I will not apologize to those from Seattle, those from Turkey, France, Italy or nothing. The best coffee you can get comes from Baton Rouge: Community Coffee. While they import their beans from Brazil, they roast the beans right there in Baton Rouge. They even have coffee-chicory blends that are pretty damn good.
The coffee is strong but not bitter. Even when it gets lukewarm it goes down smooth. I know people out here love the pretension that is Intelligentsia and all of the other snooty thumb-up-their-ass coffee places that have sprung out all over Hipstervilles. But fuck that. Just brew some of this Community Coffee and knock your socks plum off your feet. Trust me. The only vice I have left in my life is coffee, so I know me some good coffee.
When I went back to the town I grew up, Zachary, I just had to go to Winn Dixie and buy me some of the coffee. It’s only sold in stores in the South, so us Yankees are missing out. Thankfully I can order on their website, so I won’t be 100% deprived.
The last hockey game I attended and covered was on Jan. 31. With the Kings on the Grammy road trip and my own road trip, it’s been over a month since I’ve watched a hockey game live.
There is an adjustment to coming home from a vacation, but none more so than when you go on a road trip. On a normal trip you just fly to your destination, do some activity, rest up before dinner, have a night time activity and call it a day. But on a road trip you wake up, drive for hours on end. You stop at places that seem interesting in the middle of nowhere. Eventually you check into a motel at night and go to sleep.
It’s a life of mobility and freedom.
Back in 1994 my cousin Aaron, his brother Terry, our Uncle Alex and his wife Jill and I went on a road trip all through the Southwest. To Vegas, an unexpected stop in Kingman, AZ because of a busted air conditioner in the car, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Dinosaur Monument in Colorado, Reno, San Francisco and back home. It was a great trip, and Aaron and I had fond memories of that trip.
It was an easy sell when I told Aaron back in Thanksgiving that I wanted to visit my father’s grave since I hadn’t been back there since my mom and I buried him in 1997. He agreed immediately.
There were some constraints in the trip. I wanted to get to Baton Rouge as quickly as possible without having to drive nonstop. I wanted to stay in Baton Rouge for several days and then New Orleans for several days more. Then after that it would be a free-for-all in trying to get back to Los Angeles.
Here were the highlights:
Buc-Ee’s. There are not enough words about this place. With locations all over Texas, Buc-Ee’s has a great hilarious billboard campaign. “Top two reasons to stop at Buc-Ee’s: #1 and #2.” See? It’s part truck stop, gas station, convenience store, jerky maker, barbeque restaurant, tchotchke vendor. It’s just a huge monstrosity of a place that only Texas can pull off. It’s impressive really even though everything in my faggoty liberal being wants to rebel against it.
The Toy & Action Figure Museum. Also thanks to billboards Aaron and I stopped by this place of awesome awesomeness. It’s in a little town named Pauls Valley in Oklahoma. You would think a place like this would be in a bigger city. Hell we have a Museum of Death here in Los Angeles. But no, this place is in small town Oklahoma. You can see pictures of this in my Flickr photoset.
Natural Bridge Caverns. Also a billboard attraction. Outside of New Braunfels, Texas here are these caverns. It’s room temperature yet humid as all hell down there making you sweat like a greased hog at a county fair. It’s still pretty amazing to be in these holes in the ground. The guides are these young kids, nothing like the Louisiana swamp tour guide who was in his 60s and made a living in the bayous as a trapper among other things. In the caverns it was all textbook. But it didn’t really matter since the formations down there were pretty amazing.
Louisiana Food. Holy motherfucking shit. Fried gator. Catfish. Double stuffed shrimp. Fried chicken. Gumbo. Crawfish etoufee. Beignets. Jambalaya. Boudin balls. I didn’t even get the muffaletta that I wanted. But it was all right. I had damn near everything else. Holy motherfucking shit.
