USA

This is the first of three entries on my recent trip to New Orleans. This one deals with the history of the city, most of which is quite visible as you walk through her neighbourhoods. The second entry will deal with Katrina, the damage that the hurricane did and the recovery efforts. The third and final entry will deal with food, booze and the general debauchery of Bourbon Street.

New Orleans, Louisiana sits on a strip of land between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, about 100 miles from where the mighty Mississippi drains into the Gulf of Mexico, at a point where the Mississippi River bends. The bend in the river gave New Orleans’ one of it’s nicknames, “The Crescent City.”

The city was founded at the bend in the River in the 1718 by Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville. Bienville was living in Biloxi at the time, and was asked by John Law, the Scotsman who was in charge of France’s Company of the West to find a suitable place for a colony. Bienville had seen the site 19 years earlier while on a expedition with his brother Pierre Le Moyne, Sieur D’Iberville to map the Mississippi River and cement France’s claim on their section of North America.

Bienville had liked the site for two reasons. Firstly, the bend made it easy to defend. Secondly, St. John’s Bayou provided a link between the Mississippi and Lake Pontchartrain, allowing easy military and trade access to the gulf of Mexico. Bienville founded a settlement on high ground and named it New Orleans after duc d’Orleans, the regent of France.

The town was founded based on the plan of French towns, with a central square called the Place d’Armes and a grid of streets. Earthen mounds topped with wooden walls surrounded the city, protecting it both from potential invaders and the occasional flood from the river.

John Law, the Scot running the Company of the West, marketed New Orleans across Europe as a land of milk and honey, a golden opportunity to become wealthy and live in luxury. In reality, early New Orleans was nothing more than a scattering of huts of cypress, moss and clay, and not much opportunity at all. However, the marketing worked and soon a mix of Europeans joined the French already at the site, and the population grew large enough to replace Biloxi as capital of the French territory of Louisiana in 1723.

In 1727, a group of Ursuline nuns arrived in town and started a convent. They took on the role of educating young French women sent over to New Orleans as potential wives for the mostly male population. The girls became known as les filles a la cassette, or casket girls, after the coffin shaped government supplied box used to cart their possessions to the new world.

Despite the population growth, the plan for the colony to generate wealth for France failed. The Company of the West and John Law were forced to give up control of New Orleans in 1731, and the French Monarchy took direct control of the city and Louisiana. Plantations started to be established along the Mississippi River near the city, and the city’s wealthier citizens started to develop a society based on the French court, with parties and feasts.

The French Quarter has an undeniable sense of history, but it is certainly no museum piece. The area hosts a number of bars and restaurants and the world famous Bourbon Street, which is a bacchanalian scene any night of the week.

In the early years of the city, France imposed strict trade regulations on New Orleans, and the citizens were barred from trading with anyone but France. Unfortunately for both France and New Orleans, this situation lead to a financial crisis, and King Louis XV granted all the land west of the Mississippi to his cousin, King Charles III of Spain in the treaty of Fountainebleu in 1764. Without the benefit of CNN, however, it was two years until anyone in New Orleans knew of the switch, when governor Don Antonio de Ulloa arrived from Spain to take over control of New Orleans.

Spain tried to impose similar restrictions on New Orleans, allowing them to only trade with Spain, hampering any economic progress for the city. The citizens of New Orleans revolted against the government, but any rebellion was crushed in 1769 when Don Alexander “Bloody” O’Reilly was dispatched by the Spanish government along with 3000 soldiers to regain control.

New Orleans found a way around trade restrictions, though, and these were boom times for pirates, like Jean Lafitte. Lafitte opened up a “blacksmith shop” in the French Quarter to trade in plundered and illegal goods, including alcohol. The building is still standing in the French Quarter, one of the few buildings dating back before the fires in late 1700s and thus possibly the oldest building in the Mississippi River valley. Today it is a bar, and fitting with the old building, has little electric light inside, making it a magical place for a drink at night.

in 1795, the Treaty of Madrid opened up trade with America, and the city started to take off. Spain gave the city back to France in 1800, and Napoleon turned around and sold it to the Americans in 1803 for $15 million dollars.

It was in the building called The Cabildo on the Plaza D’Armes where the transfer papers for the Louisiana Purchase were signed.

The Cabildo is the building on the left, beside St. Louis Cathedral, the oldest catholic church in the United States.

The canons out front apparently work, if pressed into service. As a prank in 1921 someone loaded one up and fired it. Unfortunately, the canon ball flew clear across the Mississippi River and 6 blocks inland where it nearly killed the occupants of the house that the canon ball smashed into.

