NO Adventure

Posted by: noadventure | August 29, 2010

The Biggest WTF Ever

Tired of Katrina coverage? If you’re like most, Katrina was probably your worst “NOadventure.”

Let’s move forward, shall we?

The year was 1978. Star Wars had come out in ‘77 and was an out of control blockbuster, the biggest movie ever at the time. Not many people (even serious Star Wars nerds) know about this movie because it was never released on VHS or DVD, and never rebroadcasted except for the original airing on November 17th, 1978. Yes, the Star Wars Holiday Special is an underground gem.

Thankfully, YouTube has the whole fucking thing (of course). Here’s one of the best segments with Harrison Ford saving Chewbacca’s son Lumpy from a stormtrooper, then mingling with the whole wookie family on Life Day (wookie Xmas).

Other insanely long and pointless scenes include an elderly wookie named Itchy (Chewie’s dad) with a virtual reality helmet on watching a galactic slow jam fractal trip, Bea Arthur’s cameo (no shit) as a bartender and 1970s supergroup Jefferson Starship playing a lightsaber music video from inside what appears to be a bagel toaster.

I especially like the 1978 news teaser, where the anchorman asks what to do with the state’s 170 million dollar surplus. Fast forward to USA – 13 trillion smackers under water. Ouch. Only one way to get outta debt. Work your ass off. Let’s tighten up this country’s bootstraps and pay this shit down. But first, check out how retarded Harrison Ford is in this:

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Posted in art, beer, historical, money, movies

Posted by: noadventure | August 21, 2010

Wakesurf Day

It was one of those days in early August when the heat index was 118 degrees. Water temp was about 95 degrees, so instead of being cooled off when jumping off the boat, it felt like being boiled. The first 6 or 7 feet of warm-chocolate-milk water were super hot, so only your tippy toes felt cool water in the next thermocline.

We kinda thought we invented a new sport with this wakesurfing thing(riding a surfboard on the wake behind a boat without being pulled), but it turns out there’s already a million people doing it. Besides, the wake our boat makes isn’t big enough to surf, so we had to get pulled anyway. We still had fun.

Just as the sun was setting, Morrison had his first successful pull. It’s always great to be able reach a goal and do something you’ve never done before. And everything was on the line, because Morrison definitely did NOT want to be called a pussy the whole next day.

This is how it’s really supposed to be done:

Next time: homemade parasailing(no joke).

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Posted in beer, board sports, coastal, mississippi, socializing, sports, success, summer, surfing, wakeboarding, water | Tags: bay st. louis, gulf coast, new orleans adventure, noadventure, nola, pass christian, toobing, tubing, wakeboarding, wakesurf, wakesurfing

Posted by: noadventure | August 15, 2010

Gretna BMX Brah!

Say brah, there is totally a BMX track in Gretna. The place actually looks really cool. This is one of the the kind of things that every other city in America has, but for some reason is slow to arrive in New Orleans. For fuck’s sake, we only have 1 roller skating rink on the Eastbank.

My friend Randy actually made a rad commercial for these guys and it goes a little something like this(hit it!).

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Posted in bicycling, bmx, parks, race, rollerskating, sports, westbank | Tags: bmx, dirtbike, gretna, new orleans, noadventure

Posted by: noadventure | August 8, 2010

Spearfishing Breton Sound

So I asked my buddy Jay to do a post on Louisiana spearfishing and he’s been kinda lazy about it, so I just took some of his photos and I’m gonna make up my own post.

Dudes, let’s get the boat ready! A one hour boat ride from Venice into Breton Sound will give you clear 20′ water with a sandy bottom in ideal conditions. Everyone knows catching your own food rules.

The fish you may spear include Redfish, Snapper, Grouper, Lemonfish(Cobia), Tarpon, and SHARKS!

Pull up next to an oil rig, tie the boat off, and hop in the drink. The dive flag lets other boaters know that you’ve got people in the water. Check out this redfish!

Not gonna catch anything standing on the rig. Wait a second, what is that a sheepshead?

That’s it buddy. Jump in. There aren’t any sharks nearby… that you can see.

Personally, I love diving AND fishing, but I have never combined the two. I have been diving in Louisiana though. Water looks exhilarating.

If you play your cards right, you may end up with a chest full of reds and snapper…

OR you may cross paths with a shark and have a bloodbath on your hands…

Either way, these fish just got a cap in they ass.

Pass me a cold one.

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Posted in beer, coastal, fishing, food, snorkeling/scuba, socializing, sports, sportsman, swimming, water, wild animals, wildlife | Tags: breton sound, diving, noadventure, shark, spearfishing

Posted by: noadventure | August 1, 2010

Appalachian Ramble

We had a week off in early summer and we didn’t want to risk going to the beach this year. So… we decided to do a grand tour of the central Appalachians from the Smokies to the Blue Ridge Mountains. We started in Chattanooga.

Ruby Falls(commercial cave tours sure are cheesy)

Tennessee Aquarium

Panera in downtown Chatt looks like it might as well be in Boulder Colorado. There were plenty of gore-tex clad yuppies with laptops, $1000 strollers, and $2000 bicycles.

Next, we went way north to Damascus, Virginia to ride the Virginia Creeper Trail. This is really fun. It’s 30 miles of downhill at a 5 degree grade; it’s not super fast – just enjoyable because you don’t have to really pedal. The VA Creeper Trail is a “rails to trails” project(kinda like the Tammany Trace) where they took an old railway and converted it into a bike trail. It’s covered with waterfalls, little trestles over creeks, and pretty farmland.

