6-6-6 OR The Ride of a Lifetime (so far)

Not that it's happened yet or, for that matter, that it is imminent, but, all that notwithstanding, I have an itch I'd like to scratch.

I suppose it started a few years ago when I signed up to be a host for bicycle tourists through the slightly-unfortunately-named Warmshowers. Really, it's not what you think. Actually, back in 1993 a couple of guys who liked to tour by bicycle started a paper-based contact list of people who wanted to voluntarily host bicycle tourists. It was a form of voluntary community, a way for those who were riding around the country or the world to find a room, a shower, and maybe a meal at someone's home just for the pleasure of visiting.

A little over a year ago I agreed to be a volunteer Gardener for the site. Initially, that amounted to monitoring all the new member accounts for spammers and other jokers. Since then I've become what the kids call an "admin" for the site. We're up to 26,775 members worldwide and continuing to grow. That, to me, is proof that there are a LOT of people into bicycle touring.

"Yeah? So what?" you ask. "What's that got to do with this?"

Why you . . .

Okay, so, patience is a virtue right? I'm getting to it . . .

Reading all those new member profiles, and taking increasing pleasure out of learning to suss out spammers BEFORE they actually spam and nuking them, I began to feel this itch.

Phillip and Valeska (Austria) about to devour

pancakes with blueberry sauce.

"Oh, here's a new member who lives on the Canal du Midi (France) who wants me to stay with them so they can show me around, by bicycle. And here's one in the Burgundy region and one in Champagne and one in Normandy . . . I want to go to France!"

Bob and Laura spent the night.

"Oh, wait, here's a passel of Poles inviting me to visit. And Belgians and Swedes and Finns and Germans and Turks and Iranians and Chinese and . . . I want to go!"

Mike Hall, who, in 2012, became the fastest person to 

circumnavigate the globe by bicycle, stayed with me.

That itch I mentioned? It got worse.

At the same time there were other things going on.

Things like feeling I'm not doing anything or, more likely, maybe not doing the RIGHT thing.

Things like feeling my impending 60th birthday (which is a whole world of weird in and of itself) looming and feeling really GOOD about it.

Things like an increasing need to get a little distance between myself and Baton Rouge before I burn this fucking place to the ground (it wouldn't be the first time the city has burned but that's a different story).

Things like not having traveled for a while, in part because I just can't justify flying somewhere for fun because of the impact jet flight has on the ecosystem.

So, what to do?

Oh! I know! I'll go for a ride!!!

Thus was born the idea of my 6-6-6 Ride.

I'll be 60, the route is more or less 6,000 miles, and it should take 6 months. Get it? 6(0)-6(,000)-6 . . . easy!

What's with that wiggly blue line and green pin things?

Ah, but, where to go?

I'm glad you asked!

Here are the main places I'd like to visit:

Lufkin / Nacogdoches, Texas (friends)

Dallas, Texas (friends)

Palo Duro Canyon, Texas

Four Corners Monument, Utah / New Mexico / Colorado / Arizona

(No, that isn't me.)

 

 

Monument Valley (maybe)

Arches National Park, Utah

Canyonlands National Park, Utah

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

Zion National Park, Utah

Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming

 

Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming / Idaho / Montana

 

Missoula, Montana (home of Adventure Cycling Association)

 

Glacier National Park, Montana

 

Mount Rushmore National Memorial, South Dakota

 

Itasca State Park, Minnesota (Headwaters of the Mississippi)

 

Mississippi River Trail

Pretty crazy, yes?

UPDATE (though you wouldn't know it since this is all new as far as you're concerned): I've had another visit to the dentist - the site of the implant is coming along nicely, thank you - and yet another Dental Surprise. Yes friends, life is like that . . .

Got those Adventures in Dentistry, Jaw-Molly, Kickin' the Hydrocodone Blues - Part 3, the last

When last we met I was talking about coming down the Levee Path at the South Boulevard access point. I don't know how to explain the way I felt about coming down that decline onto the road. There are so many aspects to it - the decline itself, the bollards blocking the way, the short sharp final descent into the curve where all the gravel and trash accumulates and where you have to turn left onto the road or miss the turn and regret it deeply, the potential of traffic on River Road or South Boulevard meaning having to maybe STOP on that relatively steep ramp to avoid a collision . . . when things come together and it all works it can be quite fun.

Yeah, same one as the last one but I wanted to 

remind you (and me) of the site.

