Fat Tuesday
No sooner has twelfth night passed and the Christmas tree has been packed away, than it’s time to bring it back down from the loft again. Only the colour scheme is no longer red and white but gold, purple and green. Santa Claus shuffles away, making room for Mardi Gras. Easter is late this year, so the parades are still a four weeks away, but that doesn’t stop the anticipation from pervading the city. We stroll the French Quarter from end to end, wandering through a heritage of French colonial homes with their iron filigree balconies, gas lamps and windows decked in the montages and memorabilia of Carnival.
The supermarkets, however have a predicament; the clash between one saint’s day and the bacchanalia of pre-Lenten festivities. St. Valentine’s heart pink vies for the therapeutic retail dollar with the purple justice, gold wealth and faith green of Carnival. The latter has a hint of Catholic cleansing to it: faith substituting for the problematic pagan fertility. The former’s merchandise majors on the predictable chocolate, hearts and roses, whilst the latter’s is wreaths, masks and beads.
Beads; we’ve been spotting their evidence all along the roadside’s gutter for several days, such that I knew there was story to be found. It was either a fadding trend with juniors in middle school or a scrap lorry had travelled exactly our route, shedding its load. Then I see a painted advert on a wall: ‘Mardi Beads: 40c/lb.’ paint fading, inflationary challenged, but obviously pertinent, so with a bit more investigation, I come up with ‘the throws’. The tradition is for the different ‘krews’ to literally throw the beads from their passing decorated floats to the crowds on the pavements, kudos being gained by how full your stash bag is. However, how you attract their attention seems to be debatable. I can confirm that the Navigator acquired her string by morally acceptable means. She did not flash the ladies.
Bridge Heritages.
Around New Orleans – and that can be up to a weeks worth of cycling – when you meet with a fellow traveller, the cross fertilisation of information turns quickly to bridges. Like the ‘bear tales’ of Canada, we’ve all acquired a tale. Usually the result of erroneous information that sends you up an access ramp that at first appears to have little traffic, a reasonable shoulder and an adequate parapet. Only for a thunder of heavy semis to growl behind, at the same moment the shoulder shrinks and the barrier between yourself and a long drop dwindles, all in direct proportion to an increasing side wind that wants to help you get you better acquainted with the Intracoastal waterway far below. Then your front wheel wobbles on a crud of rotting ‘crete and an expansion joint, only for a whole window frame with jaggy glazing to appear in front.
These errors these day are less endemic, in part as many of these mid 20th Century’s crossings have been replaced with new structures and the wondrous advent of ‘street view’. Still, we’ve managed to accumulate a few new tales. Crest one bridge, expecting a mirror image of the ascent only to find that the shoulder-less road morphs into a narrow causeway that snakes around the bend and disappears into the middle distance. Just don’t look in the mirror. State-lines, certainly in the South, have a tendency towards no-mans land, neither brand of governance feeling the need to maintain the asphalt, so running the interstate motorway out of Louisiana and expecting the vast hard shoulder to cross the state line marked by a bridge was, in retrospect, ambitious. Pedal like fury.
Still, these steel girdered bridges are an emblematic heritage in a place where any modern and potential new heritage is so easily ripped down and replaced with yet more near-temporary structures. Several are now shrouded in polythene, the racket of riveters and apparently miniature scaffolders working on gantries high above me testifies to their status as working museums. Still, I won’t be visiting them as they’re still in their 1933 width, that of a horse cart passing a Model T Ford.
Primitive camping….
As a descriptive, it’s a movable feast; no two campgrounds seem to agree on the definition. At Topsail, Fl. we opt for their version, which when we find it has seclusion, shelter, electricity, water and a raised gravel pad: ‘lux-primitive’. Move on to Sea Rim, Tx, and the exact same term, to find ourselves pitched on the sand, literally within the storm high-tide line. It looks idyllic, the setting sun dropping into a tropical sea, the gentle lapping of the waves lulling you into your slumbers. What isn’t obvious is the drift of sticky, salt infused sand that pervades every crevice and surface, the ever present anticipation that somebody will drive over your tent, and the voracious mosquitoes waiting to feast on homo cyclista scoticus. The odd thing was, we had cycled fifty miles out of our way to gain this experience, only for an attempted trumping the following evening by a park whose wash facility was a six mile round trip from the tent site.
I must be getting a bit old for this style of camping, especially if I’m obliged to part with dollars for what in essence is a stealth camp. Where once, as a recovery tonic, we would have stopped for some hot street food for breakfast, now it takes a motel, a bath and time. Still it will remain memorable.