I had one of those days where work just gets the best of you, so when the day was done, I needed to go on a bike ride. I headed toward Broadmoor with no real destination when I stopped to take this picture of a dilapidated house on Calhoun, between Rocheblave and York. It looks like it’s made of weathered old cardboard, lacking the comfortable facade of its neighbor. Just a few blocks on and I was on Versailles, looking at huge and beautiful homes. Continue reading
museums
Sunset Over Lee Circle From the Fifth Floor of the Ogden Museum
Oh, the difference a few degrees and a few more percentage points of humidity make! I didn’t need to towel off following my couple miles bike commute to campus. After work there was practically a chill in the air! Well, not quite, but close enough. I headed down to the museum for music and to check out their exhibit of photographs from right after the levees broke following Katrina. Continue reading
Southern Recycling Scrapyard at Toulouse and N. Dorgenois
As you’ve now heard, tropical storm Bonnie has broken apart and storm warnings have been canceled and this is all the very best news for us. I took my bike, left my raincoat at home to tempt the fates, and headed to Mid-City to meet D. and M. for lunch. It was delightful to ride with some cloud cover and a completely free afternoon. Continue reading
Kourtney Heart at the Ogden, From the Third Floor
Sometimes I worry that one day I’m going to get on my bike and the pleasure will be gone. And then there are days like this one: it was hot and thick out, so I packed my bag for the rest of the day and night, hooked in on the Surly, and went for a ride. I just love riding a bike. It was a sweaty day as I tooled around from a lunch date, an iced tea, the gym for its air conditioning, the museum, another coffee and a meeting, dinner, and finally home. I took this picture at the museum stop, for Ogden After Hours, Bounce Edition. Continue reading
Empty Lot at Magazine and Andrew Higgins
It was a beautifully sunny day in New Orleans, which meant it was hot, hot, hot, and I was almost instantly drenched in my own glisten after about a block. Yep, some good old fashioned summer bicycling! After an appointment and lunch and then another appointment I headed downtown to the gym, partly for the weights and partly for the air conditioning and cold showers. Continue reading
Confederate Memorial Hall at Camp Street and Andrew Higgens
So I started watching Ken Burns‘s National Parks documentary, and then I lazily watched an episode of his Civil War documentary and got hooked on that as well. He is dangerously soothing with these things, all the fiddles and pianos and familiar voices softly reading to me. The documentaries are so epic I can be tempted to imagine I know the whole story after sitting through nine or twelve hours of his stuff. That’s certainly not the case–he’s got a perspective and is making an argument just like the rest of us. Continue reading
New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park at Decatur and St. Louis
I have been spending my free time slowly working my way through Ken Burns’s documentary project on our national parks, and I’ve been feeling a ridiculously strong urge to go enjoy our natural heritage. Mostly I’m missing mountains, though. I grew up in mountains and there’s just no substitute. But I’m 638 miles from the Great Smoky Mountain National Park (yes, I’ve been doing a lot of googleymapping, wishing I were rich in time and money), and those don’t really count as mountains anyway–not when you know about the Owyhees, the Rockies, the Sierra Nevadas, the Tetons. Continue reading
View From the Fifth Floor of the Odgen Museum of Southern Art
Oh, it was such a lovely day in New Orleans. After catching the second half of the soccer game–I’m sure glad I don’t have to play Germany in the World Cup–I headed out on the bike, destination: post office. The sky was gray and there was a bit of rain, but not enough to put a damper on things. I rode up to the library via Saratoga, watching the neighborhoods change, half a block by half a block. Continue reading
Rubble Next to the National WWII Museum
So the weird thing about New Orleans, which I love, and also hate, is that you can get so many different things in just a few blocks, or on the same block, for that matter. Any bike ride more than a half a mile long will take you through different worlds. My daily commute, for example, takes me past mansions and apartment complexes and houses still decaying and sinking from the flood. That’s just two miles each way. Continue reading
Lights at the World War II Museum in the Warehouse District
Rhoda’s rear cog was a little loose and I don’t have the proper flat wrench for repair, so I took her to the bike shoppe for a little TLC this afternoon. Ten bucks later and the girl was riding like a dream, so I was happy to pedal her down to the Marigny tonight for a drink with a former student and then over to S.’s place for roasted beets, prosecco, and some TV with S. and R. Continue reading
What I Saw Riding My Bike Around Today 