Hilton Baton Rouge. Located in the Capitol District, they made you feel like royalty. Now, this isn’t big city luxury or anything. But for a city the size of Baton Rouge, it’s the best it will get. Good wi-fi strength, friendly folks behind the desks, good drinks in the bar. It’s right across the street from the Mississippi River. It’s near the convention center, new art museum, the old Capitol building. I loved it there.
There was a big lowlight though.
The plan in Norman, OK was to spend the night and head west on the I-40 to New Mexico. The plan was to walk on the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge outside of Taos before heading to the Four Corners. Unfortunately a blizzard was blanketing the Midwest cloing the I-40 between Albuquerque and Amarillo. So instead of just cutting across the Texas panhandle, we had to go back down the I-35 to the I-20 which meets the I-10 and come up the I-25 from Las Cruces. And because of the timing we decided to make that drive nonstop. So 26 hours of driving we went from Norman, OK to Flagstaff, AZ.
That hurt. I probably got 2 hours of sleep while Aaron probably got 1 or 2 at best. We got to a Motel 6 in Flagstaff at around 2 p.m. We ordered pizza, showered and crashed. I woke up around 7 p.m., watched some sports and crashed again at 11 p.m.
I will never EVER drive nonstop like that again.
Also one regret: I never got a photo of the old US Highway 666 sign. It is now US Highway 491, but some of the old signage remains. Unfortuately I was trying to concentrate on not falling asleep which I failed several times.
So here are the states I have visited:
So who wants to do a road trip to the north? Anyone?
Yesterday while I was covering the Santa Anita Handicap, the poutine truck was there. I talked about this truck about a year ago when what I had ordered caused me much pain. It was delicious, but feeling my arteries cry out for help was painful.
Well I go to cover Kings practice this morning and there the truck was. Was it a sign? Like yesterday I didn’t buy anything, but now I have poutine on my mind. Ugh.
The scariest thing of my two-week road trip happened in the beginning, in Baton Rouge. No, it wasn’t me getting sick. Sure I had trouble swallowing and for one night I had body aches and chills. But after overloading on zinc and vitamins, I was all right the next day although the throat still smarted in the entire week I was in Louisiana.
The scary thing in Baton Rouge was how quickly my Louisiana drawl came back. Having lived in Zachary, LA until I was eight, I had a thick accent when my mom left my dad and moved us to Los Angeles. As a third grader, I quickly ditched my accent for obvious reasons. When I am really tired or drunk, the drawl creeps its way subtlely.
But being back in Baton Rouge phrases like, “Howdy ma’am,” and “You better’n giddy up there ‘fore I turn your car into a piss bucket,” crept into my vernacular complete with the drawl. Just like that. No thought, no hesitation. It just fell out of my mouth as if that’s how I’ve been talking the last 25 years.
Soon people looked at me as just another person while my cousin was the one who talked weird. It didn’t help that he’s full Korean, so he already is an aberration.
I lied. There were two scary things. There was the accent, but there was also something else. It felt like home. Baton Rouge, a city with just over 800,000 people in its metropolitan area and around 230,000 in its city limits, felt like a place I could move to after years of living in the second largest metropolitan area in the United States.
The initial goal of going to Baton Rouge was to visit my dad’s grave. I had never seen his headstone. We buried him in 1997 less than a week from my high school graduation, and I hadn’t seen him since. He’s buried at the Second Baptist Cemetery out in Jackson, about 35 miles north of Baton Rouge and about 20 miles north of where I grew up in Zachary.
There had been changes to both Zachary and Jackson. Zachary had become more posh. It now boasts a hotel. The Winn Dixie moved across town to nearby the Cracker Barrel convenience market my mom used to manage. They now have a library, a golf course and, inexplicably, trying to build an Americana complete with a cineplex, mall and condos.
We went by my old house. There was no one home, so we didn’t go in. It was much closer to the street than I remembered. Our old flower bed and flag pole in the front yard was gone. Also gone were the marks on the street that told the deliveryman of the Baton Rouge Advocate whether or not to deliver the paper to the houses.
