Rodeo

Steer wrestling.

Yeah, Texas!!! Pow! Pow! Pow! Yeehaw!!

I'm in Dallas, Texas, at the end of frickin' July, and within one minute I got soaked so bad that even my underwear was saturated. Well, whatever...

Alright folks, welcome to Texas! Yeehaw!!! I looked up the nuttiest NRA and second amendment sporting gun range I could find and rode out there. I think I found a good one ;)

I went to the range, signed my name, got some instruction, and promptly was let loose with a Beretta 96 and fifty rounds of 9mm ammunition. Americans...

Here it gets frightening!

At first during instruction in the sales room I was nervous and a little bit afraid just to hold that gun. You can somehow feel it's a dangerous object. Then for the first three shots I was just a bit nervous, not quite knowing what recoil to expect. It quickly became routine: point, shoot, repeat, reload the clip, point, shoot...Then I changed the target paper, putting on one with the outlines of a man. This is

All over the place :)

where it gets really macabre. At first it was again just mechanical target practice, which I found quite disturbing when I realized that. But then I imagined a person there, and that was kind of frightening, giving a sense of the permanency of the action. I changed back to circles after a few shots. But I think the most discomforting aspect of it all is how quickly the whole thing became normal and ordinary. Just shootin'. And obviously how as a matter of course people walk in and out with their guns and the store casually stocks assault weapons (I held one). I even saw an internet platform the day before where people just privately buy and sell their used guns. Like it's a used book.

And don't forget...

Dallas Cowboys Insanity

Comfortable and expensive.

There it is. A huge thing. 1.2 billion dollars. Air conditioned! Luxury all around. Art hanging on the walls. For some time it had the biggest video screen on the planet. Up to 40 year contracts for a club seat. The $140.000 for such a seat buys you just the license to acquire tickets, though. You still have to buy the actual tickets for

the games. But apparently it works. There is enough money around to support even that. Obviously the luxury suites are more in the million dollar range, with minimum leases in the decades. And of course, I wonder if the average Joe Football Fan will ever see a live

game again. But now wealthy business folks can corrupt...uhm, invite...their prospective clients. But that's just my personal suspicion what the suites are for. The owner, Jerry Jones,

is a businessman, though. That gets repeated many times on the tour. He bought the Cowboys for $190 million, now they're worth $2.2 billion. (On looking it up, the Cowboys actually advertise this purpose on their website and exclusively address companies. tztztz...)

Some sound bites from the tour:

Field level suite.

"You can buy those suites for 10, 20 or 30 years. If you do that, you can decorate them as you want to. You can put up pictures or figures...oil rigs if you're in the oil business...I say that because we have it! Now there are also suites down at the playing field, 'dugout boxes,' as I call them. They're the most expensive boxes in the stadium, and they were the first to sell out, even before the stadium was finished. You might wonder 'Why would anyone pay so much for one of these boxes? You won't see much, people are gonna stand in your way.' That's right! The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are going to stand right in your way - Jerry Jones is a businessman!"

"Shortly after the stadium was built, the Jonas Brothers had a concert here, and they had a few hours left after sound check, so they hooked up their Xbox to the TV and sound system and played Halo 3 for two hours. It sounded like war zone. I don't know what they're living for anymore, that's about as good as it gets, it's the pinnacle of life."

All in all, everything there is incredibly over the top. It's impressive, no doubt, but I guess I ten times prefer Fenway Park.

You should see the tourists here. Seems to be the biggest attraction.

Kennedy



I was at the Kennedy Memorial in Dallas when some guy just started talking to me about the area. It was immediately clear what he was up to, but he gave a nice talk and showed me around a bit, so I thanked him, gave him a tip, and so ended up at the Kennedy assassination site.

Citizens expressing their doubts.

Standing there for a while, imagining what went down, the place gains something eerie, a feeling of recentness, as if the events were still reverberating around the place.

It is also a very inconclusive feeling, somehow unresolved. Is it the site of an assassination by a confused person, or the site of a major conspiracy? Is the window the place where the shots were fired, or where false evidence was planted to support some made-up story, where Oswald was set up?


The fatal spot is marked with an X.

