The Epic Post (part deux!)

Sooo the trip back. It was well over a month ago. Let’s see what all I remember…

Last night in town we went out to a Japanese fusion type place in Huntington with Gibson and Robyn.  It was good to hang with them one last time before we peaced on the west coast.  Right after dinner Gib and I went and picked up Gabe to head down to the legendary Trestles to meet up with Will for one last surf session. Now you’re thinking…wait after dinner? Yes. We went night surfing.  It can only happen every once in a while when the conditions are right and there’s a full moon.  God smiled and tried to drown me my last in town.  Surfing during the day is hard enough, now add head high swells that you can’t see and the possibility of sharks into the mix and you can almost imagine it.  Gibson made it over the first wave (he was on a long board) and then got wrecked by the second and spent the rest of the night on the beach playing with fire.  I made the paddle out, and then got hammered for two hours by outside sets without ever catching a wave.  Will and Gabe, being the boarderline pros they are, caught a ton of sick rides, and Will had a freakin broken wrist!  It was pretty frustrating, but it was a good experience to have.  Maybe some day I’ll get the opportunity again…the Lord only knows.

The next morning Leah and I woke up kind of early, packed up, and hit the road.   Here’s the schedule:

Monday – Costa Mesa to El Paso

Tuesday – El Paso to Austin

Wednesday  – Austin to New Orleans

Thursday – Hang in New Orleans

Friday – New Orleans to Nashville

Saturday  – Nashville to Richmond

It would be cool if we had taken lots of pictures to document our trip like most people I know, but for the first two days, it seems like we forgot we had a camera at all.  Driving through in-land California, Arizona, and New Mexico SUCKED.  Nothing upon nothing upon nothing.  We ate at an awesome mexican restaurant in Tucson, that had been open since like 1912 or something ridiculous.  We were so full after eating lunch that we didn’t eat anything for the rest of the day. I think we got to El Paso at like 10 or something after being on the road for like 13 hours and we were exhausted and did nothing that night.

Driving through Texas the next day was just asempty as the first day.  We were starving since we hadn’t eaten since lunch the day before, so we pulled over to a McD’s since there was nothing to eat anywhere in El Paso.  We almost never eat there, because we pretty much hate it for its war against Chic-fil-a.  Later on that day we were further validated in our hate when we saw something about there fake-ass southern style chicken sandwiches and some sort of slogan that said something like, “Even on Sundays.”  Never eating there again. EVER. EVER. EVER. bastards….There was absolutely nothing for hundreds and hundreds of miles after that.  Just empty desert. There were times when I was almost positive we were going to end up in some sort of texas chainsaw massacre-ish situation.  After a little over eight hours that day, we finally made it to Austin, which was the first stop we were really excited to make it  to.  We stayed in a pretty awesome, really cheap motel just outside of downtown which was perfect.  We were both really grumpy from all the nothingness and being stuck in the car all day, so we went around the corner to almost the first bar we saw to get a beer and an appetizer and try to relax.  After that it was almost sundown and that meant it was time for the bats to come out! Austin is home to the largest natural urban bat colony in the world. Every night in the summer, thousands of people line up all along both sides and underneath this bridge.  They renovated the bridge in the mid-70’s and when they did it, they accidentally created these small spaces underneath that are perfect bat habitats. Now, every night at sundown literally tens of thousands of bats fly out from underneath to feed.  It’s soooo weird looking.  You can’t see them from the pictures we took, but at first it looked like a million little flying spiders crawling out from these little slits in the bridge.   AND THEY JUST KEPT COMING…for like an hour.  There was this black cloud, it kind of looked like smoke, flying along the river, made up of thousands upon thousands of bats.  It was pretty crazy. After it was too dark to see any more bats, we went on a walk up to 6th street to see if we could find a cool bar to go to.  It was kind of weird.   There was like a hundred frat type giant party bars that were all empty.  Given it was a Tuesday in the summer, but it was still weird.  These bars were gigantic.  We ended up going to Casino El Camino which was supposed to be more of a dive type bar that had really good burgers and chile verde fries that were freaking amazing.  It was also the first time I had seen a PBR tall boy in a loooong time, so I proceeded to have three. All in all, a pretty good night.

So day three began kind of early. We tried  to find this cool coffee shop we had heard about in Austin, but couldn’t find it so we took off pretty quick and headed towards Houston for lunch.  The world began to look more like the east coast after Austin.  More trees, more green, more awesomeness.  We had to get some barbeque in Texas, because it’s TEXAS, so we went to this little place we read about that was supposed to have some delicious brisket…it was.   Unfortunately, Leah ended up with a bone in her sandwich that caused her to chip her tooth and end up in some extraordinary pain.  After that we hit the road for another 5 hours until we got to Nawlens.  We had made reservations at a B&B as we like to avoid major chains of most types if at all possible.  I think it was called  the Lamonte House, it was pink, old, awesome, and just outside the French Quarter.  We actually stayed in one of the other three houses that make up the Lamonte house.  We got in and showered and then headed out to check out things.  We walked around for a bit and then ended up at another place we had looked up called Coop’s place.  It was a tiny little dive bar that had some ridiculously good gumbo.  We hung out there for a while and had several delicious Abitas, which is the local micro brew.  We then headed out to exploit the ability to drink on the street and see what kind of craziness happens.  I’m not sure if it’s just us, or what the deal was, but we just weren’t that into it.  Bourbon street, eh…it was kind of crazy on a Wednesday night, I can’t even imagine what it would be like at Mardi Gras…jeez.  It just wasn’t very much our scene I think.  I mean the houses were rad.  We love the style, but the whole place just felt awkward and evil.  We made a pretty early night of it and went back to crash.

I promise I’ll finish up soon with part three.