sights, places, memories

I cannot really call this the last post on the W(e)VOW epic. After all, we own a bus. The adventure won’t stop for some time now, I imagine. This is just an excuse to put in a few last photos. Please do forgive me for ever repeating myself throughout these posts.

Most of my pictures are from the Grand Canyon, so I suppose I will start with that. We stopped for two nights in Tusayan, AZ so that we could have a full day of banter in the canyon. Since we arrived in the same vehicle, we got a group rate: $25 for everyone, instead of $8 per person – what a deal! We all did a lot of walking around the edge, and we all attempted a hike downwards into the gorge. We caught the sunset after admiring the Abyss for quite a while. Of course we had lots of stopping to dangle our legs over the edge.

The sunset is beautiful in the striking contrast formed between the brightly colored rocks and the deep heavy shadows cast back into the canyon.

Also, this is a stick:

We decided to travel southwards through Joshua Tree National Park instead of the originally scheduled Death Valley agenda. Admission to the park and camping permission turned out to be cheaper than we had anticipated, another pleasant national park surprise! The morning found us scrambling up rolling hills to survey our desolate surroundings. We managed to find satisfactory shower facilities in the RV water station before embarking on our journey through the park.

Impressively sized rocks abounded, some towering over our not insignificant vehicle. Of course, we were all up for the adventure of climbing these monumental stones, scaling epic piles of rock and admiring the vista.

Descending upon the freeway leading towards LA, we encountered several expansive corridors of wind turbines. One of our previous encounters with these impressive beauties was leaving Austin, watching trucks transporting single turbine blades, trying to turn gracefully on undersized highways. The closeness to such a delicate looking yet powerful piece of machinery elicited gasps of wonder from all of us. However, it was not until the allegedly flat expanse that is Kansas that I managed to capture the experience in a photograph. I will let you judge for yourself the claim that Kansas is as flat as a pancake.

The Pacific coast held in store two more wonders for us. The coast itself was impressive to any Mississippian used to our sound on the Gulf Coast which prevents any wave from getting enough power to splash more than our knees. Massive waves roll in from afar and smash with great drama onto craggy boulders that decorate the shoreline. The roads undulated and twisted as we navigated gorges and mountains, they forced us to explore forests filled with towering redwoods and negotiate tight spaces with other tourist traffic. For anyone growing up in Mississippi, we imagine the high pines that populate our state as fairly impressive trees – the redwoods overwhelmed that impression, dominating over any vision of an impressive tree and altering our understanding of how a towering tree would appear.

Of course I was generally impressed with the length of the trains that travelled in the western two thirds of the nation. One hundred and twenty five car trains would parallel the highways as we raced them unsuccessfully. Trains fully a mile long could remain beside us for miles in the expanses of desert that we crossed.

It was a wonderful trip that allowed us all to explore a phenomenal amount of the country. Simply getting to be in such an exceptionally vast land, even the barren empty stretches, was the cause of our wonder as we contemplated our place on this earth.

the troubles

We had a few last minute things to do.

When i showed up in Starkville, ready to go, I found a few of the crew under the bus, furiously putting the finishing touches on a bus that they had spend a week in a proper workshop to make the new fuel system. We kept extension cords and lights on until late in the night, when we finally all got to bed, only to get up before dawn to pack up and go.

Everything was working right before we left.

It didn’t take long down the road in the morning before we had our first hiccup. A few miles past Renfroe, MS we noticed a smoke from the back. When we pulled over, a cloud erupted from the engine compartment. By taste, we realized it was coolant (tastes sweet, very poisonous). A hose had slipped off in the engine, dumping all of our coolant on a hot engine. We coasted back to within sight of a service station (the only one in Renfroe, the only one for miles). Fixed out hose and topped up.

Nor did it take too long to learn an awful lot about pumping oil. We pulled in behind a kind restaurant outside of Jackson and excitedly set to work on this nearly full container of waste oil. We uncoiled the hose and switched on the pump. The pump would draw oil through a rough filter on the end of the hose and push it through two oil filters, into the engine. While that was going, we assembled a hand pump to fill up our auxiliary barrels while we waited.

We quickly found that the hand pump didn’t do anything. Even with half of the team in an engineering major of some sort, we couldn’t figure it out. We assembled the pump, we disassembled the pump. We read everything three times. No way we held the pump, nor our efforts to ‘prime’ it worked.

The electric pump was going very slow past a half tank. We figured it was the filters, and bypassed one of them to get it flowing faster. Needed more filters at this point. So early on, and we were already soaked in oil. After four hours of only vaguely successful pumping, we got on the road, very much behind schedule.