It is said the Napoleon had planned to take back Louisiana by force after dealing with those pesky Europeans, but never got the chance because of that small problem of a defeat in Waterloo, Belgium.

The French and Spanish Creole did not take kindly to the idea of being Americans. They liked their courtly society and felt that American governance would mean an end to their European ways. As such, American settlers were pushed to settle on the other side of Canal street, up river from the French Quarter.

The original French and Spanish inhabitants lived mostly in the area that is now known as the French Quarter or the Vieux Carre (old Square), which rightly is the focus of most tourist visits. The French Quarter has suffered a few devastating fires in the mid and late 1700s, but a large number of the buildings date back to the early 1800s and are very well preserved. As the last building boom, after a fire in 1794 happened during Spanish rule, much of the French Quarter has Spanish architecture - lots of balconies, arches and courtyards.

Like most tourists, my first stop in New Orleans after dropping my bags at my hotel was the French Quarter. I spent my first night and all the next day exploring the 90 block area, and returned there every day of my 5 day trip, at the very least for the nightlife on Bourbon street.

Canal Street is a wide boulevard that separates the French Quarter from the “American sector” of Faubourg St. Mary, which is now known as the Central Business District. There is no canal anywhere close to Canal Street. One was planned, but never built. Today Canal Street is a long boulevard of shopping, mostly discount stores. Street improvements are underway to try and bring in some higher end businesses, though, to make Canal Street a more vibrant part of New Orleans.

The Central Business District, where the Americans first settled, today is pretty much like anywhere else where Americans settled and made a city - lots of tall, shiny towers where people work in cubicles on computers. Like many downtowns in America, there are shuttered buildings and rundown turn of the 20th century high rises, but also like many downtowns in America, revitalization is underway, trying to bring life to city core after the office workers head home for the day. New Orleans is probably luckier than most, as the French Quarter was never abandoned, so they don’t have to pull people from too far away to bring some people over. The is an area of old warehouses that is being revitalized with shops, bars, restaurants and galleries, and there are plans to build a Jazz area near the Superdome.

Further uptown from the CBD is where the rich Americans settled in what is known as the Garden District. The area was originally a plantation, but was subdivided to make room for the expanding population of New Orleans. Throughout the 19th century Americans built homes, most in the styles of Victorian, Italianate and Greek Revival.

Archie Manning, former New Orleans Saints quarterback and father of Peyton and Eli, who are the quarterbacks for the Indianapolis Colts and New York Giants respectively, lives in a home on First Street in the Garden District.

In New Orleans, they don’t bury their dead. When it rains in New Orleans, it tends to flood. And floods tend to churn up anything buried. As such, burying the dead soon meant they would be revisiting you. Therefore, New Orleans started housing their dead above ground in crypts.

New Orleans is the only place where I was warned against walking in the cemeteries by myself. Apparently some of the cemeteries are in rough parts of towns, and the raised crypts are a convenient place for ne’er-do-wells to hide and do harm to unsuspecting tourists. My guidebook did advise against going into some of them without a guide, but suggested that Layfatte Number 1, in the Garden District, was okay for a stroll without a guide.

As the Americans built mansions upriver, the French started to build them along Esplanade Avenue, which runs from the Mississippi River towards Lake Pontchartrain. The area became known as Esplande Ridge, though it is only a few feet higher than other areas in New Orleans. I guess when you live in a city whose highest point is 35 feet above sea level and seems to be about as flat as a place can be, words like “ridges” and “hills” take on different meanings.

Esplande Ridge today still has many of the mansions built in the 19th century, though some of them seem a little down in the tooth, though there are many that seem very well preserved.

Across Esplande, further down river are the areas of Faubourg Marigny and Bywater. Faubourg, by the way, means neighbourhood. Originally the Creole suburbs for the French Quarter, today the area of Marigny is an up and coming area, attractive to young hip urban types. There are a number of quirky bars and art galleries along Frenchman Street, the main drag, and many of the houses in Marigny have been restored by the new inhabitants.

Marigny is also the heart of gay and lesbian New Orleans, which seems to be par for the course in cities - First the artists move in for the cheap rents, then the gay community moves in to create a sense of community, then the young, hip, urban types move in for the vibe, then somebody builds condos and all the artists, gays and urban types find some place else to live. Anyway, Marigny is right now free of condos or proposed condo developments, though I heard that they might be building a cruise ship terminal along the river in Marigny, which would probably mean hotels and shopping malls will replace the nice, tiny houses that are there now.

