race are just about entirely social constructs.  They have no scientific basis whatsoever.  Best moment was a 'fit the face to the voice' game.  Where the whitest woman of the 6 on screen turned out to be the one with the broadest Jamaican patois you have ever heard, I did laugh out loud at myself. 

Maybe I do the exhibition an injustice; but a glaring ommission was the fact that China, and Islam for that matter, had developed sophisticated cultures and societies 1000 years before the scientific rationalism of the enlightenment had begun to classify humans in appalling ways we have only begun to properly redesss in the past 60 years or so. So good on them for spelling it out, but the cultural relativist bias is still astonishing.

As for the camera it has developed an aversion to daylight.  Bizarre.  The man in Radio Shack said he had never seen the like:

As I started taking pictures yesterday afternoon this is what happened.  No idea how this will look on the blog, but it has a whole load of horizontal white lines on the screen here.  But take a photo indoors, as I have just done:

A HOTEL BED IN NEW ORLEANS

Only one photograph seems to have escaped this strange turn of events:

PALM TREES IN NEW ORLEANS

If this persists I can only apologise.  I shall take the camera out tonight and try a few shots in the dark.  Metaphor for life really. 

Natchez Trace Parkway, beside which Tom Hendrix lives, runs from Nashville to Natchez, a distance of over 400 miles.  Its a single carriageway road which winds through mostly forested areas with a 50 mph speed limit.   On day one - Nashville to Florence (which I am increasingly realising is a rather nice city) - I saw wild turkey and deer beside the road.  And on one occasion deer on the road, panicking, and giving my tummy a flutter.  Fortunately they saw sense and ran away from me.  I met someone last night who hit some last year when a bunch of slightly stupider deer ran at him.  He was only doing 35 mph having spotted a bunch ahead.  Then, suddenly, a different bunch leapt from the bushes in a kamikase attack. Death toll was 2 deer; one Harley Davidson.

At a couple of points I travelled past patches of devastated trees.  They had been snapped off at between 10 and 30 foot from the ground.  I can only imagine this was the work of the tornadoes Tom Hendrix had said come out of the west.  I think it an appropriate use of the word American has now completely devalued: awesome.  The power neccessary to create such havoc is equivalent to some of the most sophisticated devices human beings have created.

Before leaving Florence I did find the WC Handy Museum. At $2 good value.  He had a hard time for several years before fame and fortune, not an uncommon story.  A skilled arranger, formally trained, some of his manuscripts, handwritten, are there.  Unable to bottom who first called those accidentals which characterise blues, 'blue'.  The Administrator at the museum just said they're the blue notes, the black ones on a piano; which  think is not quite strictly true; but I wander a little from expertise of knowledge so I better say no more.  When I have nothing better to do I may google it.  What the Administrator did tell me was that a room in the museum is devoted to Black History studies.  All very laudable, but I noticed in the main museum room a newspaper article from the 50's where he basically said, 'stop whingeing black folk and get on with it, America is wonderful.  I made it, so can you.'  I think this qualifies a straightahead Uncle Tom collaboration.  Hope I have the phrase right.  What in those heady days of politically correct nonsense of the 1980's used to be called a coconut - black on the outside and white in the middle. 

In Nashville, after the Bearfoot concert, I visited an exhibition in the library, of paintings done this and last year, commemorating the 'Freedom Riders'.  Those civil rights activists in the 60's who deliberately flouted segregation laws in the south and got clouted, and arrested, and harrassed for their pains.  Here is WC, a whole decade earlier, telling Black America, essentially, that there is no problem.  Oh how seductive it is to be sucked in to the ways of your oppressors.  You can say what you like about Jo Stalin but he knew how to deal with collaborators.  After World War 2 Soviet troops who'd had the misfortune to be captured as POW's tended to get sent to Siberia; just because they'd been captured. 

I see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been laying it on the line to the USA; as far as I can tell perfectly reasonably.  Just such a shame he goes and spoils it all by hanging people from cranes in public squares for not toeing the line.  Uncle Jo had much the same problem in the end.