We could get frustrated at the speed of pumping. Which is why our next fundraiser will have a shiny new pump in mind.

We pushed on, not stopping until we crossed the Mighty Mississippi River and took a break in Louisiana. Switching drivers here, JD was to take us through rush hour traffic. Bouncing down the road, a crack and a bang indicated that a side compartment had smashed open, leaving our valuable hose end with filter somewhere on the side of the road.

The rest of Louisiana was not too helpful. Ruston, LA was devoid of diesel fuel. A poorly designed frontage road system sent us all around, but only one station had diesel. We tanked up and headed out, but only after a memorable stop at the LA Tech stadium…

By two in the morning there were three people awake. With all of us too tired to drive, we parked in Temple, TX at a truck stop for the night. This set a precedent of getting ideal free places to stay in thru-stops.

We were ambitious. We had given ourselves two days to cover the 1100 miles from Austin to Flagstaff. At a maximum 55mph, we would need 20 hours of driving. Adding in stops, we would need much longer. It was only at 9 am that we realized that we would not be leaving by 6 am. So we did the only logical thing: we went swimming.

The long day of driving was fairly trouble free, it was the night that caught us unaware. Triumphantly riding into Laredo, Texas I hit a railroad crossing at speed. It was far rougher than anticipated, and as the occupant of a rear bunk came crashing back onto the bed, the bed came crashing down as well. That meant the next morning, as we greeted the morning in a Clovis, NM truck stop, we needed to find a hardware store.

We were always on the lookout for a Lowes

An elk in the road can give you a fright. An elk in the road when you are driving a bus can give you quite a big fright. An elk in the road when you are driving a bus for the first time at two in the morning can really scare the last meal out of you. This happened to TG on the way to our Grand Canyon RV park. Fortunately, the elk bolted, unfortunately, no free meat.

W can probably claim that things went smoothly until we tried to leave San Francisco. After packing the trailer, someone noted that it looked a bit broken. Indeed it was. One of the bars across the bottom had broken in the middle, nearly dragging the ground. Naturally, the skilled laborers that we brought along figured that the best idea would be to weld it back together. After a long manly shopping trip to a home depot, a welder was had, along with a very fancy welding mask (solar powered).

Next thing you know, we were welding in the middle of the street in Oakland. There were sparks flying from the grinder and a painful light flashing from the welder, but it finally got done. Packed up and headed out, it didn’t take long on the freeway for someone to notice a loose chain on the trailer. It wasn’t just the chain, the welding had failed. Trying to turn around on a dead end street in a neighborhood attracted the attention of a resident who helped get us turned around before we unloaded the trailer into the bus. We pushed on out of the city, with an empty trailer, still clinging to the hope that it would be fixable in the light of day.

The next morning found us unhitching the trailer for the last time and pushing it off the road at an abandoned railroad track. Probably for the best, as we had Highway 101 in all of its twisting and turning glory ahead of us. The weight over the back wheels probably helped our handling as well.

Having no trailer freed us up to take smaller roads, which meant we could jump in mountain streams, the temperature of which terrified us.

With a new trailer in Portland, we were able to go problem free all the way until Denver, where an electrical problem cut our lights as we descended in the rockies on a small highway around midnight. A bit of urgent pulling over followed by a lot of fiddling about sorted the problem, without really alleviating the stress that it might happen again.

All in all it was a fairly easy going trip though. There was never a major breakdown. No parts to wait for, nothing we could not fix ourselves. There was a lot of learning (read: maintenance) about the fuel line, but the bus was in great shape really. Now, having been tested in the real world, under fairly grueling conditions, long drives in the desert and navigating busy city streets, a 1300 mile non-stop ride and mile and a half climbs, our fair bus rests quietly, waiting for her next mission.

People

I could write for quite a while on the people inside the bus. I could go into detail about every little moment we shared, every song we sang, every argument that we had. It would be easy to put in some typical remarks about how we laughed together and cried together, but that does not really tell what it was like. There were eleven of us. On a bus. For over two weeks. We shared everything, our food, beds, clothes, soap. We shared our lives. We jumped into freezing streams together, we got covered in rancid cooking oil together. We went for days without showering, but still sat close as we went down the road, singing, reading, sleeping, eating. We explored cities and stood on desolate stretches of road, all of it an adventure to love with our friends.

Important too, were the people who we encountered on the trip.

