Day 9: New Orleans

Today we had our first rest day, a full day without driving the bikes (well we put a few miles on the bikes driving from our small house to the backpackers).

We woke up fairly early and upon checking out the weather channel we realized there wasn't much point in trying to leave New Orleans today. A large storm was crawling towards us with area of "red" showing on the weather map signifying severe weather. Then they said something about a tornado warning so we just chilled out at our amazing little place. It is the perfect size, small kitchen through the front door, small living room with attached small bathroom and a small loft above the living room.

We did some gear research, specifically looking at tires to replace our worn down ones. We have put over 2000 miles on the bikes this trip alone and by the time we get to Austin I will have put well over 6500 miles on the stock tires and the bike will be well overdue for new ones. After reading for hours and checking out online fourms we have decided to get some German imports if we can find them, the MEFO MFE 99 Sport Explorer Tires. They are suppose to last 16,000 miles if you treat them right (whatever that means).

So we took showers, relaxed for a few hours, and then we did our laundry, finally. With the clothes in the wash, we headed down to Johnny Whites to find Robert drinking his beer and reading his news paper. Over our beers (how could we say no?) we dropped the idea of having a meal to which Robert said "ah ha! I know the perrrfect place." After moving the laundry over to the dryer we headed up the street to find this "perfect place."

A beautiful french style cafe with fresh baked goods and hot cafe au lait was our destination, mmm...

James is the king of the candid photos...

With our bellies full we parted ways with Robert as we had to get our stuff packed up so we could move across town to India House, the backpackers here in New Orleans. With our things ready we walked the 5 blocks down Rampart to get the lot where we had left the bikes; they were still there.

Riding across town took us past many buildings and houses that were claimed by Katrina and have not been renovated. Broken windows, discolored walls, boarded up doors and storefronts; pretty much everything was deserted.

One beacon of light in the bleakness was the street trolly which is running, although on an abreviated network. A funny thing about the trolly we saw is that it was one the original trollys that were put into service back in the 1920s. New trollys had been put into service shortly before Katrina with all the bells and whistles including air conditioning and windows that could not be opened. What is a street trolly without the sounds and smells of the street? Well those trollys were claimed by Katrina and now they have been refurbishing the original ones that were untouched by the hurricane. Long live the street cars!

We found our way to the backpackers where we put the motorcycles in the bicycle corral and got set up in the bunk house.