But I remember the spot we used to burn our dead leaves during the winter. I remember the backyard which got flooded during a hurricane. I remember all of the ant hills I used to kick around as a kid just to see the ants scurry about manically. I remember Brandon Bates’ house, my best friend and classmate. I believe he hosts a show on the Outdoor Network or something like that.
Despite the changes, everything felt familiar. It was like I belonged here, that I was meant to be here. It’s a feeling that’s hard to put to words, but anyone who has gone back to their hometown after many years absence must surely have felt this also. That is unless that town had beat out your will to live when you were a child. Then perhaps it’s a shithole to you.
When we got to the cemetery, I was amazed at how nice the graves were. There is my older sister, my uncle, my grandfather and my father. None of the family live anywhere nearby, so I was amazed at how nicely kept the headstones were. What also astonished me was that my dad and uncle had two markers each. One was the headstones we purchased, but the other was the military ones that indicated which branch they were in and what conflicts they served. I don’t remember ordering that when my dad died.
Since my dad was a veteran, someone had stuck a tiny American flag next to the grave. There were plastic flowers and a tiny praying angel figurine on my sister’s grave which would normally repulse my atheist self but oddly comforted me. I didn’t break down and cry or anything like I thought I might have. It was all very stoic.
The one time I did have tears falling was when we had moved on to New Orleans. I wanted to see one of the few beaches in Louisiana that lined the Gulf Coast, so we went the 100 miles down to Grand Isle. We got to the State Park at the end of the island and onto the beach. The emotions just came out. The water was murky thanks to an oncoming storm.
I don’t know what had me emotional, whether this was the water tarnished with the oil from the BP spill or this was the water that fueled Hurricane Katrina. But I stood there on the beach just staring out in amazement.
It was then that I realized that Louisiana is partly my home. Though all of my adolescence and adult life has been spent in Southern California, there was no doubt that Louisiana was a part of me like the Mississippi mud, the Spanish moss, the humidity.
I told my cousin, “I could live here.” He didn’t get it. He’s only lived in Southern California so Louisiana was a foreign place for him with foreign concepts and foreign people. But I knew these people. I knew these lands. Hell, I could still find my home without the aid of a map.
This concept of home was reinforced for me when we got to Norman, OK. Stephanie checked us in, a mother of three who divorced her husband a few years ago. She was from Metarie, LA when Katrina came barreling. She lost everything.
She came to Norman to wait things out for a while until Metarie was rebuilt. In 2009 she moved back to Metarie.
“I was amazed how well New Orleans has recovered so far,” I told her.
She shook her head. “But not the outside cities,” she replied.
Stephanie only lasted in Metarie for six months until she came back to Norman. “The economy,” she told me. There were better opportunities for her to be able to feed her children in Oklahoma.
“They must be really hospitable here since you came back,” I said.
She just made that face, the squinched up face that leaves no doubt that she was not happy living here. “I miss it down there,” she added. “It’s so different here.”
Stephanie wasn’t home. To her it was just a place to live, not a place to lay down roots. Her heart was still in Louisiana.
Perhaps I’m just romanticizing my visit. But I guess part of me, too, still has roots in Louisiana no matter how much I’ve tried to run away from it in the past.
I am back at home after nearly two weeks on the road. From California to Louisiana via the I-10, my cousin Aaron and I spent three days in Baton Rouge and three days in New Orleans. From there it was a free-for-all. We ended up going to Natural Bridge Caverns outside of San Antonio, stayed in the most modular Motel 6 in San Marcos, TX, trying to go up to the I-40 to cross into the Texas panhandle but rebuffed by the blizzard. There was the Toy & Action Figure Museum in Pauls Valley, OK, 26 hours of non-stop driving just to make it to the Four Corners Monument during daylight. There was sleeping for nearly an entire day in frigid Flagstaff, AZ. A drive-by of Kingman, AZ which holds familial importance with Aaron and I. There was the Hoover Dam and Vegas and now home.