However, perhaps the artists are already leaving. Bywater, further down river, looks at first glance like a pretty industrial place. However, it is home to many art studios and artists, so perhaps the shift is already on.

Back to the history. Despite the initial separation between the American and French communities, relations soon warmed after Americans did what they do best, make tons of money. The French wanted in on some of that action, and the Americans wanted in on some of the French culture and community, so soon they started really working together. Then something happened that really forged the community. A combined Creole and American force won a decisive battle in a war that was already over.

In 1812, the British and Americans went to war. Canada was a launching ground for attacks from the North, and in fact the British Army was successful in making it all the way to Washington, D.C., where they set the White House on fire.

The British of course, attacked all up and down the American coast with their naval power. Threatening an attack, American Andrew Jackson and Creole Jean Lafitte sat down together and drew up a plan of defence. Jackson called for a volunteer force to serve, and 5,000 New Orleans residents stood up, both from the American and French sides of Canal Street.

The Battle of New Orleans was fought downriver from New Orleans in what is now St. Benard Parish on January 8, 1815. The battle was a rout, with 2000 dead or wounded Brits to 20 Americans. Andrew Jackson became a national hero for the win, and New Orleans renamed Plaza D’Armes to Jackson Square in his honour.

Sadly for the dead and wounded, the battle was unnecessary. On December 24, 1814, a Treaty had been signed in Ghent, Belgium putting an end to the war. Unfortunately, again with no CNN and satellite uplinks, neither the Americans nor the British taking part in the battle knew.

The early 1800s also saw the start of boom for New Orleans with the advent of the steam powered riverboat. In 1812 the steamer New Orleans (aptly named) arrived in the city. With the whole of the Mississippi to trade on, New Orleans boomed. In 1840 the trade going through New Orleans’ port was almost as much as was going through New York City, America’s busiest port.

While the port of New Orleans has gone through some ups and downs, today it is still one of the busiest ports in America. Much of the trade along the Mississippi is transferred to or from ocean going vessels in New Orleans. It is rumoured that Governor Huey Long actual built a bridge over the Mississippi low to ensure that New Orleans and Louisiana would always be a vital part of the marine trade.

Of course, much of that growth in trade in the 1800s came on the backs of African slaves. The slave market in New Orleans was one of the largest in America. Despite that, New Orleans was also home to one of the largest groups of “free men of colour” in the Southern USA.

In 1861, a number of Southern states, including Louisiana seceded from the United States and joined the Confederate States of America. Less than two years later, New Orleans was captured by Admiral David Farragut, and New Orleans was back under American rule. By 1865 the entire South had been brought back into the fold, and the Confederate States of America was no more.

The President of the Confederate States of America for the four short years the breakaway country existed was Jefferson Davis. While travelling in the area in 1889, almost 30 years after his term as the CSAs only president, Jefferson Davis fell ill. He was brought to his friend Judge Charles Fenner’s house in the Garden District. Mr. Davis died there on December 6th, 1889. A stone marker out front commemorates this fact.

After the war, Louisiana and the south went about rebuilding their economies without slavery. The city of New Orleans grew in size during this time, annexing the nearby towns of Carrollton, Jefferson City and the town right across the river from the French Quarter and the Central Business District, Algiers.

Algiers is connected to New Orleans by a ferry boat, a service that has been running since 1827, though they have updated the boats. Algiers Point, right across the river, is mostly residential with some nice gingerbread houses.

As New Orleans grew post-civil war, gambling, drinking and prostitution started to thrive as well. Alderman Sidney Story, upset about the vice in the city, proposed moving all illegal activities to their own district, north of the French Quarter. This area became known as Storyville, after the alderman.

Some of the fancier brothels hired musicians to entertain the guests (in between bouts of being entertained by the girls). It was here that jazz music really began to take off, as out of town guests heard the music that was already gaining ground across New Orleans. Jelly Roll Morton was one of the famous musicians that got his start in Storyville, and Louis Armstrong used to listen to the bands in Storyville before becoming famous himself.

In 1917, during World War I, the navy was concerned about sailors getting into too much trouble, and had the area shut down. Little of Storyville’s original buildings remain today, as most of the place was demolished to make way for the Iberville Projects in the 1930s. However, jazz still flourishes in New Orleans, including the world famous Preservation Hall, where nightly concerts are held for the low admission price of $10.