Later that evening two guys approached me and asked whether I'm from Dallas, and said that apparently nobody around is from Dallas, so I launched into an impromptu tour of the area, relaying my knowledge gained from cell phone Wikipedia and landmark plaques. Apparently I have one more backup career if everything else fails.

Back in Texas

Back in Texas Love Field. One Riot, One Ranger.

Let's get some food!



California

That was a good time in California! Yesterday Julius wanted to expend some energy before his flight to London, so we went for a beach run that ended by running up the trails on the hills seaming the beach. It was insanely beautiful there. Torrey Pines! In some ways it reminded me of southern France. Ocean, beach, the sandstone cliffs, surrounding hills covered in brush. Just great! I even found a diamondback rattlesnake. Apparently the young ones are even more dangerous than the older ones, since they cannot yet precisely control how much venom to release. We watched it for a while, then it hid under some brushes. Later we stuffed ourselves with Mexican food and went to another place that was full of cormorants, seagulls, pelicans, and sea lions. Those are quite funny guys, arrogantly sticking up their noses, making their noises and just lying in the sun, fat and lazy. I wonder how they managed to climb some of the rocks they were lying on. On land they're not the most adept and elegant creatures, after all. Later the all-nightly jacuzzi session followed until we felt like the resident lobsters. Then I went to bed for my early morning flight back to Dallas. Back to motorcycling!

Water Sports

Following the boogie board, yesterday I took out a surfboard. Just had to try! We only had a really short one in the garage, though. It was about a man's height. Usually, for a beginner you want to have a longboard, which is about twice the height of the rider. They enable you to ride small waves, and are way more stable. The board I had was extremely short, which means it probably wasn't suited to the waves in the first place, and especially for a beginner was way too wiggly. Just sitting on the damn thing waiting for waves was a task! I managed to kind of get on my knees, also once sort of walked along the board while already in the process of falling, but I couldn't really stand a wave. Usually, when I tried getting up, the wave had already rolled through under me. It was really exhausting. And once I was surprised by a wave. It looked reasonably big when approaching, so I went for it, but then it suddenly expanded. It lifted me one meter above my board, then through me over and in front of the board, then it was all tumbling chaos. I found my board on the beach, my wetsuit's zipper was opened all to the hip, and I had a cut on my leg. All in all, it was an amazing experience! :)
We also saw some dolphins along the way.

In the evening Julius gave me a short introduction to SCUBA gear. Breathing under water! Interesting feeling without the limitations of a snorkel. I never did it before, so he explained the breathing equipment, the controls for the air cushions used for modifying buoyancy and all that jazz. I was supposed to just sit down under water and try it out, but of course I went diving around the pool, balancing myself out and exploring. It's a quite delicate project, but not too hard. With even just variations in the depth of your breathing, you can precisely control how much you are sinking or rising, evening out your glide to a constant depth. Ready for today to go on a rogue diving trip!

Which is what we did. On a beach diving spot we went out there, first sinking down a bit and just checking out again how it feels to handle that equipment, and then off we went! It seems that Julius always has me try new stuff. When I visited him in Finland last year, I never had set foot on a sail boat before. He fetched me at the train station with the words: "Hey, I organized something. Tomorrow we go sailing in the National Baltic Offshore Championships." We did, and it was quite cool. Anyway, today we dove to a depth of about 20 meters, and it was a lot of fun! We saw fish in their hidings, Taylor found an octopus, I found a big crab hidden under seaweed, and when we left the waters there were stingrays in the shallow beach waters. The coolest guy out there, though, was a cormorant that several times dove alongside us, trying to grab some fish. We were at 20 meters depth, and suddenly we saw a bird!

Del Mar, San Diego

It is time for a short interruption of my tour. Originally I had planned to finish it with visiting my great friend Julius in San Diego for three weeks of relaxing, watersports and shenanigans in California. However, he's now got a job and moves to London on the 24th, so I flew to San Diego on the 19th to spend at least a few days there.