Pumping oil into our tank near Jackson, a man approached us. We were wary of this at first, as taking oil from grease traps is not a completely above board activity. As it turned out, he was just a curious chap who wanted to see what our bus was all about. After this, we became used to people approaching us with curiosity; as we were in a new place wherever we went, we were curious as well. Many times we would pop the hood to show off our fuel system to a mechanical buff, or let people peek in on the sleeping (someone was always sleeping, regardless of the time) inhabitants of this big yellow RV.

Fortunately for us, even the police officers were really all just curious. A Flowood officer tried to tell us that we couldn’t have the bus and keep it yellow, and say “School Bus.” When we explained that we were sponsored by MSU, he consulted the Mississippi Code and figured that we were technically legit. He wrote down the code section for our reference and wished us luck.

It was in Austin that we first realized that we were doing something pretty cool. JD got to talking to a jogger who had seen our bus around town. While parked at Uncle Greg’s house, a lady walking her dog used our bus as a background for her photography project, and gave us a guardian angel for the trip! Wherever we went, people approached us full of curiosity about this school bus that had eleven kids living in it. Stopping for fuel in Clovis, NM, we became celebrities of the Taco Villa where they gave us half off just for stopping by! We made friends in deserts and in cities, on the road and in campsites; people were all surprisingly friendly. It appears that the South does not have a monopoly on hospitality.

Of all places to get pulled over, a patrolman in Humboldt County, California stopped us on the top of a mountain. After assuring us that he just wanted to get out of the mud, and would not search our bus, we let him hop onto the steps of the bus. He was really only concerned with what state we were registered in, and warned us about having a yellow bus that said “School Bus” when we weren’t carrying students 18 and younger.

People who had traveled much were glad to share advice on our route. A man operating a taco stand at a Home Depot in Austin (who’s breakfast burritos were “so good, in fact, they are sold out.”) suggested out way into New Mexico. Our neighbor at an RV park in Provo, UT helped us find the least hilly (out of very hilly options) to get to Denver on time. He also recommended us to his step-sons restaurant, where we could do a bit of name dropping. A girl in Port Orford, Oregon served us lunch and was tempted to hop in the bus as well.

People shared their stories when we shared ours. One man in particular, after hearing from me and L about the bus trip, told a story from his youth. As a student in Tel Aviv he and a friend decided to climb mount Sinai. His journey involved an abandoned mosque, an army that decamped while he slept, nearly missing a once a week bus in the desert and a pilot who didn’t even know where they were flying too. I was clinging onto every exciting word when he finished and said “But you are having a great adventure too!” Indeed we were.

Our last encounter with the Law was in the flat bit of Kansas. Apparently, there had been a report of a school bus converted to an RV that had a drunk driver and passengers. While he initially accused our driver of swerving, he didn’t bother with a breathalyzer once he realized that we were all clearly fine. Looking at the registration, he was curious how we registered as an RV. Grandpa explained that we had to meet four of six requirements: Living quarters, heating and cooling, refrigeration, cooking, wiring and toilet facilities. When we said that of course we didn’t have toilet facilities, he looked down and, to our amusement, noted that we did.

Atop a rock/hill jutting into the Pacific at Port Orford.

Roads

I had this rough idea of organizing my diary into themes. Here is my attempt to work that out. First installment, Roads:

As it turned out, Mississippi did not have the worst roads of the trip. Louisiana’s decision to build their interstate highways out of concrete slabs meant that the bus shook violently enough to smash a side compartment open, spewing half of our tools across the highway in rush hour traffic.

Some of our earliest struggles with long hills came on the toll roads outside of Austin, TX. High arching roadways coming together in a great tangle may have been impressive to look at, but meant that our bus struggled mightily to climb. Any hill required us to put the pedal to the floor, but the long inclines of sweeping interchanges took our speed down considerably. The bus would slow to 30, 25 or even 15 on some inclines on Texas overpasses, the Continental Divide in New Mexico, the Redwood Forest in NoCal, and the Rockies of Colorado. This change in momentum was accompanied by reckless speeds on the other side of the bump. Braking heavily, we could hit 70 or higher on the long downhills.

The climb to this altitude took a while.

Any bump is magnified greatly to those laying on the back of a school bus. Going into Laredo, TX, a railroad crossing hit the back bunks hard enough to cause grandpa to crash down from the top bunk, necessitating a trip to Lowes in the morning.

Long stretches of desolate highway became common as soon as we left Austin. Rolling hills gave way to flat deserts in west Texas. Our first few hours in California found us rolling along Highway 95 through a desert valley on the way to Joshua Tree National Park.

If it wasn't B&W, you would see a sunset.