Like many cities, New Orleans built up a massive network of street cars running on rails through out the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And like many cities, they tore up most of the tracks in the late 20th century to make way for more cars. In fact, the year after Tennessee Williams wrote “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1947, the Desire Street streetcar tracks were pulled up and the route was converted to buses.

Eventually all the street car tracks were pulled up save for the line on St. Charles street. In the early 2000s, New Orleans rediscovered the love of the street car, and 2 new lines have been built, one running along Canal Street to the cemeteries and City Park, and one running along the waterfront.

The system has new cars, but still uses a significant number of the 1920s era wooden streetcars.

Throughout the 20th century and into the early 21st century, New Orleans continued to grow. In addition to the port, it became a regional financial centre with 50 banks, and a number of new buildings popped up in the Central Business District.

For those of us outside of the shipping or financial industries though, at the start of the 21st century most of us would have known New Orleans for the famous Mardi Gras balls and parades. Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is the day before Lent, and as New Orleans is a very Catholic city, they take both the fasting and prayer of Lent and the party leading up to that period of reflection very seriously.

The first Mardi Gras in Louisiana was celebrated by the city’s founding brothers Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville in 1699 at a spot just down river from present day New Orleans. Today, the Mardi Gras festivities run over two weeks, with parades running along St. Charles and Canal Streets, nightly balls and galas, and lots of drunken revelry on Bourbon Street.

Of course, the world’s attention turned to New Orleans in August and September of 2005 for a completely different reason, when Hurricane Katrina, the subsequent storm surge and the breaking of the levees brought international attention to a city being devastated, the effects of which are still felt today.

Coming up next, Katrina’s impact and where the city stands today in their rebuilding efforts

As many of you are probably aware, in August of this year, Beijing is hosting the 2008 Summer Olympics. It has certained caused a boom of construction there. When I was over in Beijing in 2005, there was a lot of new buildings, subways, highways, etc. being built to manage the hoards of atheletes, administrators and tourists that will be decending on the city.

The Chinese government is going all out to present a great face to the world, which includes getting the locals ready and excited about the event as well. For taxi drivers and tourist guides, that means learning English. For the rest of the folks, that means seeing a lot of Yao Ming. Yao Ming is a very tall Chinese man, and plays basketball for the Chinese national team, and also over in the United States in the NBA for the Houston Rockets. In Beijing, I saw a ton of flat surfaces (bus shelters and building walls) covered with Yao's likeliness.

Seeing Yao all over Beijing wasn't unexpected at all. What was unexpected, though, was seeing the number of Chinese people in Houston how had travelled from somewhere (some as far away as China itself) to see Yao play. I went to a game on January 15th, when Houston played the Philadelphia 76ers. The 76ers aren't very good, so there weren't a lot of people at the game. However, of those that were there, probably 70% were Chinese. They had Chinese signs, which I couldn't read, but I'm sure said stuff like "Go Yao Go!", "Yao, Beat the 76ers!" or "Hey ESPN China, Put Me On TV" because those are the kinds of things people write on signs at sporting events.

I was pretty bored by the game, frankly. I'm not a big basketball fan, and other than a couple games I saw in St. Louis for the start of the NCAA (USA College basket) March Madness tournament, usually find myself only doing on thing at basketball games. Watching the cheerleaders!

Er... I mean Dance Squad. They, like the basketball players, are professional atheletes, you know.

You can't really see them very well there. I should have brought my camera along I guess, instead of counting on my cell phone to get the good picture. But trust me, the dance squad women were very pretty.

When one thinks of Texas, one thinks of heat, of dusty desert landscapes upon which tumbleweed rolls along. Texas is a big place, though, and Houston offers a tree-filled view, a lush river delta leading into the Gulf of Mexico. However, with a latitude of 29 degrees north, 45 minutes, a latitude further south than Cairo, Egypt, one would expect Houston, Texas to be warm, even in the January.

In fact, average temperatures for Houston in January tend to be in the high teens Celsius. That is why it was so surprising that the weekend I choose to tour the city, Houston would be experiencing a high of 10 Celsius. Unprepared for the cool weather, I had to wander down to a Target store and buy myself a sweater. Local Houstonians were wandering around in heavy jackets with scarves and gloves.

Decked out in my new sweater, providing one of the 4 layers I was wearing, I headed out from my Hotel near the Galleria on the west side of Houston, and headed East towards San Jacinto Bay.