Fortunately, traffic was light as I pulled up to the red light at Saint-Someone-or-other feeling great. It's only a short ride up South to Napoleon where I turned right and headed to the Carver Branch library.

While I was returning my book - David Brin's "Existence" -I asked about the tippy-top secret, special category Library User Designation . . . don't tell anyone but, if you're 50 years old or older, you can check shit out for 6 weeks at a time! Yes friends, once you get to be 50 years old the East Baton Rouge Parish Library System allows you EXTRA TIME with your library materials. Yet another perk of living longer!

Now a certified "Senior Citizen" as far as the Library is concerned I remounted my bicycle and went off in search of the BREC Interstate Park HQ building, soon to be site of the first public meeting for the Downtown Development District's Greenway Project. I say "in search of" because a Google Maps search yielded a Street View of a lot with nothing but a slab surrounded by weeds on it. Not a good sign.

I eventually found it but what did I find? From appearances, an abandoned building with boarded up windows and broken glass in the parking lot.

See what I mean?

Even in context this isn't exactly inviting.

Of course, the Interstate Park isn't all that inviting either. The pathetic thing is, this is one of the most heavily used BREC facilities in large part because of the football practice field in the park.

Yes, you are looking at the football practice field.

This is the only practice field in the area and it's used by one of the local schools for their football program. As the field is unlit, parents have had to drive their automobiles onto the field, surround the field, and run their engines to power their lights to light the field. Why? Well, football is a Fall sport, right? Guess when the sun goes down in September . . . right . . . 6 PM-ish. No lights on the field means no practice unless you figure out how to get light onto the field.

Did I mention that the park was graded so that rainwater drains ONTO the field? No? Well, it is.

Another view of the practice filed. You can kind

of see the uprights through the interstate supports.

How anyone can hear calls on the field is beyond me. Even on that Sunday afternoon when traffic was relatively light the roar of motor vehicles and the constant dumpa-thump of tires hitting all the expansion joints in the roadway made it hard to hear anything. At busier times, like, say, 4:30 - 5:30 PM when practice would be held, it must be deafening . . . unless, of course, traffic is once again at a standstill due to a crash or goats on the roadway or some other tragedy.

Mr. Jones was beginning to make me grit my teeth at this point so I headed off in the general direction of Brew-Ha-Ha. "General" because I wanted to look for a few sites that we were planning on having on the Velo des Artes ride in April and I didn't exactly know which direction they were from the BREC park except for "east and south."

As I headed out I went down to Myrtle rather than up to South. It was a serendipitous thing as I found this great example of ritual art on an (perhaps) abandoned house.

Consecrated by blood!

Look at all the ritual symbols and power spells!

Door detail

In some other cities this would be a completely fabricated art piece. Not here.

A fairly new development first built in the 1920s, what we now call Old South Baton Rouge has been largely Black from the beginning. Once a center for the Black middle- and business-class, this part of town has been in decline for nearly 50 years. Seems the only place "they" could build the new Interstate was right through the center of this once-bustling neighborhood with a number of Blacks-only hotels, theaters, businesses, and a robust street life backed by a solid, stable neighborhood.

 Well . . . we can't have that, now can we? Might as well gut it and put an elevated interstate highway right through the middle of it. What possible harm could come from that? With all those successful Black businesses gone all the White businesses will prosper, right?

Alas, those short-sighted fools with the money and the power . . . 

Getting the Jittery Junkie Jumps, care of Mr. Jones, I got back in the saddle and headed toward Brew-Ha-Ha. I did find a couple of other moderately interesting graffito pieces along the way not far from the House of Pleas.

Here Kitty, kitty, kitty

You are always welcome . . .

By now I'm doing the Jittery Jake and have to hit it pretty hard. I fairly flashed through the Garden District on the straightaways (for me that means between 15 - 19 MPH) and took corners as fast as I could. Didn't miss a one (thankfully)! By the time I'd slalomed through the Westmoreland Plaza parking lot dodging pot holes, speed bumps, concrete curbs, and a few stationary and moving cars to pull up to the crossing on Acadian I was pumped and had remembered The Radio Bar was doing a new Snday-afternoon-at-the-bar thing with games and free BBQ. BBQ! Hot diggity dog, Dawg! I almost turned around but decided to head on to coffee.

Not that I needed coffee at this point, mind you, it's just that I'm not inclined to just go for a ride. I have to have a destination in mind most of the time. It's a weakness in me but I'm learning to live with it.

