New Orleans has developed a nice little scoot community and they even hosted Amerivespa last year. The Big Easy Weekender is our great little annual rally that takes place every spring.
Here’s a video from the Harmkhana obstacle course from BEW3 a couple of years ago.
I couldn’t make it to BEW this past weekend, but I found a video online that covers the whole Gymkhana event.
I know this video is incredibly long, but you can kinda scan through it and get the gist of the activities and crashes. It starts with the slow race(last one across the finish line wins, but your feet can touch the ground).
Lot’s of new posts in the weeks to come including an the exploration of an urban ruin and of course, the 120 RAW OYSTER CHALLENGE. Stay tuned.
Weeks ago, when Sharky entered the picture, we found ourselves holed up in our house with cabin fever. In the past, Rebecca had expressed interest in visiting the Tobasco factory, the McIlhenny estate, and the Jungle Gardens. Coincidentally, all of these things are within a stones throw of each other… on Avery Island.
As we approached the island, I commented to Beck that it looked like there was a mountain on the horizon. I didn’t think the hill was real, but rather an illusion from the treeline. I was wrong. The 152′ tall “mountain” was indeed real and it was made of salt. More on that later.
The tour of the Tabasco factory is not really a tour so much as it is somebody talking for 5 minutes and then showing a ten minute movie. Be sure to try the Tabasco ice cream in the gift shop too! It’s colossally terrible.
The real jewel of Avery Island are the Jungle Gardens across the street from the Tabasco Factory. These gardens are home to hilly terrain, beautifully kept flora, and a creepy old McIlhenny mansion with about 40 vultures chilling out on the roof.
Nothing weird about all of these monster vultures hanging out on this roof. Not a thing.
Inexplicably, the Jungle Gardens also houses a 900 year-old Buddha statue that was sent to America in the 1920s from a Chinese warlord. Two friends of “Ned” McIlhenny sent it to him from NY as a goof in 1936. This spurred Ned to build an Asian-themed garden befitting the Buddha.
FREE MONEY?!
There’s also this area of the gardens called bird city. It’s kind of empty in the winter due to migration, but here it is buzzing with activity:
Little did I know, the island is also the site of one of the world’s largest salt mines. Salt extraction has occurred on the island for at least several hundred years, the first benefactors of its salt deposit being American Indians who boiled briny spring water to extract the mineral. In 1862, during the Civil War, the Avery family discovered extremely pure solid rock salt just below the island’s surface. Because of a Union blockade, the South had no reliable source for this valuable commodity. As a result, the Averys mined the deposit to supply much of the lower South with salt.
Here are some amazing photos:
Today, mining occurs down to the 1300-1600 foot levels, but the dome extends to 40,000 feet in depth! The salt used to pack Tabasco’s barrel-aged peppers comes straight from the mine on Avery Island. How convenient!
I enjoy living off the land. Whether it’s squirrel sandwiches or sheepshead supper, I’m into it. Mid-summer, when the rains started dumping on New Orleans and making up for lost time, the mushrooms started popping up with abundance.
I’m no stranger to mushroom hunting, but I’m also no expert on wild mushrooms. I know what 3 types look like: morels, liberty bells, and chanterelles. Fortunately for me, my neighborhood is rife with chanterelles.
Chanties, as I call them, are delicious but deadly(much like lead paint). This is not a joke SO BE WARNED, I have poisoned myself TWICE(yep, twice) by eating chanterelles. Apparently, even though I scoured the internet for chanterelle information, I failed to see the 2 or 3 instances where some samaritan warns that they should be dry-sauteed before consumption. YOU HAVE TO COOK THEM TO DETOXIFY THEM. Get that moisture out of them and they are ready to eat. The poisonings were not fun, but they were an important lesson in living off the land and the limits of what Pepto Bismol can do.
Here’s the first batch of the season that I got straight from my backyard:
Dry those suckers out on a paper bag. Coincidentally, you should use a paper bag when collecting them, because they could get mushy in plastic. Just saying.
Also, bring a scissors so you can cut them from the stem. Before you cut ’em, ding the bell with your fingers to encourage the mushroom to drop spores. We’re trying to go sustainable with this bitch, yo.
Here was an even bigger score I got later in the week. Holy chanties! I found these suckers around the corner under a water oak. You can usually find them under trees where dead wood falls. For a long time, Rebecca hated me eating these things, but she has sine come around to the idea since I prepared them properly the last 4 or 5 times I’ve had them. Forage away, holmes.
You know Anderson Cooper can’t wait to get all up in this ASAP.
The only earthquake I’ve ever felt was the one that hit Hawaii in 2006. Mild for me on Maui, but worse for people on the big island. Historically, Louisiana is no earthquake virgin. Tremors on the Delta and in the Gulf have been recorded for centuries. Nature will always win as much as we try to stop it.
Although there have been other earthquakes felt in Louisisana, these two are the largest CENTERED in Louisiana.