The Southern California deserts gave way to majestic redwood forests in Northern California. The roads got more twists, the hills became more frequent (non-stop one might say, but people don’t usually describe hills that way). The lanes (only one each way) were narrow and the shoulders were often non-existant (choice: rock/tree wall or cliff edge). As I drove, the front of the bus felt like it could take the blind downhill sharp turns at the advisory speed, but the way the rear leverages any turn elicited shrieks and calls to slow down at almost every turn.

Driving at night turned out to be my forte. With no hot sun to wear me down and tire my eyes, I could stay alert far longer than in those long days. Cheap and dirty coffee is always available from any truck stop, and they usually have an extra caffeine version. From sunset until midnight on the first night, I navigated Texas highways to Waco. The smaller roads with more turns and varying speed limits were a refreshing change from the monotonous interstate highways. Small towns cropping up every few miles kept the road interesting in the dark.

Nighttime roads are nearly traffic free. Worrying about that car in the mirror does not happen. I crossed Idaho in a six hour stint starting at 10 pm one night outside of Boise. The interstate road works meant that at least one hour I spend on edge, gliding down a one lane interstate with a concrete barrier to my right and a rare bit of traffic to my left.

First stop of the morning in Idaho.

My last drive started halfway through Kansas and ended up at six in the morning, handing over the wheel at a truck stop just outside of St. Louis. Watching the sun rise as I motored east was excellent. Going up a small incline would tuck the sun back away and wash the sky in a new color.

the set up

This is how it happened.

One day i got a call. It was L (to become Grandpa). He told me there were plans in the works to take a road trip. This was not to be just any road trip, we would have a big yellow school bus. As the plan evolved, we got funding to convert an old yellow school bus running on diesel into an old yellow school bus running on waste vegetable oil. Thus W(e)VOW was born.

Copyright © 2010, Taylor Gair

There was a lot of work to be done once the bus was acquired in North Carolina. Firstly it was driven down by grandpa and JD.

All the seats were ripped out save for four in the front, two turned to face each other with a table in between. Two sets of bunk beds were built in the back, in hindsight, maybe not the best place for beds. Couches and a futon filled the rest of the space. We wired a sound system and some outlets. We upgraded interior lights, and added supplementary christmas lights. Dumpster diving efforts gave us cushions and foam for our beds, T’s mother made velcro curtains for our windows. Even though a bus is big (“Dude, its a bus.”) Eleven people and everything needed to sustain them (oh, plus a generator) takes up a lot of space, so a trailer hitch ensured we could always carry on.

The conversion went slower. The full tale involves a marathon work session, the Mississippi Gulf Coast and an alcoholic welder who rose at 5 am and started work at “bud light o’clock.” An old 55 gallon propane tank was repurposed as our veggie oil tank. A pump mounted under the bus would draw oil through a strainer and force it through two oil filters (a 25 and a 10 micron filter, in series) before it filled the tank. One additional filter would remove water from the fuel before it was sent to the engine. A switch controlled whether the engine drew fuel from the diesel tank or the veggie oil tank.

The conversion was ‘finished’ hours before we were set to leave Starkville: at 6 am, 21 May 2010. It was untested, but we were ready to go.

this took me ages to write

My phone rang as I stepped off of the train. J (why do half of the people that i stayed with have names beginning with j?) was getting out of class and was on her way to pick me up. I just missed C on her way out of town to cheer for the Blue Devils (who would go on to win the NCAA championship with her support).

Since the weather was still excellent, I spent a lot of time wandering around, exploring the campus. There was a definite style to the campus – all stone architecture. This was all very top down, pristine and tidy. It was clear that someone had a single vision as to what Duke would look like, and that it was being fulfilled. The chapel seemed to epitomize this, built to look like a fairly standard European cathedral, the inside was crisp and clean. The floors and walls were not littered with memorials as one might expect. The floor was not worn to a shine from centuries of foot traffic. The ceilings were not stained with smoke from ceremonies. While it was all very very nice – that was all there was. I caught the botanical gardens as everything was emerging from winter. Flowers were blooming everywhere and new plants were just putting out shiny green growth. The names of benefactors on buildings and places reminded me that much of the best public radio programming comes from here.

On my last day in Durham, I attended a biodiversity conference. Much to my hosts surprise, i was actually interested in attending, not going out of politeness! There were three topics covered, certification schemes, mitigation and paying for environmental services. The speakers surprised me with how local much of this work is. Projects of all scales needed to be funded, or offset in some way, making great opportunities for small land management companies. The effect of certification schemes was particularly interesting – with no real standardization in the field, effects of certification varied broadly as each promoted different aspects of environmental protection.

