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no one said it would be easy

Whilst the supposed felon was being awoken and escorted from the concourse, I made my way to the toilets as nonchalantly as I could.

Once we had Bessie, we moved out of town to the Fontainebleau State Park on the other side of Lake Ponchartrain. The ride took us over The Causeway which is two parallel bridges, recognized as the longest bridges over water in the world. The slightly longer of the two is about 24 miles long. They both have a scary section of steel web-grating near the middle where the draw-bridges are. Web-grating causes motorbike tyres to squirm alarmingly and there is always the feeling that a pending disaster is about to befall you. Needless to say, this section of the bridge was dreaded on every crossing. With only one bike but three people, this had meant quite a bit of riding before we were together, tent-up in the park. Although Lousiana was going through an unseasonal cold-snap, we felt better out here than precariously living in a bus station constantly on edge, guarding against pick-pockets and police. Here there were people to openly talk to and we soon were learning all about the Appalachian Trail that a couple of guys had just abandoned because of the weather. This was new to us and we were a bit in awe that people would walk two thousand miles across 14 States. Another motorcyclist pausing a ride because of the cold introduced us to Mad Dog 20/20. This is colloquially known as ‘bum wine’ or ‘brown bag vino’. It is a fortified wine that is high in alcohol content but low in price. Available in several ersatz-fruit flavours and fetching colours, this was pretty grim stuff but several notches above slivovitz. The community back in the bus station would have approved.

Lawrie and I were able to start an exercise regime of running and doing shoulder-loaded squats and more. The park was also where we taught him how to ride a motorbike. Because Bessie was the smallest and easiest to ride it was decided that she would be Lawrie’s to ride, at least until we reached Panama. He took to it pretty well, although it was just around a flat, semi-empty park. A good start though. He’d hone his skills on the road, just as Roly and I had done a decade earlier. You can only gain experience from experience.

We’d not wanted to waste our meagre funds on doing touristy things in New Orleans but we did have to have one night in the French Quarter, exploring Bourbon St and making a pilgrimage to Preservation Hall, the home of traditional New Orleans jazz. I’d promised a blues and jazz lover from the rugby club that I would search it out and go. We enjoyed walking down the main thoroughfares, amazed