The largest Earthquake recorded in Louisiana was centered about 60 miles west of New Orleans and awakened many people throughout eastern Louisiana at about 6:17 a.m. on October 19, 1930. Maximum intensity reached VI at Napoleonville, where the entire congregation rushed from a church, as the entire building rocked noticeably. Intensity V effects were noticed at Allemands, Donaldsonville, Franklin, Morgan City, and White Castle, where small objects overturned, trees and bushes were shaken, and plaster cracked.
More recently, on November 19, 1958, a local earthquake in the Baton Rouge area shook houses and rattled windows. Scores of residents telephoned the Weather Bureau, Civil Defense, police and radio stations. The shock was also felt at Baker and Denham.
When will the next earthquake shake the Mississippi delta? Speaking as a dude who lives in an old house, my walls couldn’t take it.
Despite their terrible instincts, primitive coordination, and utter dependence on adults to live, they can still amaze with their sheer babyness. The concept of this was so foreign to me that I wouldn’t have believed it unless I saw it for myself. The pediatrician blew my mind with this one.
I think the doctor explained that there is leftover estrogen in the baby’s body from the gestation period or something like that. Anyway, you can milk a baby. Add that to the list.
You may have already seen Sharky dance to Cut Copy, but did you know that infants are remarkably agile and full of crowd-pleasing party tricks?
I don’t know if you’ve seen this before, but Sharky started doing this at 3 weeks old. He stands up erect when I grab his feet so I started balancing him like a broom. It really works his core and it helps to build confidence and a trust-bond with his dad. After a quick search on youtube, I found out that I’m not the only dad doing this, but my kid is the youngest I’ve seen balance for any substantial amount of time. I wonder what stunt Sharky will pull next?
Since I had my first taste of sailing a couple of weeks ago on the Pensacola Expedition, I was finally invited out to participate in the whitest sport since polo. BTdubs, this is what a google image search for “black polo” brings up:
Unlike my first sailing experience which took place at 2AM in a less than traditional outing, this time we were competing in the last race of the season for SYC. Southern Yacht Club is the 2nd oldest(1849) yacht club in the country, after New York Yacht Club(1844). If you’re interested in getting your mind blown, look at the photos of the interior of the NYYC here.
I know far less about sailing than this little girl who was a crew member on our boat.
Here’s what I do know: the boat has 2 regular sails – the main(big one) and the jib(in front). If you’re going downwind, you can haul ass if you drop the jib and throw out a big billowy 3rd sail called a spinnaker(AKA kite AKA ‘chute). As you can see, there’s a bunch of complicated info to know about the rigging of all the ropes and wenches and stuff.
Also, they don’t call any of the ropes “ropes.” They’re called lines, but each one has it’s own name. If they’re on the bottom of the sail, they’re called sheets. If they pull a sail up, they’re called halyards. There’s all kinds of inside lingo like that so that the crew can be very particular when yelling instruction. Instead of “pull that rope,” they might say “jump the spin halyard.” The problem is that sometimes old sailors who have been doing it forever forget that newbies like me don’t know shit about sailing. They fall back into the “pull that rope” vernacular to dumb it down, leaving everybody confused. Stick to the plan dude.
This is the jib sail(pre-race) before we hoisted it, shackled to its halyard. Below you can see the spinnaker pole. Changing from the jib to the spinnaker is the exciting part of the race. It’s a carefully timed teamwork-y move where you go from zig-zagging into the wind to turning completely around and raising the GO FAST sail.
We raced other boats that were in the same class as us to make it fair. Our boat had a cabin and a kitchen so it obvs wouldn’t be as fast as a stripped-down super light boat.
Even with a crew of 7 adults, there was still a lot of yelling when we raced. On a race sailboat, it’s almost like nothing is more important than winning. These guys didn’t care if they smashed their boats or what. The most pressing matter was going fast. If an adult were to fall overboard during a race, everybody would be hugely pissed. You might as well take your chances swimming to the shore if you’re close enough, cuz you will get ostracized if they have to turn that sucker around.
No matter what kind of boat you’re using, there are no brakes. On regular powerboats, you can throw it into reverse to slow down. Sailing is the subtle art of giving it juuuust enough stank to get it where you want it to go. See this guy coming out in front of SYC? Hard to return without a motor.
When the wind is at your front, you have to zig-zag or “tack” to go forward. Imagine parking in this slip using only the wind. It makes parallel parking look like child’s play.
This slip above is part of NOYC, the public marina owned by the city. In typical New Orleans city-run fashion, they haven’t had electricity or water to any dock there since Katrina. Come on dude.
After sailing in a big race boat and sailing in a small 2 person craft, I have to say that I like the simplicity of the small boat. I also like kayaks, man. Sometimes bicycles are more fun than motorcycles.
Chromeo throwing down with Daryl Hall taking some Yacht Rock to the next level:
NO Adventure 