Made it to Brew-Ha-Ha, had an espresso and a cake ball of some ilk then threw my leg back over the saddle and jetted back to The Radio Bar. I figured I needed a little self-dosing to take the edge off the Jones and what better duller of edges than alcohol, yes?

Dodging back through the Westmoreland parking lot I managed to hit the light at Hearthstone green in my direction! The Traffic Gods were with me!

I locked up at the best bike rack in town and walked around the corner to go in The Radio Bar. Before I could I looked up and saw that the giant eyesore of an abandoned building on the corner of Bedford and Government was different. O . . . M . . . G . . . someone had pasted up what looked like 24" X 24" paper prints of portrait photographs all over the facade on two sides of the building, three sides counting the flattened off corner. Gorgeous!

Don't take my word for it.

The Shady Side . . .

 The Sunny Side

Detail of the Shady Side

Fortunately, the stencil of Nathan Crowson was still there.

Having satisfied my photo jones I went to knock back that other Jones. The Radio Bar was hoppin' on a Sunday afternoon! Not too crowded and delightfully scented with BBQ smells, I stopped to say hello to some friends in a booth then headed to the bar. It tool a few minutes to greet some folks there as well but I eventually took my pint back to the booth, sat down, got up, sat down, got up and went to see the BBQ offerings. Huuummmm . . . chicken, beans, potato salad, smashed potatoes, a little green salad . . . yes indeed . . . I'll have some of that and that and a dollop of that and just a  soupçon of that green stuff, thank you very much!

Back to the booth as the conversation, seasoned with more alcohol than I had had yet, slurred its way between topics. I have some happy friends, I have.

See? Happy!

In the above photograph you'd be a fool to miss the Woman in Blue. I mean, yeah, I'm gay and all but I'm not blind and I can enjoy esthetics as well as the next Horn Dog.

What you can't do is SMELL the table next to her. Seems she's about to launch a new business enterprise making cookies and chose this event to debut a number of her intended varieties. Not only that, but she and some of her friends were soliciting ideas for beer / liquor / cookie parings. BRILLIANT!

It helped that there was this tray of sample-size treats that a couple of her friends brought over and (somewhat) foolishly stuck in front of us asking if we'd had any yet. HAH! Why no, we hadn't . . . may we?

They eventually caught on that we were lying and just wanted more of those delicious treats. Too bad as we had managed to deplete the stash fairly heavily and it seemed to have become an unspoken challenge to eat them all before the trusting fools discovered out feint.

By this time I had beaten the edge off the Jittery Jumps and needed to go home . . . after a lovely neat rum to perfume my way home.

It was only two days later that I came to discover the Jittery Jumps were the precursor to the real show . . ..

So, kids, when you have a licit stash of opiates just remember That Peculiar Piper WILL be paid in time.

 

Got those Adventures in Dentistry, Jaw-Molly, Kickin' the Hydrocodone Blues - Part 2

Yeah . . . so . . . Wednesday afternoon, a few hours after getting home from my latest Adventure in Dentistry the local anesthetic under which the procedure proceeded wore off, I guess. I mean, I could feel things and there was some tenderness but it wasn't much really. A whole lot less than I anticipated at any rate.

Nonetheless, with this vial of hydrocodone and instructions to take it "every 6 hours for pain" I figured, why not? No one said it had to be actual PHYSICAL pain and I got a lot of angst, ya know? Maybe a little of that ol' existentialist ennui? And besides, this was MEDICINE, right?

Right . . .

Thursday morning I woke up, a tad groggier than usual, maybe a little more . . . distributed, let's say. Could it have been the hydro? One way to find out . . . "one every 6 hours" it said, so, let's see, it's been at least 12 hours, right? Right!

Fast forward to Sunday morning and the realization that those little white pills made for a great, if fairly unproductive, series of days. Time to give it a rest and get back to work. Right? Well . . . if you say so.

It didn't take long to realize just exactly how much that semi-synthetic opioid had gotten into me.

Agitation? Yep. Shakiness? You betcha! Disjointed reasoning? Um . . . huh? What's that?

It's not like I was just sitting in the middle of the room on the floor rocking and shaking. I did some work, got the laundry done, a few little chores here and there . . . but the entire time I felt that jones back there just asking for a little taste, maybe HALF a tab? What can it hurt, right?

Oh shit . . . really? It took THAT long to get here? And THAT long weren't no time at all.

The good news is . . . yes . . . I have a bicycle! A good bicycle, a great bicycle, a bicycle I fit on and ride on and like and can go . . . alright, alright . . . you get the picture.