The Natchez Trace Parkway is a migratory route for buffalo which Indian tribes also followed, later the White man used it too; it can be traced back over 3000 years. (source Tom Hendrix).  I soon discovered it to be almost entirely empty of traffic.  Working on the logic that if very few cars  and motorbikes were using it then the cops probably wouldn't be wasting valuable police time harrassing motorists; I began to ignore the speed limit.   When I resumed on Thursday I did much the same. 

I had something like 5 hours, in total, of completely unrestrained driving down one of the most beautiful roads in America.  Eventually the National Parks Police passed me going the other way.  They have quite sophisticated technology these days that can read your speed, even if they are going in the opposite direction.  83? Is that right?  Yes sir, and I think you were slowing down at the time (I was).  The guys I met later that evening, who told me the deer story, said I was actually quite lucky.  That kind of speed is usually taken as reckless driving and subject to more severe penalties than the $225 I incurred. Probably down to being a tourist and impeccably polite. 

Worth every cent.  As Michael Winner is alleged to have said," I love London, you can drive in the Bus Lanes and it only costs you £60."  But I won't do it again.

Tom Hendrix is 82 years old and for the last 30 years or so he has been building a wall.  A dry stone wall we would call it.

Here is a section of the wall.  Tom started building this wall to honour his Great Great Gradmother a Yuchi woman named Te-lah-nay, or Woman with the Dancing Eyes.  She was one of several thousand Yuchi forcibly transported from their ancestral lands in northern Alabama across to Oklahoma.  But Te-lah-nay found the rivers in Oklahoma did not sing to her like the Tennessee River; so she walked back.  I've bought Tom's book about the journey but not yet had time to look at it in depth. 

The walls, there are actually two of them, are an extraordinary achievement.  The section above, representing the journey of her forcible removal, is the shorter of the two.  The driveway to his house divides the two walls.  The return journey is much longer and snakier.  Well she had to hide out a lot and avoid the white folk, Tom told me, so its a much longer journey.

Every stone was collected by Tom in one of, I think he said four, pick-ups he has owned.   Then moved in one of half a dozen wheelbarrows, then placed by hand.  I cannot remember the tonnage of stone the man has shifted over the years but it is an impressive figure.

It is now considered one of the top 10 pieces of landscape art in the USA.  Not that Tom conceived it as a work of art, it just became one.  He wanted to make a memorial and a rememberance; as his book is titled, 'If The Legends Fade'... 



Here is a section from the return journey wall.  These 'faces' are uncarved, just natural stones Tom has found.  They are placed here facing west to ward off evil.  Bad things come from the west, like tornadoes, Tom tells me.



He learnt the story of Teh-lay-nay from his Grandmother but also a contemporary of Teh-Lah-Nay, a Preacher and Teacher, was so impressed by her journey that he sat down with her, over a period of a couple of years, and wrote an account.

So we have both an oral tradition and contemporay documentation.

And a wall.

There are no signs for it.  Only the word of other people will tell you about it.  In my case I happened to stop off at the Wayne County Welcome Centre, needing a coffee break as I travelled the Natchez Trace Parkway.  More, perhaps about that road later.  At the Welcome Centre they suggested I visit the wall if I had the time.

I did and I am grateful.  I knew buying a wooden flute was something I needed to do, back in Washington DC, after I left mine behind in the UK.  Here it just felt right and natural to play within the circles of the wall; to the birds and the trees and the rivers.

Its a sunny Alabama morning, the washing I did yesterday late afternoon is just about dry.  So its off on the road again.  Via a quick visit to the W.C. Handy museum.  He was born here in Florence.  WC is considered one of, if not the, Father of the Blues.

NASHVILLE: GOOD AND BAD

Hallo my best beloved reader.  You may have wondered where I had  gone over the past 2 days; well I have been in Nashville, as advertised, and it has been both good and bad.  The reason I have been out of the blogsphere was a shite hotel, Days Inn - please boycott it, where despite advertising  wi-fi; it didn't work.  So an extensive sojurn on Tuesday at a store named Office Depot. 

You may recall my baking of the netbook on day 1 of the tour proper.  Its been a bit problematic ever since and when, despite all sorts of attempts to get me online, I still could only connect sporadically, I decided it needed attention.  A diagnosis showed it needed tender loving care, the sort only given by a $70 donation to captalism, they call it a 'tune up'.  