That’s why they call it the Smokies, muthafucka!

What next? Then we headed down almost the whole Blue Ridge Parkway(which is beautiful for hours). On the way down, we stopped at Grandfather Mountain and Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi.

I have now been to the highest point in North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. More to come on that.

We also saw a baby deer on Grandfather Mountain. His momma had swollen teats so it must have been a recent birth.

Then we stayed at Lakeview at Fontana. It’s a “rustic chic” spa/yoga/mountain resort. It was a really shitty 1950s motel that has been converted into a modern beautiful little getaway. There is tons of whitewater rafting within 10 minutes; the town of Bryson City is 5 minutes away. I highly recommend cooking in your room and getting a hot stone massage.

After 2 days at Fontana Lake, we took it slow going back to New Orleans and stopped at Alabama’s Horse Pens 40 – the bouldering mecca of the South.

Don’t forget Noccalula Falls, just north of Birmingham. It’s right off of I-59.

Birmingham really impressed me as a city of charm and class in an otherwise unclassy state(don’t get offended Alabamans, I’m from Louisiana AKA #50 on the class list). The truth is Alabama’s kinda got everything: beaches, waterfalls, climbing, and a surprisingly awesome little rocky city in Birmingham.

Back to Mississippi. Dunn’s Falls anyone? Also right off of I-59. I want the gold.

Just a couple hours from New Orleans. What trip to the Appalachians would be complete without some of that old time lonesome mountain music? Ernie Redbottom?

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Posted in alabama, bicycling, caves, climbing, highpoints, hiking, mountain biking, museum, north carolina, paddling, parks, river, road trip, summer, tennessee, virginia, water, waterfall, whitewater, wild animals, wildlife | Tags: caving, climbing, mountain biking, noadventure, paddling, virginia creeper

Posted by: noadventure | July 26, 2010

Zam’s Swamp Tour

As I have expressed on other occasions, we have always wanted to go on a professional swamp tour.

Not knowing which might be the best, we decided to go with Zam’s Swamp Tours. Yes, this is the dude(Diego) who was on Trading Spouses when they swapped moms with a California Vegan family. Hijinks ensued.

When we got there, Diego greeted us and told us to take a look around. There are animals all over the place: giant roosters, snakes, turtles, exotic birds, and about 10 thousand dead mullet on the surface of the bayou.

Seriously, the swamp was littered with tens of thousands of floating dead fish, most of them mullet. According to the folks at Zam’s, their deaths had something to do with oxygen depletion when the swamp water recedes, but I didn’t really understand. They admitted it was a rare phenomenon, but since we were 60 miles inland, I knew it had nothing to do with oil spills.

Make sure to get there early so you can chat with Diego and ZZ. Here was the dining room shack on the bayou where we ate lunch. Fried gator, shrimp poboys, and crawfish pies. Tasty. They say this shack gets 2 feet of flooding every year when the bayou gets high. That’s pretty annoying.

While waiting for our tour to begin, I perused the gift shop…

We went back on the porch and noticed that Diego had left his keys, a bottle of germ-x, and an unattended backpack on a picnic table with a live python in it.

Diego saw us eyeballing the snake and yelled across the road that it was ok for us to handle it.

“Go ahead and pick it up.”

Beckers did a little animal wrangling of her own.

These little guys are easy to handle and don’t hurt if they snap down on your finger.

We only saw a couple of small wild gators on the boat ride, but they had some serious monsters in a small pond on their property.

The guy told us this gator was over 100 years old. Apparently, the gator gets curious when a hose is sprayed on the water. Another technique to get him to come out is to try and swing at him with a stick. Listen in the video below when I tell the guy at 0:23, “Yeah, I think you should hit him again.” Awesome.

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Posted in fishing, parks, socializing, sportsman, swamp, water, wild animals, wildlife | Tags: alligator, gator, new orleans, noadventure, nola, swamp, zams

Posted by: noadventure | July 19, 2010

Okatoma Whitewater

How many of you waited all winter and spring, saying to yourself,”Man, when summer gets here, I’m going to hit the water every day?”

How’s that working for ya?

Let me ask you a question. What do these three images have in common?

Answer: They are 3 things I was not thinking about on my recent Okatoma whitewater trip. The photos above may not make sense to you now, but they will make hits for me on this post.

The Okatoma is only 2 hours away and has genuine class II rapids. Who knew? Enjoy killer rope swings and sweet little waterfalls in the heart of South Central(Mississippi). I cut a pretty decent backflip off this one.

Here’s a log jam that happened right after the first rapid. Word of advice: either pass everyone up or let them cruise past you. The best rope swing is after the first rapid so try not to get caught in the middle of a church group or school. Also: it’s a dry county, but we DEF had suds in our kayaks. You may get leers from some god-fearing locals, but who cares.

Some of the rapids eat canoes, so you can pull off to the side and watch fat kids tip over all day. There is also great little scenic bluffs that you don’t see alot of south of I-10.

Somewhere around this rapid, we stopped to swim and grab a beer…

While we were soaking in the river, tiny fish started nibbling on our fingers and toes. Pearce claims one bit the fuck out of his nipple. All I know is that his nipple was bleeding when he came out of the water. I can’t really see any blood in the photo, but it does look inflamed.

Anywhosers, the Okatoma ate my camera(these photos were salvaged from the card), so I had to scavenge some clips of people FAILING the rapids on the Oke.