The day was cool and bright. The time getting late and I had to get out and MOVE or I'd agree with that little voice belonging to Mr. Jones. So, out I goes. A little shaky, a little skittish, a little too aware that things were not as they were or would be but EXACTLY as they were (loop back to the "A little shaky, a little skittish . . " line and let it keep looping).

See? Shiny!

 But where to go? It's kind of hard to make a clear plan of action when there's that other thing going on, much less EXECUTE the plan. Still, I had front loaded the ride with purpose! I had a book I'd just finished reading and needed to return to the Library. Then I needed to find the site of the first Greenway project public meeting. Then I figured I'd ride to Brew-ha-ha, maybe further. Then I remembered The Radio Bar was holding their first Sunday Funday BBQ in the 'Hood. Then I thought . . . yeah . . . jones . . . shut UP!

Leaving the Capitol I ride down Lafayette and hear, as from a distance, "YEAH BIKE!" I pull up a bit, sit up, look around and sort of yell, "Where bike?" but not fully bellowing because as I turn to yell I see a man on a bike coming up from River Road through the parking lot on my right. I don't recognize him and he doesn't make any sort of recognition of me and I'm all confused and scanning for other bike people but no one seems to be there.

Did that just happen? Oh . . . shit . . .

Move on, move on, move on . . . go to the Carver Branch . . .take the book back . . . just go . . . now . . .

Ah, but, WHICH WAY to go? Shit . . . all the possible routes, or at least enough of the possible routes, leaped to mind creating a knot of images, turns, landmarks . . . DAMN . . . I looked right and saw the Levee. Oh . . . right . . . take the Levee to the Bridge get off at South, head up to Napoleon, take a right, two blocks and a bit and I'm there . . . phew . . . get on the Levee . . . where? . . . oh . . . right . . . at Florida . . . have to stop in the street to dismount and climb the curb and the decaying cross-tie "steps" and cross the railroad tracks and the next set of decaying cross-tie step-like objects before mounting the levee and my bike again but, okay, done, let's GO for fuck's sake already!

As I turn to drop down Florida to River Road and that stupid, ugly, insulting quasi access point I see another rider on the Levee slowly pull up to the bench just downriver of the steps and stop, one leg on the bench for support. He's back lit but I can tell it's a man and he seems to be waiting. Maybe this is the mystery "YEAH BIKE" guy?

Huh! As I'm walking up across all the obstacles to get to the levee top I think, against the bright sun back-lighting, that this is someone I know. He seems to be wearing black kit that is making the back-lighting more severe to my mind but the shape is familiar. I finally get close enough to recognize Beaux who asks, "Did you hear me yell YEAH BIKE?"

HAH! Relieved to know I DID hear someone yell I say, "Oh yes, yes I did. I wondered who that was," then begin babbling the tale of the wrong rider in the parking lot and the hydro and fucking Mr. Jones. He took it all in stride and we pushed off down river slaloming through the surprisingly large number of walkers on the Levee.

We weren't going fast and had a chance to sit up and chat a bit, one-handing the steering for the most part between knots of walkers. Turns out he was out for a little training ride, wanting to raise a sweat before doing a real training ride in St Francisville for the upcoming Rouge Roubaix. I continued to babble when I wasn't shouting "On your left!" and ringing my bell, perhaps a bit assholishly but, hey, it wasn't me, it was Mr. Jones doing it and he was still pretty damned insistent.

Yeah, down that ramp into that curve.

Beaux and I parted company at the Bridge, me swooping down the ramp onto South Boulevard, he continuing on downriver. I made it across the River Road onto South without having to slow down and got a little thrill out of that, not much because there isn't really a lot to it but, still, the downward acceleration, crossing the gravel without losing it, missing the motor cars, and speeding up to the red light at St Someone-or-other . . . it was enough to make me appreciate the joy of it, the pure flying freedom feeling of it.

In yet another - hopefully - final, episode, we reach the library and points beyond.

Got those Adventures in Dentistry, Jaw-Molly, Kickin' the Hydrocodone Blues - Part 1

Nothing like eating a dainty treat at a public event - in this case a tiny little biscuit muffaletta at the public input event for Better Block - and having a molar crown break off in my mouth.

As I stood there, having just expelled the crown - lightly crusted with biscuit, ham, and olive salad - into my hand, staring at it as my tongue began to explore the shard that remained while trying to maintain the conversation I was having at the exactly moment . . . well . . . shit . . . here we go again . . ..