On Monday evening, quite late I did manage to write the following, but then the connection went down again so I gave up and went to bed.  Somehow it did get saved:

Broadway is THE drag in Nashville.  After arriving I discovered that I was not, as I had imagined, close to downtown in this hotel, so taxis there and back.  Only got to 3 bars but at each of them good musicians playing country and bluegrass to a high standard.

Frustrating connection problems and I am surprised to be online again now.  I have absolutely no idea how and why connection comes and goes.

More people begging than anywhere else so far. All day tomorrow to discover more.

Right next to the freeway so the music of the automobile will lull me to sleep.  It is every American's right to have unsilenced exhausts; the trucks are phenomenally loud.

New time zone too; I thought the satnav was optimistic in predicting arrival time, now I know why.

NASHVILLE SKYLINE  (sort of - tried to take a better one but camera batteries had run down)

So let me tell you more.  Dropped off by taxi at Broadway I immediately ran into a guy from Burnley who refused to take it seriously that I came from Newcastle because of my accent.   I have to say I've been polishing up the refined english as it goes down so well.   Took me a minute or two to level with him.  But he told me I had arrived at the best bar for genuine bluegrass/country; and do you know, I think he spoke the truth.  Roberts Western World is the bar, next door is Layla's, also good.

At Roberts  I saw John England and The Western Swingers.  All quite loose, with other musicians apparently just dropping by and being invited onstage.  After seeing a couple of other similar 'pick-up' bands the next night I would say he was the business.  All good stuff and the highlight was probably the piano player, Neil Stretcher, singing 'I Just Don't Look Good Naked, Anymore'.  Shades of my own 'Old Age Blues' ( Dogan, if you're reading this, how's the mix coming on?)

Then at Layla's I saw Nora Jane Struthers with a similar 'pick-up' band.  She invited the audience to come to the main library the next day at 11.45 to see the launch of her band's new album.  I went.  The band is called Bearfoot and they are rather good.  At that launch, where as far as I could tell only the bass player was the same as the previous evening, and even that I'm not 100% about, I noticed a guy who had been playing with her the night before in the audience,  Always a good sign, I think, when musicians can be bothered to come and watch other musicians play.  He was Paul Kramer and we chatted a little.

BEARFOOT AT NASHVILLE MAIN LIBRARY (Nora Jane's the blonde)

Nora Jane's very much the front woman and she does it well; but the fiddle player, Angela had a tone and approach that was sublime, so too the guitarist, Todd Grebe.  In fact they were all good.  Promised to give them an intro to Adam Collerton, promoter of the Jumping Hot Club, back home in Newcastle.

As it turned out I did not have an awful lot of time the second day to discover more about the ins and outs of poverty etc in Nashville.  As the brief Monday night blog, italicised above promised, I did intend to, but the connectivity dominated the day. 

Thinking that perhaps my problems were related to the backing of the netbook I took it in to be checked out.  Surprise surprise they said it need a tune up - $70.  So I left it with them and went off to the Library.  Returning at 2 p.m. the manager, Chris, with whom I had had a good crack earlier, apologised profusely, but he had forgotten to get my password before I left.  I had of course logged in with it to show him the problems, but it goes off after 10 minutes and needs re-entering.  So no tune up had been done.  Nothing for it but to sit in the store whilst they did it.  The day ticked past.  Finally it was done and I went back to shitesville Days Inn; no time now for the Country Music Hall of Fame.  And it still would not connect!  Eventually I took the netbook into the lobby and it did connect.  So the problem was their wi-fi not my netbook.

Chris, Manager at Office Depot, who dealt with me on and off for most of the day, was another example of American's who know the score but just live with it.  He openly admitted that his standard of living had become worse and more insecure over the past 10 years, despite being a higher grade professional/managment worker.  Office Depot, he told me, is a stand alone company but has a weak share price.  He reckoned it was ripe for takeover by a corporate/ hedge fund/ equity fund type operation.  Why, I asked, do people not rise up against this corporate dictatorship?  People are focused on today and maybe tomorrow, but no further was his reply. Short-termism.  Hey we're all bit like that.

