12 miles from New Orleans

This whole adventure started with a joke on the Illinois River somewhere between Siloam Springs and Hanging Rock Camp OK. We had 3 people and 60 beers (the goat came later) and one of us kept saying, "we can keep going you know, this river will take us to New Orleans".

What a long strange journey it has been, the Arkansas River and her amazing beaches the mighty Mississippi and it's nasty infections, tornadoes on the Atchafalaya and being lost in bayou for a day or two. I am a few miles from Harvey Canal, at least thats what the map says but it may be a pooka canal, only the and pure hearted can see it. Tomorrow I will return to the Mississippi for a short jaunt through down town New Orleans to cross into "Industrial Canal", (not the most romantic of names but it gets the point across) and into Lake Ponchartrain. I'd like to find a place to secure Waltzing Matilda and maybe even Mattie, she got us in a bit of trouble with the library at Houma, seems that little dogs pooping next to rusty bicycles are a "hazard". Fortunately the big evil corporate monster under the golden arches has Wifi, thus I was able to get charts on the laptop. I bought a cup of coffee from the BECM and tried not to skid on the floor, seems that the golden arch company mops the floor with grease and it was like ice skating, with less control.

I need to do the tourist thing, see museums, experience culture, I tried to win opera tickets for Friday night via radio but the host of the local NPR didn't give out the area code when he called for caller five to win, but I did meet a very nice man via mis-dialing, unfortunately he didn't know the area code for New Orleans either. I've heard a lot of bad things about the big easy but I have been fed so much mis-information on this journey that I have stopped giving too much weight to hearsay, for instance, the Mississippi does not boil mud, there are no man eating gators in the Atchafalaya in December, coon-ass is not a bad word.

I met a group of very nice coonasses on the ICWW today, four young men in a bass boat quite curious about me, I hailed them and bummed a beer. They motored along side of me for a while explaining some of the local nomenclature and telling me I should try to make the football game in N.O. on Sunday, the Saints are in the play offs. I didn't think it was the best time to tell them that I hate sports, the more organized the more I loath them. Axles of kickball are about as organized as I care to engage in and even then I get too competitive. The coonasses motored off and about an hour returned headed the opposite direction, the pull along side and gave me a 12 pack of Bud Light with instructions to tell everyone that coonass is not a bad word and are pretty good people, except for them coonasses from uptabayou.

Side note, I have used 1 roll of TP so far, thats 1 roll for 60 days, take note.