The battlefield at San Jacinto, near the San Jacinto River and San Jacinto Bay, was the site of a very important battle in 1836 that gained Texas their independence from Mexico. In the 1800s, Mexico stretched from Columbia (modern day Panama) in the south to a northern border that included parts (or whole pieces) of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Texas. Mexico gain independence from Spain in the early 1800s during the Mexican war of Independence, and soon that large swath of land found itself under the control of president General Antonio López de Santa Anna (a man who would hold that office a total of 11 different times over a 22 year period).

In 1835, Texas declared independence from Mexico, forming the Republic of Texas. Santa Anna was not impressed, and soon dispatched troops to bring Texas back under Mexican control. Santa Anna swept up into Texas, defeating Texan troops at the The Alamo in San Antonio and later at Goliad.

General Sam Houston, on the Texans side, retreated his troops from Santa Anna’s advance. Santa Anna, feeling confident, divided his troops into multiple columns to pursue both Houston and the Texan government. This gave Houston his opportunity, and Houston set up camp on a point of land where the Buffalo Bayou met the San Jacinto River.

On April 21st, Houston attacked the Mexican camp, with a regiment of troops lead by Sidney Sherman advancing from the northern tree line, and the main bulk of the army coming up from the south. The Mexicans, unprepared that day for battle, retreated to the east, where they were cornered. 600 Mexican soldiers died that day with a loss of only nine Texans. Santa Anna was captured the next day, April 22nd, 1836, and forced to sign a treaty giving Texas it’s independence from Mexico.

Texas’ independence was short-lived, however, and a few years later they joined the USA. Following the defeat by the Texans, much of the rest of Northern part of the Mexico fell during the Mexican-American war. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded to the United States approximately 1/3 of the present area of the USA, including in whole or in part the present-day states New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas and Oklahoma.

The point where the battle took place is now a state park with a large monument to the battle and the Texans victory over the Mexicans. The Art Deco obelisk is the tallest free-standing column in the world at 570 feet tall, 15 feet taller than the Washington Monument. Leave it to the Texans to outdo even their own government. In addition, a number of boulders are scattered around the grounds where important parts of the battle took place, including the spot where the majority of the 600 dead met their ends.

The park is also home to the 300 acre San Jacinto Marsh, a tidal wetland that has recently been undergoing restoration. In the 1970s and 1980s as the petrochemical industry and shipping grew in the area, much the marsh lands along the San Jacinto River were converted into open water. Started in 1997, the San Jacinto Marsh Restoration Project has been working to convert the area back into a marsh. More on the project can be read on the Department of Fish and Wildlife website, or on the University of Houston / Clear Lake website

Speaking of Clear Lake, that was my next destination, to the south of the San Jacinto Park. Clear Lake is a pleasure boaters destination, with from 19 marinas and over 7,000 boat slips in Clear Lake area, the third largest concentration of pleasure boats in the United States, apparently.

My reason for going to Clear Lake was not to go boating (a little cold to be out on the open water this past weekend). Rather I was there to head north from Clear Lake and back over the city boundary into Houston and NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, which sits just over the border from Clear Lake in Houston.

The Johnson Space Center is mission control for all American Space Shuttle missions, activities aboard the International Space Station, and is the training facility for all American astronauts. No rockets or space shuttles take off from Houston (for the most part, that happens in Florida at the Kennedy Space Center). The control facility in Houston is separated from the launch facilities in the event that a disaster occurs (rocket explosion or what have you) to ensure that you don’t lose both facilities.

The visitors’ center at Johnson Space Center has an interactive museum which would probably be fun for kids, but I found a little dull. I did, however, quite enjoy the opportunity to do the NASA tour, where a tram takes you around the grounds of Johnson Space Center. We saw one of the three mission control rooms in the facility, the training center where astronauts train and a few rockets and rocket engines from past programs like Saturn and Apollo. The training area was interesting, as it included full size training models of the shuttle and International Space station, a couple of shuttle flight simulators and two models of the Canadarm, the robotic arm made by Spar Aerospace in Canada. Yay Canada! To simulate using the arm in a zero-g environment, the astronauts train by pushing around balloons and other light weight objects with the robot arm.

In addition to controlling missions and training astronauts, the Johnson Space Center is also home to the development programs for the next generation of space travel, which includes new space craft, a lunar base and a trip to Mars. In addition to the over 17,000 full time and contract employees working at the Johnson Space Center, there are more than 70 aerospace firms in the Houston area. The Bay Area (as the area around the Johnson Space Center complex is called) Bay Area Houston is home to 92 percent of Houston's aerospace jobs and 4.5 percent of Houston's total employment.