Later on Tuesday evening, after the demonstration in the lobby that it was shitesville's wi-fi, not my netbook that was at fault, I decided to walk into downtown Nashville.  If I go down this road I said, to the incompetant wanker who manned the desk at shiteville, indicating the road outside the motel, where does it go to?  The stadium he replied.  It didn't.  He forgot to mention that I needed to take a left half a mile down the road.  The stadium, I knew, was opposite downtown where I wanted to return to for some more live music. Paul Kramer, the musician I had chatted to at lunchtime, had recommended a spot where there should be some good music.  So after the road bore right and right and right I realised I was coming back on myself.  So I took a left noting, a 100 yards or so down that road, a sign saying 'Bridge ahead closed'.  And so it was.  Scrambling in the dark through undergrowth and over a half demolished bridge, which was a bit tricky, I made it across in the correct direction. 

10 minutes later, as I was beginning to tire a little, a car stopped beside me and the black guy driving offered a lift.  Half a mile down the road he asked me to buy him some gas.  Frankly I began to get a bit worried.  Here I was in a strange town in a strange man's car being, maybe, scammed.  If not worse.  A couple of dollars he asked for, a couple of dollars he got, and a couple of dollars he put into the tank at the gas station; which was a hang out for a whole lot of black folks.  As I waited to see what went down, my anxiety increased somewhat.  But I need not have worried, my fears were allayed.  He was straight ahead.  I got back in the car with him and he drove me to where I wanted to go.  What he was doing cruising around I cannot tell; but he was poor, in Town because he had celebrated his 50th last Sunday, and was awaiting his disability recognition so that he could draw welfare.  Just another casulty of a society that has 46 million in poverty.  Nice man.  I forgot to ask his name.

Downtown I visited a couple of the bars from the previous night.  Not so good as the night before, Monday night is a good'un it seems.  Then off to the Station Inn in 'The Gulch', an up and coming area of Nashville that has stalled a little due to the economic downturn.  At Paul's recommendation I went there at 6.45 to see a show he'd said was quite good - The Darren and Donna show, or something like that, but it was sold out, so I went back to shitesville.  Now I return to see the music  that Paul had suggested would be worthwhile, at 9.30, after the show. 

Oh dear the netbook just lost power and crashed.  For a few awful moments I thought I'd lost everything that I'd written tonight.  Miraculously its all still there.  Wow, I hadn't saved it but bless blogspot it must do it automatically.  I must get a new battery asap.  Chris from Office Depot warned me this would not be easy, although he indicated a couple of stores which might supply one.  In the event I just decided this morning to get out of Nashville and move on .The netbook has only worked on mains since the baking and I have to use a cumbersome adaptor I inherited.  Most power points are in the wall a foot or so above the floor and the weight of the adaptor just pulls the plug prongs away from the socket. If that happens whilst I am using it it just crshes.  In this hotel the adaptor is balanced on top of the microwave I put under the power socket with good old Gideon's bible on top, plus my new book from Tom Hendrix.

As 1 a.m approaches I best tell you about Tom tomorrow; but he is probably the best experience of the trip so far.

TOM HENDRIX (as far as I know no relation to Jimi)





To conclude this episode I make it back to the Station Inn to hear an R 'n B trio whose names I cannot tell you but who were just great.  Guitar, organ  and drums.  Tight, subtle and a fitting conclusion to my Nashville experience.  Great Country, great Blusegrass and great R n B.

Oh and my taxi driver home last night is the third person to offer to buy the bike from me when I leave the USA.  Hopefully I still have his card in my bags somewhere.

I am now in the city of  Florence, Alabama.  I had intended to go to Muscle Shoals, because I had heard of it as a  music place; but I couldn't find it.  I mean by that that it was just strips of developments, not a town.  So, recalling Tom's advice that Florence was a better place, I went there.  And he was right.  You'll know more about trusting the flow, his judgement, tomorrow.

Washed my clothes here and they now hang on the balcony outside my room; they'll never dry inside it.  Just hope they're still there in the morning.

