Champion of the Slow Lane: DAY 32: fotos and bonus text

In Austin now, secured in a motel room. Fotos to get us up to date, at least thru camp site this morning in Whitney, Texas. Will start with oldest images, from New Orleans.

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Interior of Napoleon House, New Orleans. Adrienne is in foreground texting. She was here a few years back for an architecture competition. The natural ventilation here superb.

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Woman playing accordion in French Quarter near Jackson Square. Man unloading truck. Cast iron columns. bicycle

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Crossing endless Lake Pontchartrain. Concrete, guy wires and clouds.

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A human figure along the side of the road. Occasionally we see this. Someone along the side of the road. It's always unnerving. The road is car transport. A person walking can get nowhere by walking along these roads. By bike, maybe. But by foot is a near impossibility. The writer Douglas Coupland says that our souls can only walk. So when we fly or drive, the soul lags behind us, walking. He's obviously happily squirreled away in his writing room.

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a red finch on the N of Company. Natchitoches, LA. We all need company, even if it occasionally it's just a bird.

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Just a few blocks from Horne St. in Natchitoches, at Lasyone's Meat Pie Restaurant. I am seen here sampling the crawfish pie and dirty rice. Adrienne has censored the photo I took of her as unprofessional, unproperly lit. She and I shared, from left to right, a vegetable plate of pickled beets, turnip greens and red beans. Apparently Steel Magnolias was filmed here, for anyone who has seen that movie. A pleasant town to stop for lunch, which is what we did.

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Some of the yapping mallards that approached us as we strolled along the Cane River, demanding food. Unfortunately we'd finished every crumb of our cornbread and couldn't oblige.

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Since so many of the included fotos verge on extraordinary, I am trying to occasionally sprinkle in one like this: an ordinary scene. A Conoco gas station on Rt. 71 north of Natchitoches, headed toward Bossier City.

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steel barn just a bit further up the road

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birdhouse land, same stretch of road

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cypress grove. beautiful trunks, rot-resistant wood. hard to find. still on same stretch of 71.

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Mobile home, long grass and grazing horses. Just crossed into Texas on state road 79. Near Carthage, TX.

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The road to Big Sandy. Near Tyler, Tx. After setting up our tent at the state park, in Smith County, a dry county as it turned out, we drove this road through two counties to get a six-pack of beer to enjoy with some delicious chili we whipped up.

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tyler lake at sundown, just down the hill from the tent

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campfire, tyler lake

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the two acolytes about to head into the Kimbell

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ah, concrete, diamond-sawn travertine, glass and steel. Here, one of four corner columns that support a 100-ft-long barrel vault. The museum is comprised of 16 of these sections stacked in three rows. the museum opened in 1972.

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Adrienne's silouette, shadows of leaves. barrel vault floats above infill walls of museum

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view of museum from the shade. note the unending span. other two columns at vault's other end not shown.

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Detail of the concrete barrel vaults. Countersunk screws in the plywood formwork used to pour the vaults emerges here in relief, as a spine of raised nubs.

Yellow Truck at the entry to the museum

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the freeway weavings of Ft. Worth

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the gable roofed house, American single family archetype above all others. now available in steel frame. Call 817-790-2271 to begin living the dream.

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