The train was running late, so we took a small wander around campus. After a few more pictures and a last visit with some of J’s friends, i found the train was making up lost time and we rushed off for the station. I made it a few minutes before it arrived.

I got off in Greensboro to change for the Crescent service to Meridian. It was quitting time as i walked down Elm street. People were coming out into the street to enjoy the restaurants and shops that downtown Greensboro had to offer. I stopped for a rest in a park, which had a large sign with information about the Greensboro Greenway – a downtown loop of bicycle and pedestrian friendly pathways and parks. I wandered into a nearby neighborhood and found myself at UNC Greensboro. This was a fairly quiet campus on a friday night, but I was able to find a shop nearby to pick up some foodstuffs for the long train journey ahead.

I boarded the train around midnight. One lady getting off had five large bags that the porter helped her with – she had traveled all the way from Seattle with what appeared to be everything she owned. We were assigned seats and I settled in to my spacious seat. The leg rest came up and the seat reclined and I could hardly reach the seat in front of me even as it stretched out. I fell asleep roughly for the night, but enjoyed waking up to peek out of the windows. The lights came on to wake us up at about 7 am, an hour before Atlanta. I tried to wander down the train when we stopped, but one of the cars was being cleaned, and I got told off for not wearing shoes. I settled back into my seat and cracked into a quality meal of a muffin, goldfish crackers, an apple and vienna sausages. I would save the moon pie for later. I visited the cafe car many times in between Atlanta and Meridian to enjoy the better windows and a bit of quiet to read.

This brings me to two complaints about Amtrak (besides the horrible boarding procedures) the track (ok, this is beyond Amtrak control) beyond Atlanta, going south and west is horrible. Jointed track leaving the station in Katowice, Poland is gives a more comfortable ride than the track through Alabama. Also, the windows are too small. Please take note of that when buying new trains: window size.

My journey ended when my mom and brother picked me up in meridian… Though I probably could have caught a ride with the JSU bus taking a carriage full of students back home.

briefly

I stayed another night in boston, hosted by some FOAF (ok, really bad joke) which was lovely. In the morning, I headed to the bus station and caught the noon Fung Wah bus to NY. This was the cheapest and most jokes sounding form of transportation to take. I had heard that they may be the fastest bus to NY, even with a short McDonalds stop along the way. I boarded, half expecting an eastern european style trip, with people smuggling twine, sausage and strawberries piled high in the seats. It was packed, but just people.

Apparently my trip over was fairly middle of the road. I noticed that nobody on the Interstate was able to pass the Fung Wah. When we got into NY traffic, the driver took us through s maze of streets to avoid slowing down. This resulted in getting pulled over in Queens, to the annoyance of most passengers. Once we crossed the bridge into Manhattan, we were dropped in the middle of Chinatown. I grabbed some takeaway and headed for Penn Station.

On the train to Delaware, I called up J (A?) and let her know i was on my way. Apparently the last plans I left with her were only tentative, so she was startled that I was on my way. This meant that i had a little time to wander around Wilmington before being picked up. This was lovely, the weather was warmer and only a light drizzle instead of the downpour that Boston was that morning.

Tuesday was my big day in Newark, DE. The weather was gorgeous, so after meeting for lunch, we wandered around campus and wondered about the architecture. There was definite classical influence, with the bold white Ionic columns contrasting with the pervasive dark red brick. In ceramics class, I tried my hand at making tea cups. Afterwards, we had to go pick up a speaker: Todd Murray of Hope’s Voice. I found out in the car that there was a raffle for a cruise going on at this event, which i was only attending by coincidence. J (A?) made me promise to take her on the cruise if I won. After the talk, “Does HIV look like me?” the raffle was held, and to Todd’s great amusement, I won.

There was once a Dunkin’ Donuts here. After it closed, and I stopped hearing about it, i figured that it was petering out in some desolate corner of the world. But no, Dunkin’ Donuts is alive and well on the east coast. So, after an obligatory stop there on the way out, I was dropped back in Wilmington where I had some time to wander before catching a train to North Carolina.

The departure boards in the station strike a great contrast to airport departure boards, where delays are expected, so expected arrival time is used, rather than scheduled arrival time. In the train station, I watched as several trains departed bearing only a status stamp of “On Time”. I boarded my train and settled in for the 8 hour journey. There was a major stop in Washington DC where i slipped off hte train for a peek around. The station was fairly epic. Fine marble floors and a massive vaulted ceiling lined with statues contained upscale shops enclosed in rich hardwood. I had time for a short march up to the capitol where I noticed that the capitol police were poorly outfitted with fully suspended mountain bikes. These are pretty much the worst bikes to ride on city streets.

