Dylan's April 21, 2010 blog

Dylan fuck the champagne, we want gin

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Wednesday blog

APRIL 21, 2010 @ 02:00 PM

I think I'll begin in New Orleans. It's not really the beginning, but over the last few weeks my mind has been wandering back there every time it thinks I'm not looking. If only it were that easy for the rest of me to follow!

I remember vividly our arrival, it was late at night and we stumbled off the coach sleepy and cramped. My hips felt dislocated and my mouth tasted like floors. The journey from New York had begun by train, but after 16 hours flash flooding in Georgia had meant swapping the relative comfort and emptiness of the train for a smelly coach full of fat snoring men and rustling crisp packets. We travelled by coach fourteen hours through the most spectacular lightning storms I have ever witnessed, driving over the lake while the water around us lit up and the sky cracked open. We walked through the doors of New Orleans station and the air hit me like syrup, so thick and heavy, full of rain and jazz.

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Dear United States of America, you are huge. On the train (double decker, as if it wasn't already twice the size of the one I'd take from home to London) I remember gazing out the (huge) window at a very large river spanned by a colossal bridge and vast fields full of grass as tall as me, giant billboards beside giant roads carrying giant trucks to (presumably) giant places. I remember how almost overwhelming it is to be confronted by that much impossible space. I also remember the sounds of the guy two seats behind me hawking up great strings of snot. The two jolly train conductors and the one little mean one. My involuntary sniggering at a building called 'Wackoff Steel Ltd' and the worrying that my brain was turning to jelly after only a couple of hours of a 30 something hour journey. I got very excited in an I-recently-overdosed-on-The-Wire sort of way about the train stopping in Baltimore, all I really got to see of Omar and McNulty's stomping ground was the sides of two other trains and a sign that read 'Baltimore'. I loved the slow trundling of the train through open fields and small villages, past homes so close I could spy on people's day to day lives. There was an old woman in her dressing gown sitting on white plastic lawn furniture cleaning her microwave with a hosepipe. Americans are crazy.

coldandwet

United Kingdom

January 2005

APR 21, 2010 02:48 PM

Wow. Thats a lot of cocaine they served you with that coffee and pastry. No wonder you had attention deficiancy on the journey

I've hardly seen any of America, just Disney and a weekend conference in Phoenix in which I saw daylight about 3 times. The storm sounds both beautiful and a bit scary considering you were travelling through it in a large metal box!

Videre

United Kingdom

August 2008

APR 21, 2010 03:15 PM

Those Benyes look like the came from the Cafe Du Monde

I love that city I spent three months in the Big Easy last summer and enjoyed every moment.

I intend to go back as soon as I get the opportunity.

That was a nice journal entry. I hope you get the chance to go back soon.

DrOcculari

Appleton, WI

June 2005

APR 21, 2010 06:13 PM

One of the things I like about train travel, at least in the U.S. is, everyone and everything turns it's good side to the roads and highways. From a train you get to see the backyards and backsides of the country. It's a remarkably different view, like the lady in her dressing gown hosing down the microwave.

ron4164

Ponchatoula, LA

January 2007

APR 21, 2010 08:01 PM

I see you had some beignets.
Like em?
Air like syrup? I hardly notice!
Hope you had a nice time down here.
It does rain at the most inopportune times.
Take care Dylan. Very nice read.