Yes, that's the remnant of my bottom left molar

Clearly, I had an Adventure in Dentistry ahead of me. Nothing new, as all that other stuff in the x-ray tells better than I could. Still, despite all the time I've been in a dentist's chair over the past nearly six decades, it isn't something I get all happy about. More like resigned to the necessariness and, more importantly, expense of it.

Nothing for it but to go have it looked at. <sigh>

Fortunately, there was an opening at my dentist's office the following morning at a time that wouldn't require a lot of shift shifting (we have assigned desk shifts at the Library and it can be difficult to get others to take a shift at the last moment). So, on my bike and off to the dentist down one of the more unpleasant streets in town - Highland Road.

After an only moderately threatening ride I arrive in time to see the good dentist. The tech created the x-ray image above and when the doc came in he immediately said, "Huh . . . that's bad." 

Great.

How bad?

The obvious part - what was left of the tooth had to be extracted. No hope of just pasting the crown in my pocket back onto the stump. That would be too easy, too straightforward. 

So now what? Extract it and do what? 

Two choices - removable bridge thing or implant. The bridge would be shorter lived than the implant but cost less. Then again, it would need to be replaced at least once (assuming I don't die sooner than later) and that would incur more expense. 

The implant would cost more but be more permanent (same caveat as above, that is, only as permanent as I am).  Knowing my predilection for letting things slide I thought it best to go with the implant. That meant getting a CAT scan of my jaw right then, no big given that they have a head scan device in the hallway . . . convenient!

Before getting my head irradiated the doc was good enough to smooth off the jaggedness that was aggravating the hell out of my tongue. A little while later I had a good scan, an appointment for the following week, and a fist full of prescriptions. Yee-haw.

The next Wednesday I spent 2.5 hours, more or less, in a dentist chair having the broken molar extracted, the bone excavated, a molly implanted, the gaps filled with a mix of sterilized, granulated cadaver bone and platelet rich growth hormone spun out of the blood drawn from my arm. Here's what that looks like when all is said and done.

Hello, Molly!

Now, in a week I'm to see the doc again to make sure the gum, sutures, and everything are doing well then, assuming no problems, a four month wait for Phase 2 - removing the protective cap, screwing in the post, creating a temporary crown, and taking a mold for the real crown. 

Yeah . . . I know what you mean . . .

In our next thrill packed episode (yawn) - me and hydrocodone become friends then have a falling out . . . cue "Me and Mrs. Jones" . . .

Sunny day, lazy day - Part the 3rd (at long last)

The short version of this is . . . I didn't do laundry. There . . . I said it.

What I did do was go for another ride the next day. Turns out it was another beautiful, cool day with light breezes, partly cloudy skies, and . . . well . . . isn't that enough?


View Larger Map

I headed to Farr Park, about 5 miles downriver from me, partly in hope of seeing if the bald eagle's nest remained occupied. I'd heard about it and had gotten a fair idea of where it could be seen in the batture from the levee. I didn't want to bother the nest but I enjoy birds and seeing bald eagles is a good thing.

As I headed out I had to make the usual choices for route. The levee was my immediate goal so there weren't too many choices - basically, over to Spanish Town Road / 3rd Street / Lafayette / River Road or 6th Street / North Boulevard / River Road - for the first choice. I don't much care for the 6th / North option so STR it was.

The next choice - how to access the Levee? There's only one "authorized" access point to the levee path in downtown and it sure wasn't designed by someone who rode a bicycle. To get to the access you have to get to South Boulevard via St Phillip, a sometimes trafficky street that feeds a major southbound thoroughfare out of downtown. South Boulevard isn't that bad in itself.

The other option is a dicey bit of River Road that runs between the casino parking garages and the casino hotel. The surface is pretty beat up, there's usually motor traffic going in and out of the garages and the parking lot, and the street runs parallel to and on the same grade as the railroad tracks that feed and empty the refinery complex just north of downtown. Not pretty. At the end of that stretch is a stop sign that requires a 90 degree turn onto South then a short sprint to the access point.

From under the Bridge it looks like this.

One of the Casino parking garages in the distance.

Welcome to the Levee Path

That access is in a curve where River Road becomes South Boulevard under the Mississippi River Bridge / I-10. You have to cross a band of gravel kicked to the side of the curve by the motor traffic then push up a short steep section while dodging bollards and warning signs. That's followed by a brief flat then another incline. There's a smaller intersecting path that allows access for the golf carts hauling gamblers, too lazy or too infirm to walk, from the parking lot to the casino. More often than not the golf carts have to really gun it to make the incline with their load of obese hopefuls and we're often in conflict.