Boarding the train again was a bit of a hassle. With only one escalator leading to the platform it carried passengers away from the train when the train arrived, and now carried them to the train. I am pretty sure that is not even legal, not to mention safe. There was no standing about on the platform, except the massive queue that formed at the one open door on the train. Basically, boarding planned to the the least convenient thing ever. Not only did they check tickets at the boarding gate, but also as you boarded the train, and twice on the train.

We left DC under diesel power on some CSX tracks. Tropicana trains were pulling out of town alongside us. “Quantico will be our next stop, Quantico, home of the Marines, FBI, and CIA. Hoo Rah! Semper Fi! Quantico, Hoo Raaahhhhhhh!” was the enthusiastic announcement before we pulled into Quantico. The tracks in rural Virginia and NC were just littered with cute small towns. And coal. But that is mostly in Virginia.

next:
last stop. duke.

some people think my posts are too long

I find it a great pleasure to book travel over the phone. Some people are very much into searching and searching and booking tickets online and doing it all themselves, but I like the concierge-like service that free phone booking provides. I called up Delta and asked the delightful sales rep when the cheapest time to fly to Maine was. A short chat later, I had a ticket in my email, no problem.

My flight ended up being an all day affair. Starting off in a terrible thunderstorm, mom dropped me off at the airport and i strolled through security. “We’re gonna have to confiscate this sandwich because we don’t have anything to eat down here.” It was a slow morning at the former “International” tagged airport. As my bag was subjected to closer inspection (nobody else in the queue to hassle) i learned that at four in the morning, when the TSA officer came to work, the weather was lovely, so he had missed the onset of this extreme weather.

Maine was lovely. I arrived in the midst of some unusually warm weather (apparently the winter was a bit mild this year) and enjoyed every bit of the clear sky. The town of Brunswick was tiny, but seemed not to be dominated by the college, at least not during the day. The ocean was just a short cycle ride away.

The bus station was just a Seven-11 (oh thank heaven!) so buying a ticket was a matter of getting the man to phone it in for me. When i was waiting on the bus friday morning, I asked when it was expected. Apparently the 9:15 bus arrives whenever it wants to, but generally well past 9:15. It was an average day, so it showed up around 9:35.

On to Dartmouth (Darty) I was met by J at the bus stop. We covered the entire town that evening, in a matter of minutes, i believe. The next day, i explored every inch all over again, finding the most adventurous cemetery I have seen. I highly rate it. You can find it down Tuck road towards the business school. Walking across the river into Vermont i wandered into the town of Norwich which had a farmers market in full swing in the towns original school building. I can now tick Vermont off the list.

Arriving in Boston was a bit of a shock on the weather front. It was an absolute downpour which drenched me with freezing rain as I made my way to the MIT students union. On the way to A’s dorm, I experienced the MacGregor wind tunnel, where already strong winds from the river are funneled in between two dorms to force everyone immediately sideways. In the morning I got a tour of the campus, where all the buildings are referred to by their number from the widest crosswalk ever in front of building 7 to the domed grandeur of building 10, down the infinite hallway to the 30-60-90 triangle which is building 66. The Stata Center was a city in itself, and all of the buildings were connected by unsigned tunnels.

The of MIT campus was great fun and very creative. This is opposed to the little liberal arts school up the road called Harvard. The buildings were all a plain red brick, with locked doors. I’m sure the academics are fine; the campus was dismal. One bright point was the Au Bon Pain next to the T stop. #sneakyhint The coffee and tea is not behind the counter, so just buy a cup for tea and get unlimited whatever you like. Or, do like the couple at the table next to me, just reuse some cups from another place, that is well cheap.

up next:
post-boston.

pictures would improve this post

In these days of instant communication over the inter-tubes, people having the interwebs in their pockets, and taking pictures on the digitals, all i had was a bike and a notebook, and a grocery list. That is not to say that the grocery list really mattered. But it does indicate that I had other things to do, namely, make fajitas. This is not about fajitas. This is about the the recently announced resurfacing of Woodrow Wilson Drive.

Talking about municipal public works is boring. This is going to be very boring because of that. Also, i forgot my camera, thus, no pictures to liven the mood. Please forgive me.

Yesterday I saw a JFP (and JFP-Local) tweet about a press conference Mayor Johnson would be holding announcing the resurfacing of Woodrow Wilson Drive. I figured this would be a good chance to go and ask a question or two. Conveniently, I could combine trips and hit the grocery store afterwards, pay attention, this is almost a theme of the post.