Solely because of the increasing disorder

In our cities of class struggle

Some of us have decided

To speak no more of cities by the sea, snow on roofs, women

The smell of ripe apples in cellars, the senses of the flesh, all

That makes someone round and human

But to speak in future only about the disorder

And so become one-sided, reduced, enmeshed in the business

Of politics and the dry, indecorous vocabulary

Of dialectical economics

So that this awful cramped coexistence

Should not delight in

The contradictions of so bloodstained a life

You understand.

As I fell asleep after last night's blog I realised that images from the Museum Of Native American History, images of faces, were merging with that of Linda; of whom I spoke.  I bet my motorcycle she has more than a trace of native american genes.

On which point whilst I was in the Wild Bean Cafe yesterday breakfasting and re-drivering the netbook a man at the next table asked me, in that brash upfront American way, if I wanted to sell my motorcycle which was right outside and he'd seen me fetch something from it.  Perhaps to his surprise I said yes; explaining the circumstances of my trip.  I named a price he agreed.  But I will be in Washington DC I said.  Thats my pick up outside he replied.  I'll come and fetch it.  This is the equivalent of going to South London from Newcastle.  I already have one potential buyer anyway, a friend of the guy who sold it to me.  So this makes   a sale before I leave a real likelyhood.

I have now arrived in Bristol, Tennessee.  Having missed the 'Rythmn 'n Roots Festival by a day.  Rats.  Time to catch up with the blog.  I intended to write last night but on return to my hotel, after the Irish Pub with the magic trio and a meal in the Stardust Cafe which turns out to be owned by Hall's sister and run by his niece; the netbook stubbornly refused to accept that an internet connection is available.  I got very cross with the hotel proprietor but it stayed that way so I dived into bed at 10; an unheard of early night for me.  Still I thought I will probably wake by 6 and could at least draft a blog and transfer it later.  Slept rather well; in fact until 8.30.  No breakfast at the hotel so I drove to the Wild Bean Cafe in Lewisburg  where the netbook gave me just the same message.  Obviously not the hotel wi-fi that had misfunctioned.  After running diagnostics the netbook then re-installed about 15 drivers and lo; I was online. A warning though that the machine is not in peak condition and I may go silent at any time. 

Amy came in to the Wild Bean for a latte as she had to open the store, Bella, from 12.  A totally pleasant interruption, but alongside the re-installation of drivers, that contributed to a shorter rumination than intended so I shall take up the themes a little later.

If I was a little unkind about the landscape in the highlands of W. Virginia around Elk River TC then let me balance that by saying I have found much of the rest of the state more interesting and enjoyable to experience.  Rolling hills which go on for miles and miles and in most places a proliferation of shacks, trailer homes and single storey clapboard houses beside the roads.  Sometimes trailer and shack combined together.  Poor folks houses.   A recently released statistic tells that those living below the poverty line in America have increased to around 46 million people.  The ghettos of the cities are a feature of many countries, here the rural poverty smacks you in the face too.

At the recommendation of the the magic trio I visit the Greenbrier River Trail, a few miles out of town, before setting off to Bristol.  It is very much to my taste.  A heron sits mid-stream, fishing, and many colourful birds fly amongst the trees.

So this is the Greenbrier River, near Lewisburg.  

Sitting beside it after a short walk I reflect a little on the Museum of Native American History.  350 years ago we in Newcastle were, give or take a couple of years, busy dealing with King Charles I as we kept him prisoner in the City during our Civil War.  Indeed he used to play golfe upon the Shield Field during his time in custody; an area almost in the City centre these days.

Here native Americans lived in harmony with the rivers and forests, plants and animals, entirely innocent of the changes awaiting them.  Of course the vast majority of native Indians were wiped out not by guns and swords and armies, but by diseases.  Microbes, bacteria, viruses borne upon the ships of the colonising French and British.  I think the museum suggested some 90% died that way.  Missionaries reported piles upon piles of corpses in native villages. "All that we converted have now died"

I reflected too, in the midst of the tranquil beauty, on the poverty and troubles of today.  Brecht's 'Solely Because of the Disorder in Our Cities' came flooding into my head.  A poem where he can no longer speak about the beauties of this world because of the political crisis surrounding him.  As I speak the words gently tears begin to flow almost uncontrollably and I have to pause.  I remember the power of several of his poems used to do that to me before I engaged in the discipline of performing them.  You have to rein that back as a performer and try to get the audience to feel the emotion.  Nevertheless the thrill reminds me that I do have a mission to bring his poetry to people.  He remains, for my money, one of the 10 most important western artists of the 20th Century.  My daughter, who helped enormously with the first version of my show over 2 years ago now, thinks I have become ridiculously obsessed with the work, but I fear the new version of the show which I have been slowly working on for most of a year now, will find the light of day next year.