Coming down there is even more fun as the relatively steep decline requires dodging the same bollards and signage keeping motor vehicles (mostly) off the levee while braking to avoid the gravel and being shot straight out into traffic passing in the curve. It can be fun to attempt an exit there at speed but "fun" is interpreted differently by different people. Most would say is was anything BUT fun.

Me? I prefer the unauthorized access via the "Labyrinth" between the LASM and the USS Kidd.

Granted, it's not really a labyrinth but a handicap access ramp that cuts back and forth from the railroad tracks running between the street and the levee to the top of the levee. Built back in the 1980s (maybe?) it probably doesn't meet the current ADA guidelines for slope but, hey, it works on a bicycle and I've never seen anyone in a wheelchair on that facility.  In fact, the labyrinth is mostly, from the smell of it, a urinal for the homeless and the drunk.

At last . . . on the levee and heading downriver. The first thing I noticed was the river was up. Not flood stage up but way higher than it had been. The USS Kidd had been sitting there by the batture with air under her keel for months and now, somewhat suddenly, she was riding high in the Big Muddy. Hard to miss, that.

As I headed past the casino (no golf carts this time) and under the bridge I noticed the barge traffic, lots of barge traffic. The River had been so low that the Corps had imposed restrictions on barge loads. With such low water the barges wouldn't haul as much weight meaning more frequent and lighter trips meaning higher costs. A lot of traffic just stopped while waiting for the water to come up; now that the water was up so was the traffic. The diesels in the push boats and pull boats and auxiliary boats were chugging and spewing away in the river and along the banks of the river.

Amphibians in a piquant diesel sauce

I stopped at one point where the high water had flooded the batture a little. The relatively warm weather and the high water had gotten the amphibians all excited and they were chirping and croaking and buzzing back and forth loudly enough to overcome the sound of the boats. I love the sound of those places on the batture when froggie goes a'courting. While far from a herpetologist (though I did dabble in it back in junior high school) I am convinced there are different populations of amphibians in various sections of the batture when flooded based on the sonic differences alone. If anyone reading this (assuming . . . ) knows for sure, I'd love to hear about it.

 At this point, turning to get back to riding I noticed how beautiful the light was. It had taken me quite a while to leave home and my late start put me by the frogs with an hour or so of light left in the day. There's something about the quality of light just then combined with the high thin, though broken, clouds that gives everything a slightly metallic blue-gray edge backed by an increasingly yellow-orange quality. As time passed the twilight gathering behind me added that great slow fade to blue-black . . . but that's getting ahead of things.

Not too much further along three white pelicans came in low over the levee behind my right shoulder. They were skirting the tops of trees in the batture at the edge of the River headed across to the south and west. Odd yet oddly majestic in appearance these big migratory birds are another seasonal favorite of mine. I love it when they arrive in December or January and miss them when they leave.

A little while later I made it to Farr Park and a bit beyond to the eagle nest. I was in luck as there was one adult bird there, back lit by the setting sun, perched on a branch high above the ground near the nest. Because of the light I couldn't tell if it was the male or the female. Luckily, a young couple was there and they let me borrow their binoculars for a minute or two of enhanced peeping-tomery. With the enhanced sight I could distinguish the eagle was male. People can be so nice!

It was really beginning to get on to sunset, the sun was more red than yellow, the twilight in the east more pronounced, so I headed back upriver. On the way, as I neared the LSU campus, I noticed once again what I had taken for a parasail earlier but it was too far up and away for me to be sure what it was. Now, as the sky darkened and the thing leaded for landing I could see that it was an ultralight craft of some ilk, kind of a glider with a push motor behind the pilot. What I had taken for clever handling in, around, and through thermals at the end of the day was really motor-driven pilotcraft. Slightly disappointed to know there was a motor involved. I watch the flier approach the ground but didn't watch him land.

The transition from day to night as it passes through twilight is one of my favorite things to experience. The light changes so much, the sounds change, temperatures, everything slowly shifts from one form to another.

I could see the edge of night come across the sky as the sun fell below the rim of the earth. The first planets and stars appeared, cars on River Road now featured two bright spots, and the new lights in the upper tiers of Tiger Stadium began to cycle through their purple and gold routines. Lights lining the Mississippi River Bridge came on and the Capitol, lit up from above and below, guided me home.