I arrived at the corner of Peachtree and Woodrow Willson to see a small clutch of news-peoples, police officers and people of some local significance standing behind some orange traffic barrels by the park. I walked over to the cameras and leant on my bike waiting for Mayor Johnson to arrive at the podium. He announced the work to be done: a resurfacing of Woodrow Wilson, done with assistance from the MDOT Intermodal Connector Program. Work has also been approved on Mill and Pascagoula streets, presumably under the same program. Work had already been approved, and is presumably now to start, on Pearl streets. These are all being done under the guise of improving access to Union Station (which I absolutely and enthusiastically support!).

The details of the resurfacing program are as follows: The contractor is Superior Asphalt. As Woodrow Wilson is an important corridor, the work will be done to minimize disruption. The work will take place on one lane at a time, mostly at night. There will not be any work undertaken during Jackson State or JPS football games at Memorial Stadium or Newell Field, respectively. The work should start “in a week or so” and be done within three months. It is the undersanding of the Mayor that the work will take only 60 working days.

Three news cameras showed for the “turning dirt”: Fox 40, Wlbt 3 and Wapt 16. The Mayor was joined by a representative from Superior Asphalt, the City Council President, a doctor from the hospital across the street and probably somebody else. I think he mentioned that an MDOT representative could not make it.

While the photo op was going on I got to talking with an Officer Brister (im pretty sure thats his name). After opening with the standard “who are you with” we got to talking about the road and pedestrian access. We both had noticed that many people working for the hospital cross the road to get to their cars parked near Murrah. He asked me how the crossing was and said that he thought it looked scary – fast traffic on and off the interstate. I suggested a crosswalk with a warning light was needed but he said it would only make people speed up. We decided that the best option would be a pedestrian controlled red light. He encouraged me to ask the Mayor about any pedestrian accommodation they may have made.

Johnson said that there would be work done on sidewalks and crosswalks along the road. I am not sure if this is new or existing sidewalks. He did indicate that pedestrian facilities were important to development. I overheard him talking to one news man about a new development coming to Jackson. He spoke of a mixed use development where people could “work play and stay in one place” which was the trend of developments nowadays. I think this is fairly exciting for an American city, but i did not catch where this would be. He said that it would bring an estimated $2 million in tax revenue to the City when fully developed. This would be land that did not generate any tax revenue currently. Hopefully this is on a brownfield site, rehabilitating abandoned buildings is far better than paving over valuable, if unruly, greenspace.

Then he got to my real curiosity. I was wondering what sort of study was done on life cycle costs of road surfaces. A resurfacing is just a temporary solution to bad roads. I asked about different paving methods or materials and if they were studied to see if they could extend the life and value of the road. Johnson replied that they are not done on a case by case basis – suggesting alternatives to merely paving were not studied at all – but from an overall standard based on the type of road. He did mention that some alternative road materials (recycled glass or rubber) are used sometimes, but necessarily being used in this case. He did say that the standards they applied were designed to get the most bang for their buck. Without looking more deeply into the issue or studying alternatives more carefully, we may not know if we could get more bang out of that buck.

So. Speaking of road surfaces. I went to the grocery store. I got, among other things, eggs (and was told to wash them by the cashier – not necessary due to USDA regulations on egg producers). I rode my bike home. On these rough streets, my bike and I can absorb most of the smaller bumps, but the larger ones – not so much. Thankfully my eggs all remained intact – but it did get me thinking about the importance of smooth roads. Having less traffic on residential streets would certainly help slow the onset of potholes and ruts. This is one of the further, gestalt issues that should be looked at.

Improving sidewalks is important for pedestrians. Sidewalks, especially along busier roads give people a safe place to walk (ok, you knew that). In my neighborhood, in the evening, it is generally lovely and traffic free, so people walk in the streets everywhere (we also have very few sidewalks). Cyclists should not ride on sidewalks. This is dangerous for pedestrians and does not help raise visibility of cyclists on streets – which is what should be done. The most effective cycling improvements that I have noticed are cycling only streets (cut off to cars) and cycling catches at stop lights – allowing cyclists to filter out of the stopped traffic and get ahead of the cars. Motorists don’t notice cyclists amongst the cars, and its a horrible place to sit in between two cars with engines running. Cycling catches make sure the motorists see the bikes and get to the other side of the lane once the cyclist gets going.

