Days 167 - 172 Austin - Corpus Christi - Houston - Beaumont - New Orleans - Pensacola

After two weeks in Austin it was time to get going again. As I mentioned the weather in Dallas was getting even worse than in Austin, colder and more rainy. Roads were already flooded with water. So I decided to take an alternative route and head south to Corpus Christi.

I started around nine in the morning and damn it was cold. I had all my clothes on just to keep at least a little warm. But nothing seemed to help. It was rainy and foggy all the way. About 50 miles before Corpus Christi I faced the heat wave I've never experienced before. All of a sudden my helmet's visor got foggy. I couldn't see a thing and I just pulled over. The temperature rose several degrees in about hundred meters. After that heat wave it was hot! From +6 in Austin to +26 in Corpus Christi really makes a difference.

Corpus Christi is a city for tourists. A beach city full of hotels and motels. I had booked a room in a motel right next to USS Lexington, an old aircraft carrier which is turned into a museum. I spent nearly two hours exploring that huge ship and the exhibitions organized in there. Very interesting place. The ship is famous for having a role in motion picture Pearl Harbor.

Fortunately the weather stayed warm also next day. My program on Thursday was to get myself from Corpus Christi to Houston.

The weather being warm really doesn't mean weather being nice. It was wet - it felf like I was riding inside a cloud. Everything turned wet and heavy. But at least I didn't freeze.

Corpus Christi and it's surroundings faced hurricane Harvey in August 2017. A lot of buildings still had tarps on the roof and piles of trash were on the side of the road. And probably because all the land is privately owned all the trash was collected on highway divider to get sorted. As an idea that felt so weird. But it makes sense. It's already very expensive to everyone to try to fix things the storm destroyed. Why would the state pay rent for somebody when it has land of it's own, even though it happens to be in bit of a funny place.

Finally I ended up in the next former disaster city - Houston - where massive flood caused by Harvey made huge mess. My host Brandan said he was lucky. Only his garage had water on the floor but 2 inches more would have brought the flood into his living room. I had such a lot of fun with Brandan. Long and complex discussions about motorcycles (of course), traveling (naturally), gun laws (obviously) and many other aspects of life. 

He happens to be the first guy I've ever met who uses car tire as rear tire in a motorcycle. And I mean normal motorcycle without sidecar. In his case the bike is Honda ST1300 - also known as Pan European. He said it works grear. And it's cheap. And gets huge mileage compared to motorcycle tire.

My real target in Houston was the Space Center. That was really worth all the $30 they charged. The most interesting part was 1,5 hours long tram tour in Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center which is a real, active NASA training, studying and investigation facility right next to the museum. I got to see the original control room that was active when the astronauts landed on the moon and a huge training hall where the astronauts of today practice before they are sent to ISS - International Space Station for quite a long periods of time. Space crawlers, robots, Skynet... Just kidding, Skynet is not taking over and it's not NASA thing.

Beaumont was the place to stay for the next night. Joey - my host - had had a busy week in construction but fortunately it was Friday and he had a chance to accommodate me for the night. He is living in a house more than hundred years old with a funny little Chihuahua. So many people have dogs or cats. 

Beaumont is a little (in US scale) town about 200 miles east of Houston with about 150 000 inhabitants. Good place to stay for a night and it was nice to meet Joey. I was his first guest. Too bad I didn't take a photo of his camper. That's a piece of an art! By the way: hurricane Rita hit straight to Beaumont in September 2005.

Getting from Beaumont to New Orleans in dry weather was really something different compared to the previous couple of days. I went near Texas oil refineries, followed the coast of the gulf of Mexico and through this rice fields of Louisiana. Actually USA is the biggest rice exporter in the world. It's so much easier to grow rice on flat in Louisiana than on a steep hillside in Japan. Every time I saw a hill in Louisiana it ment a bridge over troubled water. I mean river.

New Orleans - that's a beautiful place. And of course another place of natural disaster. Right before Rita hit Beaumont hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. It was the most disastrous hurricane in very long time if ever. And the people evacuated to Beaumont had to face Rita there. Man is so small and weak when nature shows it's power.

You really can see there's a long history in New Orleans. Strong French influence as it used to be the main city of French settlement in the US. Probably the most famous place in the city is the French Quarter. Bourbon street being the heart of jazz, blues, rock and endless partying. Or at least it seemed like a place of endless party when I visited there on Saturday evening. New Orleans seemed like a civilized city. It even had tram system - or street cars as they are called there. And traveling with street cars is cheap,only $1,25 per trip.

My host "Evil Eagle" a.k.a Ben and his wife Jen - fighter pilot and civil engineer, both working in US Air Force - had a work weekend. So when I got to New Orleans I just parked Rosie next to their house and left my gear on the side porch. I got back from the French Quarter at around eight and after visiting a little work related party we called it a day.

In the morning Jen had already gone to work and I had a great and extremely fun discussion with Ben as he told how he bribed his way in to Bosnia and how people though he was Russian in Moscow.

After Ben left to work I packed my gear and got on the road again. And after five minutes the rain started. And it didn't end until I got all the way to Long Beach. And as the weather forecast showed only small "showers" I didn't put on my trousers' waterproof liner. A big mistake! I felt like I was sitting in a bond or I'd been pissing under myself. Actually the latter one would have at least felt warm for a while. The water didn't.

So I followed the coast all the way to Mobile and cut through inland back to the coast to reach Pensacola. My host Jason was a helicopter pilot for US Navy. I'd call that a coincidence. Anyway. His family hosted me for the night. Our discussions varied from motorcycles to combination of pizza and marshmallows and from brass instruments to Finnish educational system.

By the way. Pensacola is not extremely famous for being a victim of hurricanes or any other natural disasters. But I bet it has had it's share.