As the tour group was leaving building 30, where the mission control rooms are located, the guide motioned up to a flag atop the building. “Whenever an American is in space, the American flag flies on that pole. As there is an American at the International Space Station, the flag is flying at this point.” Looking up to the flag pole, I noticed off to the right that the moon was rising in the blue sky over the building. There it was, NASA’s next destination, the moon, just above the horizon, so close and yet actually 380,000 kilometers away. Houston is right there, at the edge of space.

Due to its important place in the Aerospace industry, Houston’s NBA team is called the Rockets, though I learned while attending a game last Wednesday that originally the team was from San Diego. In San Diego, the team was also called the Rockets, in honour of that city’s large aerospace industry. Luckily for the NBA, the Rockets moved from one capital of aerospace to another. After moving from Minneapolis to Los Angeles, the Lakers of the NBA never changed their name, even though there isn’t much in the way of lakes around the Los Angeles area.

Heading south from NASA down highway 146, I noticed that my gas gauge was getting low, so I pulled off the highway in Texas City to fill up. Buying gas in Texas City, besides for being a practical concern of not running out of fuel, was also a strong metaphor. I recently read the outstanding book The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, in which the author examines the question, “If somehow the earth were depopulated of humans overnight, how long before all trace of humankind vanished?” In the book, the author spends a chapter in the Houston area, and specifically Texas City, to examine what would happen to all the petrochemical processing plants that we have created.

Why associate the petrochemical industry with the Houston Area? As the interesting article on the Houston Ship Channel called Amidst a Petrochemical Wonderland: Points of view along the Houston Ship Channel points out, approximately one quarter of the refining capacity of the United States is located along the ship channel, at over 20 petrochemical plants in the channel area. They are linked by pipelines, selling streams of liquid product to one another, and bringing in crude from hundreds of platforms in the Gulf, as well as heavier, cheaper crude from Mexico.

Texas City, south of Houston, is home to three refineries: Valero, Marathon Ashland Petroleum LLC, and British Petroleum (BP). The BP refinery can process over 450,000 barrels per day, making it the third largest refinery in the USA. In addition to the refineries, there are a number of other petrochemical plants that use all that refined oil to make a number of products. With all those petrochemical plants, Texas City has from time to time, blown up. The most significant of these, known as the Texas City Disaster, happened in 1947, when a fire aboard the French ship Grandcamp ignited the 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate (fertilizer) aboard, causing the ship to explode. The resulting set of fires and explosions through-out Texas City killed more than 500 people and wounded over 5,000.

I left the gas station just as the sun was sinking in the sky, and drove through town and past the chemical plants. The lights on the pipes, stacks and processing equipment were just coming on. Looking at this stainless steel maze light up against the blackening sky, with spouts of fire shooting in bright orange and cool blue flames from venting stacks, I couldn’t decide if the scene reminded me more of a post-apocalyptic landscape ala Mad Max, or a futuristic city like something from a Japanese manga cartoon.

Apoligies for the poor singing, and the fact that my words get cut off at the end. I am a poor host and videographer, apparently. I was saying, before I apparently hit the stop button to quickly, "Welcome to Texas City, the gas station of America."

Later that evening, when driving north back towards Houston from Galveston on highway 45, looking at the row of petrochemical plants in the distance definitely put me in mind of that futuristic city. From across the water of Galveston Bay, it looked like a very distant city of skyscrapers, all lit up with shiny glass. It’s truly an impressive site, though once you get closer to the Texas City industrial complex, the vision of future cities fades into the stink of chemical processing.

But prior to heading back to Houston, I drove further south to Galveston. Galveston sits on an island in the Gulf of Mexico, and is now probably best known as a town with a number of tourist attractions. Back in the late 1800s, however, Galveston was the biggest city in the area, surpassing even Houston. However, in 1900 a hurricane struck the area, killing between six and eight thousand people and destroying a good chunk of the city. After that, many of the residents and businesses moved north towards Houston, and the city never really recovered. One can’t help but draw parallels between Galveston and New Orleans, and wonder if Galveston is a glimpse into New Orleans’ future.

I didn’t see too much of Galveston though, as I arrived pretty late in the day and needed to head back to Houston that evening. I took a quick drive around the historic Strand district, and then headed to a restaurant for dinner. It was a busy night in Galveston, and I had to wait for a table. Soon my name was called, and I was shown my table, overlooking the the tall ship Elissa. Launched in 1877, the Elissa was restored in the 1970s. As I was at a restaurant called the Fisherman’s Wharf, I figured I should get seafood, and as I was just steps from the Gulf of Mexico, I decided on an entry with three different preparations of Gulf Shrimp. The shrimp are caught wild in the Gulf of Mexico, where they live. For all I know, the shrimp could have been caught by Forrest Gump and Lieutenant Dan. Who can say?