I am a bit torn about bike lanes. They are great when they are respected – cyclists can easily fly through stopped traffic and not worry about a lane changing car not noticing them. the problem, however, is when they are not respected. People park in them, walk in them and drive in them. This is not safe for the cyclist. Additionally, merging back into traffic tends to be harder from a cycle lane than from within traffic. For example: a cycle lane on the right side of a four lane road is very difficult to move from when you need to turn left – if you were in the right lane, this maneuver would only require you to shift to the other side of the lane before changing – but without constant signaling and looking backwards (both unsafe to that extent), this is not easy to do from a bike lane. Integrating with traffic is difficult from segregated lanes. Cyclists need to move with the traffic – no salmoning! Riding on the side of the lane usually allows room for a motorist to squeeze through, and spaces between stopped cars allows the cyclist to race to the head of the queue at a stop light. Its all about maintaining smooth efficient traffic flow.

Perhaps instead of bike lanes, safe routes should be marked. Signs indicating that a road is also a key bike throughway may help. A wavy line of green paint in the lane (where it won’t get worn down by cars) with the occasional bike stencil could indicate to cyclists as well as motorists that that road is ideal for cyclists, and cars should be wary. It is the visibility of cycling that needs to be raised.

where the burnsides at?

From Senatobia, take highway 4 east to gravel springs road, go south to O B McClinton road and take a left. Within a mile, you will see the cars lining up on the street and neighbors renting out their driveways and yards for $3-5 per parking spot. The marching band, consisting of up to two snare drums and three bass drums led by a fife, marks the Turner family homestead. Two dollars gets you a long night of food and music. This is the Otha Turner Memorial picnic, started by the late Otha Turner in the 1950′s as a labor day goat barbecue, it is now an open barbecue and blues party.

Some little girls were dancing around as we arrived:

We walked around the house to the back yard, which had been transformed into the perfect venue for a blues show. An open shed had a menu posted which revealed that a barbecue goat sandwich could be had for only $3.50, pork was $3 and pickled eggs only fifty cents. The goat sandwich was excellent: thick white bread, plenty of sauce, and delicious meat. A trailer directly behind the house held the huge barbecue smoker where freshly cooked meat was being kept warm. As people came in, the chef at the barbecue snuck out some tender ribs and offered them to whoever was standing around.

This is who you sneak ribs from:

A tractor trailer was set up with a stage in the back of the yard, blocking view of the horse pen. One of the Turner women shouted out for the Burnsides, who seemed to be running a bit late. A young man who was enjoying the festivities thoroughly took it upon himself to climb on stage and assure the crowd that the music would start soon “Its definitely gonna jump off soon, and because you had to wait, we gonna make it real good.” He made a number of these announcements in only a few minutes before a blues guitarist came sat down on stage, flanked by Dexter and Garry Burnside, who supplied the drum and bass guitar for the performance.

The picnic drew one of the most diverse crowds I have seen at a musical event in Mississippi. Some elderly ladies and gentlemen from the Turner family sat on a bench near the food shed. Country neighbors were joined by young people of all description from the city. Red-necked men stood next to borderline hipsters. People from Memphis, Jackson and Compton swayed to the music alongside everyone else.

It got packed later in the night, but there were plenty of people gathering at the shack early on.

In between each artist, the marching band would strike up. The fife sometimes just seemed erratic, but made for an entertaining set. The people behind the instruments was always changing, sometimes a drum would be played by someone from the crowd. The snare drummers held their drums sideways and played casually, while the bass drums would dance around, putting on a show. Throughout the whole night, the drumline was excellent. When they started playing, the crowd would rush from the stage to surround them tightly. People closest would always dance while everyone else angled for a better view. The band often got so caught up in playing that they could not hear the calls for them to get back to the stage to kick off another set – they had to be physically pulled and pushed at least once to get them to the front.

Throughout the evening, a number of artists came to the stage, always supported by some member(s) of the prodigious Burnside clan. Otha’s sixteen year old granddaughter Sharde came on stage late in the night for a few songs, including an amazing fife rendition of ‘Ride Sally Ride.” Sharde was an excellent fife player, and it was announced (i think) that she has a CD on the way. R.L. Burnside Jr. turned up on stage to play “just one song.” It turned out that he had another song he wanted to play, before he played one last song. That last song was followed by several other last songs before one of the Turner women tried to kick him off stage. He played one more song after that. His trademark seemed to be just that – one more song.

It is really impossible to do justice to the experience in a blog post. The only lighting was a partially clouded moon and a single street light in the middle of the yard. 200 speed film and a no-flash philosophy don’t turn out good pictures in these conditions. The displayed pictures were taken on E’s digital. It was a wonderful experience, capped off with camping below the Sardis Dam.

For a video of Sharde, Otha and the Rising Star Drum Band in the Turner’s back yard, check this video. This is what happens as people arrive, but they dont park in the back yard anymore.

For a full recorded song: