Lightning, Fire & Adventure
Greetings!
I’m currently writing from the gorgeous city of Athens, GA! There are so many updates to share — my life has completely changed this year, but especially over the last month.
Lightning & Fire
As you may know, I’ve lived in New Orleans for almost exactly 15 years. I’m from California originally and moved from there to Seattle for a couple of years, then to New Orleans, which I’ve loved. My girlfriend and I had been living in the neighborhood of Mid City, which is beautiful—full of oak trees, pretty shotgun houses, a bayou, and the gorgeous City Park.
One month ago today our apartment building was hit by lightning and caught fire during an afternoon rainstorm. We got ourselves and our animals out, watching for 3 hours as exactly 10 firetrucks showed up, squads of Firemen taking turns going into the 4 apartments to put the fire out.
Firemen resting as other Firemen go into the apartments. You can see the wall in the back of the house falling away from the fire inside the crawlspace.
We lived in a 4-plex house, with two apartments on the first floor and two above on the second. The theory is that lightning hit a metal pipe near the roof and traveled into the house, starting a fire in the crawlspace between the top apartments and the bottom apartments, and then spread into the walls of the upper apartments. We were on the first floor, and none of our stuff actually burned. The firemen going into our apartment tore down the ceiling in our bedroom and kitchen so they could spray the fire from below as other firemen were spraying the floor from the upstairs apartments. So a lot of our stuff was destroyed by tons of water, pieces of the ceiling falling onto everything, and ash from the burned wood.
Photo of our bedroom, taken by Mallory Whitfield.
As we watched from the sidewalk, my girlfriend said something like, “Maybe we adventure for a while, explore other cities and find another place to live.”
So we turned a bad situation into an adventure.
Exploring Other Cities
We love New Orleans but had been getting the urge to explore and find magic in other places. So the next day we salvaged what we could of our things, got all of it into storage, and I quit my barista job at this really cool zombie-themed coffee shop called Sacred Grinds (which is surrounded by above-ground cemeteries).
We took our pets to Gulf Port, Mississippi, where we have family watching them as we set out to explore other cities.
Keep checking back for my Travel Blogs about our trips over the next several months, or sign up for my Newsletter to know when I post new Travel Blogs.
The First Cities We’re Checking Out
We’re currently in Athens, Georgia. It’s gorgeous here—full of trees and walking trails and a river snaking through the whole city. Downtown has awesome, old architecture and is quirky and has tons of interesting restaurants and shops.
Tomorrow (Friday) we’re heading to Greenville, South Carolina. I’m super excited to check out Greenville. There’s a waterfall in the center of the downtown area, and it also looks like it will be gorgeous and full of trees and nature. We’ll only be there for 2 days, but I’m very excited about that city.
We’re talking about tagging on a couple of days in Chattanooga before heading back to Mississippi, just to get a feel of a third city to start thinking about.
I’ll be posting pictures of all of these places on my Travel Blog, so check that out, and subscribe to my Newsletter to know when I post new blogs and release new books.
Thanks for reading, and I hope you’re having a good September!
—Andy
