Star Spangled Bikes

I originally started writing this post on July 4th (see paragraph below) but then I got kicked off the computer and we went to fireworks and etc. Now is the first time I'm back on a computer. We're staying in Carthage, TX, in the home of a Bike&Build alumna (well, her parents' house). It's ridiculously nice. For you pirates, it's about the same as Tor's castle. Last night we stayed at a Baptist summer camp in the middle of nowhere. Literally. Not a person for miles around. They had a lake with paddleboats. It was sweet! Anywhere, here's the bit I wrote before:

Well, again it took me far longer to post than I hoped. Today is the fourth of July and we're at the Louisiana School of Math, Science, and the Arts in Natchatoches, LA. Today was an easy day, only fifty-five miles. I finished pretty early, took a long nap, and caught up on some bike maintenance.

I'd planned to do a whole post about New Orleans, so I'll mainly talk about that today. We left New Orleans four days ago (though we're now about 320 miles away...time flies). We spent a six days there, it was quite an experience. Many parts of the city are still deserted, especially in the ninth ward, where we were working. We spent five of the days working on a house that had been heavily damaged by the flooding. We worked with the Episcopal Diocese Disaster Relief Unit, which was established to help homeowners rebuild damaged houses (there were also many Habitat groups around, as well as other organizations constructing new homes where they had been completely destroyed. The house that we worked on had sustained heavy water damaged, so they gutted it and re-did all of the plumbing and wiring. When we got there that was about as far as they had gone-we could see through most of the interior walls. We spent the five days putting up insulation and drywall throughout the entire house, then putting "mud" (a plaster-type material) over all of the holes, screws, joints, and irregularities. By the time we were done, most of the walls were ready to be painted. It was good to be able to see that we had actually accomplished something significant in our time at the house.

Although we had the evenings free, we had to be up early for construction (many of us biked the six mile commute every morning), and we were usually tired from a full day of work, so I didn't have a great deal of free time to explore. Nonetheless, I got to see a lot of the city and had a good time. Every day after construction some of us went to Cafe du Monde and had beignets (french fried doughnuts), which were delicious. I saw Bourbon St, which was pretty unpleasant. It was like a weird version of Disney World for adults who liked to drink a lot. Not really my thing. The more out-of-the-way parts of the city were much more interesting, and we spent a lot of time jujst biking around, looking at all of the cool architeture. The city is somewhat like Boston in terms of having a lot of old buildings with tiny, criss-crossing roads that are hard to navigate. Most of the streets in the city, except the very largest ones, were one-way, which made navigating somewhat difficult at times. Also, the streets are in awful condition. There was hardly a single street without potholes and cracks all over the place. However, the people in the city were very bike-friendly. Unlike Mississippi and Alabama where people threw things at us and barked at us (yes, people barked at us), I never recieved an angry honk during my whole time in New Orleans.

We had our first day off in the city, and it was amazing! In the morning we went to a phenomenal breakfast diner. I got the usual eggs, hash browns, toast sorta thing and it was the best breakfast I've had in weeks. After that we had a chorus rehearsal which went smashingly (everyone is so enthousiastic and they're all such quick learners!). Then about a dozen of us suited up in our Bike & Build uniforms and went down to the french quarter. We rode up and down Bourbon St. and the surrounding streets, telling every single person about Bike & Build. We ended at Cafe du Mond, where we were met by a news crew who filmed us and did some interviews. I can't find the clip right now, but I'll post the link later. We earned about $130 in donations in less than an hour, then while we were being interviewed, the owner of Cafe du Mond came out and gave us all certificates for free beignets. Most of us had ours then and there, though we tried to be polite and have less of a powdered sugar-throwing war than the previous day. After enjoying our delicious afternoon snack, we split up. A few of us went around looking for a bar in which to watch the news to see if we were on it (we had no other access to a TV). While riding down Frenchmen St. we came across a park with rainbow banners everywhere. We had stumbled upon New Orleans' Pride Festival! Unfortunately, it was just starting to rain and the festival was winding down. Still, we wandered around and admired the rainbow stain-glass work and such. We finally made our way to a bar, where we met Laura, the worlds' most awesome bartender. She lowered a projector screen for us to watch the news and gave us all a free round when she heard about our cause (I had some local Root Beer, which was delicious). It turned out that she was also a cyclist, preparing for her first bike tour, in Italy. We talked for over an hour, learning all about the local bike scene and her adventures. We finally made it home for a delicious dinner and some sort of evening activities. I forget what we did. Anway, the day was very fun.

That's all I have time for now. I don't even have time to proofread! I apologize if there are any egregious errors. I'll proofread it later, I promise. Hope everyone is well. If you're bored, send me stuff. I got the awesomest letter ever from Harry Aspinwall, so if you want to aspire to such greatness, I welcome your efforts. And a lot of you should be getting postcards soon. Hopefully.

Many hugs!