It was an incredible two weeks. There were many people along the way who had tons of stories. It almost made me turn into a reporter for This American Life.
I’ll definitely have a lot more to write about as I can put my thoughts together coherently. But for now it’s time to delve back into the bitter pill of reality and get on with things.
After a little more than two days, my cousin and I have arrived in Baton Rouge. As you can see, our hotel room faces the Mississippi River which is fucking posh.
Now, arriving in a mid-sized city on a Sunday night means not a lot of things are available no matter how revitalized their downtown district is. Fortunately my nose found the hotel bar and a Macallan 12 neat which hit the spot after 1,830 miles.
Now I would have written an update last night, however the Motel 6 we stayed at in Fort Stockton, TX failed to give us the Wi-Fi key, and we were too tired to go back to the front office to pick it up. Some notable things along the way:
Buc-ee’s. We saw signs of it coming in and out of San Antonio. One of them talked about Beaver nuggets. Another talked about the best jerky. So past San Antonio in Luling, TX was Buc-ee’s. It was an extravaganza of a store that could only be appropriate in Texas. Jerky, snacks, bbq, hunting equipment, gift shop. It was a huge orgy of crap. Gifts were almost bought and could still be bought as we head back. I haven’t decided yet.
Fuck Texas drivers. Signs on the interstate clearly say that the left lane is for passing only, made especially for the fucking idiots who don’t know this rule of driving etiquette already. So why did we still encounter cars going 60 mph even thought the speed limit is 80 mph?
Oh. THE SPEED LIMIT ON THE OPEN ROAD IS 80 MPH IN TEXAS!!!!!. Talk about burying the lede.
Texas lasts forever. 883 miles on the I-10 through Texas. And boy do the Texans love themselves. “Don’t mess with Texas,” the slogan reads. Fuck them. I messed with them all right, and boy were they sorry. By the way, Pepe’s in Ozona, TX rocks. If I were forced to live in Podunkville, Bumblefuck and could choose a town to live in, it would be Ozona, TX.
Rain is expected here in Baton Rouge tomorrow. That will put a damper on things. But exploring will happen.
So there was more traffic than I had anticipated as we were heading out of Los Angeles last night. Being the dense person I can sometimes be, I failed to realize that this is president’s day weekend and everyone would be heading out of town also. Doh!
Nonetheless once we got past Riverside, things were okay. Of course this brought up one of my peeves of California drivers: their utter lack of care or ignorance on how to drive on a 4 lane highway. The first lane is for passing not for cruising.
This stupid cunt was driving her little Hyundai at around 65 in the passing lane. 65!! We damn near rear ended her.
Trucks trying to pass other trucks? Is that even legal?
It became very apparent that as I sat stewing in the passenger seat it was a good thing I wasn’t packing heat. Unfortunately I wasn’t carrying any drugs on me either so this anger is allowed to fester.
Regardless, things are well. We spent the night in Blythe right at the California-Arizona border. One thing that struck me as we were in the middle of nowhere were the random lights seen off in the distance. One particular row of amber lights in the distance turned out to be a state prison.
I haven’t killed my cousin Aaron, nor has he wanted to kill me. Yet. Things can change very quickly. I got a whiff of what the product of his morning sit-down session in the bathroom can be.
Dispatches from Arizona and daytime pictures coming next.
As you can tell from the photo above, I am in dire need of a haircut. That will be done today. Along with packing and tying up a couple of loose ends at the homestead. Fortunately I shopped for travel-sized toiletries and did laundry yesterday.
My cousin Aaron and I will be taking off around 6 or 7 tonight for a road trip to Louisiana. Many pictures will be taken. Many FourSquare check-ins will be made. Hell, I may resurrect my Flickr account.
I will not apologize to those from Seattle, those from Turkey, France, Italy or nothing. The best coffee you can get comes from Baton Rouge: Community Coffee. While they import their beans from Brazil, they roast the beans right there in Baton Rouge. They even have coffee-chicory blends that are pretty damn good. 