The next day I had my first shot at boogie boarding. We caught a few nice chunkers! The swell was about one and a half meters, which doesn't sound like much but is totally enough! They were the biggest waves I had ever seen live. Before that, I think the most I saw was one meter waves. At one point I was watching the beach for some moments, and Julius said: "You should look out there!" - "Yeah, I was just looking..." - "No, I mean look there RIGHT NOW!" There was a biggie rolling in, I caught it, and rode it all the way home. Where usually it ends or I lose the wave, it hadn't even started yet. I was lifted ever higher. It just had no end. I was transported all the way back to the beach for what felt like about a hundred meters and maybe thirty seconds (reality: probably more like fifty meters and ten seconds), literally to where the water is only knee high. That was awesome!

I also got a taste of what power those waves have. I always had a bit contradictory thoughts about the big ones, on the one hand thinking that professional surfers, who have done that their whole life, are extremely fit physically, and competent in the water, still sometimes drown in the really big waves. On the other hand I thought, if it gets troublesome, just dive under the wave, so it just rolls over you. Where's the problem? The power is only on the surface, after all. Well, it is not. It used to feel like it with the smaller waves I was used to, those that were about one meter high. But just that little increase to one and a half increased their power by what felt like multiples. Yes, you still can dive under them, but there is much more going on there as well. And if you get caught in the wave proper, you're in for a ride! It's like a washing machine. Once I actually felt the first taste of a little bit of panic approaching, as for the first time I couldn't get up for what probably was only about ten seconds but felt like ages. But after that you know what to expect, and the next time it's fine, just wait a little under water and swim up again. But what humongous power those monsters must have that the pros are riding. Just think about the increase between one meter and one and a half, and then watch pictures of twenty meter waves!!!

The riding, though, is awesome! I'm hooked! To be propelled by that power, and being lifted ever higher, really feels great. I always was kind of addicted to that stuff anyway, catching waves and body surfing them whenever in the ocean, looking out for waves, judging them, "Oh, that looks nice, might become a good one...oh, no...wait it out...but the next one!" And I always had to stay in the water a little longer, wait for another good one.

Old Feelings

Texas. Hot. Dry. ... Yeah, right! Yesterday, while approaching Houston, within thirty seconds I was soaked to the bones. But that's probably because it is still near the coast. Today when I was riding towards Dallas, and just while I was thinking about how I had imagined Texas a bit more desert like, the grass changed abruptly from green to a dry, light brown color that is the more familiar image of Texas. Finally there. Welcome to Texas!

I don't know why exactly there, or why then, but while riding on the interstate approaching Dallas, for the first time I felt a taste of that special excitement about being in America that I had felt as a sixteen-year old driving on the interstate after arriving in Pittsburgh for my school exchange program.

Later that night, because everything was closed, I walked into a 24-hour drive in and got some food, sat next to my bike in the parking lot and stuffed my face with burger and fries. That, too, was a reminder of those old times.

Small Town Crime

:-)

9th Ward. And Some Food...

Eight years after Katrina, the 9th Ward looks like a city claimed back by nature. And that's what it is. There is some new construction somewhere, a few remaining houses clustered somewhere else, but all in all it seems that the city and national governments have given up on this area. You see the foundations of former houses, some freestanding staircases leading to nowhere, and lots of tall grass growing in the cracks in roads and sidewalks. It's a wide area of grass and trees, separated into cells by the remains of roads, with the occasional house standing out.



The 9th Ward is rough. And many other parts of the city are quite normal. But judging from the French Quarter, I lost my heart to New Orleans. Thanks in part to the cigar habit there was not a single night that I got to sleep before 3am. I had a lot of fun here. Before I left, however, I had to squeeze in a stop at Mahony's Po-Boy Shop. Cool place. Has its oddities, though. Since it's a small shotgun house, it's a bit cramped in some quarters. Specifically, the bathroom is right next to the kitchen, separated by what seems to be only a corrugated metal wall. So you can hear the cooks in the kitchen do their business while you're in the bathroom doing your business. And vice versa. The Po-Boy was great, though. Didn't think I would like fried oyster.

All That Jazz

Awesome! Another night! Those guys made me love jazz! Same drummer as yesterday, by the way. Two makes a trend, right? Therefore I'll make a deductively valid induction (hah!) that all shows at the Spotted Cat are awesome. Seriously, sometimes I find concerts a bit exhausting, and I'm not even a jazz guy, but with these bands I have an involuntary grin of joy in my face! And I love hearing licks that are a bit weird, then seeing musicians laughing at each other, trading musical jokes.