I finished up with dinner, and soon was back on the road, heading north along highway 45 back to Houston and my hotel room. The day started with the history of San Jacinto and ended with the historic center of Galveston, and in the middle featured space travel and the futuristic landscape of the petrochemical alley. Yesterday, today and tomorrow all in one day.

I am working down in Houston now, staying at the Marriott West Loop By the Galleria, which seems an unnecessarily long name for a hotel. The hotel is decent - soft beds, good selection to TV channels, decent room service selection. It's nothing to sneeze at.

In the bathroom, they provide you a nice range of toiletries to use. There's mouthwash and skin cream (which is good, because hotels are notoriously dry and you can soon find your skin cracked and flaking in the dry atmosphere of a hotel room). In addition, there are three items for the shower - shampoo, conditioner and "invigorating body wash."

I've been using the body wash all week, but have found myself stepping out of the shower and still feeling sluggish and tired. It is not invigorating me as I would have hoped. I only find myself really invigorating once I get my first dose of caffeine via a Diet Coke.

The shampoo and invigorating body wash look very similar, both yellowish liquids in a clear bottle. Today, I accidentally washed my hair with the invigorating body wash. I hope there are no long term side effects, like my head becoming confused and thinking it's part of my body. I'd hate for my head to suddenly morph into an arm or something. While an extra arm extending out of the top of my neck might make it easier to reach canned food on the top shelf, without a mouth I wouldn't be able to consume it.

Sure, now I have a can of beans, but I can't enjoy it!

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Sharp-eyed readers will notice at the bottom of the right hand menu there is now a section for links. In addition to a link to the Travellerspoint site that hosts my blog, there are two other links (at this point).

The first is to a public google calendar that I keep up to date with my most up to date travel plans. It's probably complete arrogance for me to think that anyone cares where I am, but in the event you ever think to yourself, "hey, it's Tuesday, I wonder where Greg is," click on the link to find out. If you see white space, it means it's one of the rare days I am actually in Toronto.

The other link is to a site called TravelBlogs.com, which is a site that collects some of the best travel writing on the internet, and for some strange reason, the little corner of silliness on the internet that I call my travel blog. If you ever get sick of reading about chickens or people with arms for heads and want to read some serious and interesting travel tales, I would suggest checking it out for sure. There's some pretty interesting stuff on there, including a dude who is trying to travel from London to Sydney without using a plane. Cool, and much more interesting than me washing my hair with bodywash...

I am sitting at a high-top table in the Dirty Dog Bar at 505 East 6th Street in Austin, Texas, just a mere 10 blocks from the Texas state capitol building, sipping on a pint of Dos Equus and watching the University of Texas Longhorns Football team playing the Rice University Owls. Off to my left, a band is preparing to play a set once the game finishes. I look around at my fellow patrons. Beside me, a couple beautiful blond co-eds from the University of Texas are watching the game intently. At the end of the bar, a guy in a button down shirt works on his laptop, probably one of the many high-tech or bio-tech workers in the region. Closer to the stage, a few metal heads are chatting and drinking, waiting for the Dave Evans and his band to get started. Just then, three guys with Mohawks walk into the bar. None of the other patrons bats an eyelash.

“Man,” I think to myself, “Austin IS weird.”

Now, you may be saying right now, “Gregory, why do you feel the need to insult the fine city of Austin, Texas, by calling it weird?”

However, I’m not the one that called it weird, at least not originally. In fact, the citizens of Austin like their weird reputation, and some years ago started plastering their cars with bumper stickers imploring everyone to Keep Austin Weird. This weekend, while perusing the local free paper while eating breakfast in one of the many Mexican run restaurants in town, I read an editorial that was lamenting the covering of a local “non-commissioned outdoor art piece,” (i.e. graffiti) and how this was just one more move away from Weird Austin and towards the “Dallasifaction” of the city.

Austin is a very diverse place. If people know Austin, most likely it is because of the University of Texas in Austin. The University is one of the larger ones in the country, and is situated on a beautiful campus north of Downtown Austin.

The most famous building on campus is the huge tower attached to the main building. Architecturally beautiful and visible from most places on the campus and in various places across the city, the tower is also site of one of the more infamous campus shootings in American history, when on August 1, 1966, architectural engineering major Charles Whitman barricaded himself in the tower with a rifle, killing 14 people and wounding 31 others. The stand-off ended 96 minutes later, with the police storming the observation tower and killing Whitman.