I also remembered too an early date with a girlfriend 20 odd years ago now.  A down to earth and astute working class woman she was very nervous when I suggested a film as a date, that I would take her to some obscure art film with sub-titles.  In fact we went to see 'The Last of the Mohicans'.  The film of course starts with the Mohicans hunting a deer in a forest not unlike the ones I am seeing now.  And the first 5 minutes of dialogue are all in a native Indian language; with sub-titles.

 Hall,the Crazy Baker, told me yesterday that he had actually looked up the U-Tube clip from my Brecht show.  Flattering in one sense and deeply embarrassing in another as now I don't regard it as a very good piece.  Badly recorded sound and not what I would really like to represent my work.  You forget that once in the ether material remains there for ever.

I have written a little about Hall and Amy.  Linda, the third of the magic trio, is one of the most stunningly attractive women I have ever met in my life.  Not classically beautiful and certainly not glamourous; just, as I think I told them on the first night we met, an uncommonly handsome woman.  I have to confess her image has floated into my mind as I laid my head on my pillow the past few nights.  If I were 10 years younger, a little thinner round the waist and not just passing by in transit, I would definitely want to have her babies.

The trio have, quite unwittingly, helped to define something, and I am not yet sure quite what it is, about me and about this trip.  Something to do with people not places certainly.  And it is about discoveries too. That I can have such, slightly ridiculous, fancies not expected of a man approaching 60, is at once unnerving, exciting and revealing.  Am I nothing but a superficial flirt?  Or just attuned to potential?  Where is constancy in all this?  I tried hard to be constant with my last partner, 12 years we managed, but I also am who I am and that was too dangerous for her.  Not being trusted was a deeply bitter blow that I am still trying to escape from under and I still struggle not to blame her for that.  Blame, like guilt, is an entirely unproductive emotion.

At dinner tonight in an Italian next to the motel - Parmigiana Melazane with a bed of spaghetti and garlic bread, plus egyptian bread with the Tzatziki I ordered as a side dish, total carbohydrate overload most of which I had to leave - the next door table took up conversation. The accent seems to attract attention and the Baptist minister, for such he was, on discovering I was from Newcastle, told me he spent 6 months on the Baptist circuit based in Blaydon and High Spen; near neighbours to Newcastle.  Even he and his friend agreed that despondency was the order of the day.  Where will I find some Americans prepared to stand up for their country's mad follies?

Nashville cats, cool as country water.  Tomorrow.

This will have to be a quick one and may contain nuts, no errors.  The last post did contain a serious error - Lewisburg is the COOLEST  small town in America; not the best as I erroneously stated.  It is a small town and a slight mystery.  This is not a well off area of the country to all appearances, but Lewisburg is full of trendy gift shops, galleries and cool cafes (like the Wild Bean where I am currently breakfasting). Where does the money come from?  I mean it is a small town but I would estimate that around a third of the retail outlets in its one and two half main streets are of the trendy variety.

I meet up again with the quite unusual trio of Amy, Hall and Linda, who do all live together it turns out.  The conversation flows as easily as it did the other night.  First with Amy in 'Bella', one of the trendy shops where she works, as the trade dies down late afternoon we ramble around children, families and challenging the corporate evils.  Hall and Linda are out demonstrating how delicious Hall's granola is at a store in a neighbouring town somewhere.  Then they join me in the Irish pub while Amy cashes up the store.  

There is an element of adventure and discovery in taking this trip.  I talk openly with them about my life my loves my hopes and fears.  Not quite all of them but enough to give pause for reflection.  

Off for a quick explore of the Greenbrier River and then to Bristol Tennesee.