Just think about the keyboarder. He was constantly adjusting some settings, then using his foot pedals to adjust, then he has to understand the music around him, he has to be able to play in all the keys, moreover has to be able to immediately recognize the keys the others are playing in, he has to understand the interactions between all instruments, the harmonies, melodies, the rhythm, and then finally he has to muster the creativity to improvise good stuff on top of that. That, of course, holds for all instruments. I think most non-musicians fail to understand the enormity of this task. Then, at some point, they just switched instruments, with the solo saxophonist suddenly playing accompanying keyboard, and the keyboarder playing bass.

But again I was drawn to watching the drummer play. He was moving all four limbs independently, giving them different rhythms, with perfect technique. I was outside, dancing to jazz. Another guy out there was equality fascinated. He said he played for thirty years and sound engineered for twenty, and still he can't even tell whether the drummer was left handed or right handed. At some point I didn't even perceive the other instruments anymore.



The Big Easy

N'awlins is just awesome!

"If you play F..."

Yesterday I walked through the French Quarter, taking in the atmosphere, looking at all the awesome buildings, and listening to several of the many street musicians around here. So much talent! Those saxophonists on the left were just standing there, trading bits and pieces, maybe waiting for their turn, and talking about music and music theory, every now and then throwing in

a little performance when they noticed that some people were looking at them expectantly. Other bands were focused on performing. What impressed me about the guys on the right was how young some of them were, and that even though they are young boys, they play this kind of music and "old folks'" instruments. And they do it really well! The evening saw the obligatory visit to Bourbon Street, drinking on a balcony.

Today I started my day with a walking tour, covering a bit of New Orleans' history. And boy, it is colorful! Several stories are told in many different versions, as I found out later. Probably none of them are true. My favorite was about some guy who wanted to kill his rich wife for her inheritance

and fired six shots at her. But since the shots were pellets, she survived. He then got desperate and killed himself. For which he needed four shots! Given that in those days you probably had to reload your gun after each shot, one really starts wondering. I then added a visit to the Pharmacy Museum, which is a nice collection detailing the mixture of impressive medicine, rather dubious treatments and outright and ridiculous quackery

that medicine was at the time (and in a way still is - homeopathy and unproven therapies in academic medicine were around then, and are around now). Then I got some Cajun and Creole food at a rather rustic place, after which I stumbled over a costume and music parade celebrating French Bastille Day, so I just marched and danced with them to the Joan of Arc memorial. After that, I was off to Frenchman Street, checked out the live music joints, listened to some super famous Hammond organist via the broadcast from one club to the sidewalk, and settled on The Spotted Cat, where those boys were playing:

It was another reminder how many truly amazing musicians are around worldwide, with only a fraction of them ever getting famous. Considering how good many unknown musicians are, I think it is a huge amount of luck that determines which musicians get famous. I can't tell whether those particular guys have what it would take to make it, but during a guitar solo I got dumbstruck, standing there in awe and loosing my sense of time and space, just staring, and grinning. "Flying fingers" might be a good way to describe it. Later one of the drummer's soli was the second time I lost control over my facial expressions. The other guests also couldn't stop screaming and dancing, it was just pure fun in there. The trumpet guy in front by the way wasn't even part of the band, just some guest with an instrument who joined the band and improvised. His throat expanded to astounding proportions while playing! I ended my evening with some quiet time in the hotel's courtyard.

Even though my days in New Orleans are quite packed, and I'm limiting myself to the French Quarter, I'm just barely scratching the surface. It's fascinating, and most of all it feels so wonderful. It's hot, it's southern, it's relaxed, the Big Easy, it's colorful, lively, friendly, fun-loving, it's strange and exotic, it's mysterious, it's got a weird obsession with death, you see Voodoo shops and hear ghost stories, there's party, blues and jazz, there's crumbling and decay, and incredible charm. It's just New Orleans. I highly recommend it!

You know jazz funerals? Here's the jazz wedding.

 

Old pirate's headquarters turned bar.
No electricity!

Shotgun houses.
 



 

Really?