The incident notwithstanding, most North Americans would know the University of Texas from watching college sports. The Longhorns basketball team is a perennial contender in the NCAA “March Madness” basketball tournament. The big draw though, is the Longhorns football team.

On Saturday, September 22, the Longhorns faced off against the Rice Owls. The game was not expected to be much of a match. Rice is an “Ivy League” school, more known for its academic achievements than its sporting traditions. Rice is, however, proud of the fact that all of the team doctors are Rice graduates and former football players.

The likely uncompetitive competition was not enough to deter the Longhorn fans from coming out to support the team. Even though the game wasn’t scheduled to start until 6 PM, the fans started arriving early in the morning, soon filling up every parking spot and patch of grass within 2 miles of the stadium, and preparing for the American Football tradition of “tailgating.”

The tailgate party is the pre-game ritual of football fans across the United States. In Texas, they pull up in everything from small cars to massive RVs, usually with a few bumper stickers declaring that they “Bleed Burnt Orange” (the colour of the uniforms that the University athletes wear) or beseeching the Longhorns to “Hook ‘Em High” on the horns of the bull that is the University of Texas’ mascot. The tailgate party can be as simple as a charcoal barbeque and a cooler to beer, up to satellite TV dishes, flat screen TVs and massive BBQ smokers to slow cook ribs all day well prepping for the game.

Back in the Dirty Dog Bar, the game comes to half-time, and the sound is turned down so that the band can do their sound check. Tonight, the Dirty Dog is presenting Dave Evans, the “originally lead singer of AC/DC,” famous Australian Rockers who went on to success after dumping Dave Evans in 1974 for Bonn Scott as lead singer. I laugh quietly to myself as a line from AC/DC’s Thunderstruck comes to my mind, “Went through to Texas, yeah Texas and we had some fun.”

Dave Evans and his band are not the only musicians playing in Austin this evening, though. In fact, Austin is the self-declared “Live Music Capital of the World,” with more live music venues per capita than any other city in the USA, including famous music cities like Nashville or Los Angeles. Many of these venues line Sixth Street, offering music lovers the opportunity to hear many types of music. The band selection is very diverse. A bartender at the Jackalope, another bar along Sixth Street suggested I go and see a band of his friends that sounded like “New York City in the mid-seventies, you know, like Iggy.”

I listen to Dave Evans warm up for a bit, but decide to head out into the night air. I’d been walking all day and in addition to my Dos Equus, the bar has been handing out orange Jello shots each time that the Longhorns scored, and against the porous Rice defense, they were scoring a lot. All the vodka was going to my head.

I head out into the night, and wander over to Congress Avenue. I look to my right, and perfectly framed at the end of the street is the Texas State Capitol building. Austin is the capitol of Texas, the history of how it became the capitol I covered (most likely with incorrect and inappropriate details) in a blog entry on my last visit to Austin in 2001 called 38 year old grandmother strippers and American Born NHLers. If you scroll about half-way to the bold title “Capitol Music,” you can read about how I surmised that moving fatigue is what landed Austin the title of Texas capitol. The capitol being in Austin, though, means that the city is home to many government workers, not to mention the politicians.

Turning right, I see some shiny glass buildings, and am reminded that back in 2001 this area was called the “Silicon Hills.” Austin is in Texas Hill Country, a lush and rolling area of Texas that is nothing like the image of endless cattle ranches or dust farms that we often see on TV. Back in 2001, over 100 high tech companies had set up shop in Austin, including IBM, Tandem, Schlumberger, Motorola, AMD, Apple and Texas Instruments. Even though the Internet Bubble has burst since I was last in town, there is still a presence here of technology, from computer circuits to genes, the companies range from computer equipment manufacturers to bio-technology companies.

I watch a couple of goth kids wander by me, on their way to catch some band no doubt doing covers of My Chemical Romance, and think what a strange mix of people that inhabit this city: Frat Brothers and Sorority Sisters from the University in the same bars as the alternative rock fans; Mexican service workers enjoying a drink after their shifts, sitting next to bio-tech professionals drinking away the stresses of the day; country musicians grabbing a smoke before going on to perform for a crowd of government bureaucrats; smarmy politicians coming into town on occasion to sleep through sessions of state legislature; and all of it in a downtown core that doesn’t take more than 20 minutes to cross on foot.

Austin is weird, in the best way possible. Hopefully they do keep it that way.