Way back in February I booked a flight to New Orleans for the last week in August for the Flatland Voodoo Jam. But then X Games popped up and was the same day, so I had to re-book my flight for another time. That other time was this past weekend. I had high hopes of riding my ass off, hanging out with my old friends, and seeing my family. I got to do all of the above, but had a few hangups along the way including, but not limited to:

- My luggage and bike not showing up until late the second day of my trip.
- Losing my phone and wallet in the French Quarter. (Thank the stranger with a good heart who found it and gave it back to me two days later.)
- Forgetting my computer charger in California.
- Forgetting my keys in my car.
- Ass hole security guards in both New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

But instead of harping on the bad, let’s focus on the good… Check out the photos!

I took a quick trip to Louisiana this weekend for Terry Adams’ wedding. While I was born and raised in Louisiana, I have been living in California for almost three years now so going back down South makes me realize things I never really paid attention to before.

Here are, in no particular order, some observations from Terry’s big day and nine ways you know you are at a Louisiana wedding?

People Wearing Saints Hats
Even though the New Orleans Saints have been a notoriously terrible football team for as long as I can remember, people in Louisiana still have a strong loyalty to them?even at weddings.

Strokin’ Gets The Biggest Reaction
If you have ever been to a social function in the South you know exactly who Clarence Carter is. And you know that when you hear Mr. Carter sing that chorus of “I be strokin’ to the East, I be strokin’ to the West?” that the crowd goes absolutely berserk.

The Groom Does Backflips
Get a drink or two into Terry Adams and clothes start coming off and wild dance moves start emitting from his body. I wondered if his wedding would be any different?it wasn’t. Before the end of the night Terry and Scott O’Brien were doing over-under doubles routines on the dance floor and Terry did more than one standing backflip. Maybe one day we’ll see Terry do a “body varial” type backflip on his bike and land into a hitchhiker or something.

Girls Dance With No Shoes
Whether you are at a high school dance or a wedding, if you are in the South, you can bet that half the females in attendance will not have shoes on. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s just gross. When I think about the floor we walk on, everything resorts back to poo. Hear me out on this one? The soles of your shoes touch the ground everywhere you go. You are bound to step in dog crap at some point?directly or indirectly. Then you walk inside the wedding reception hall. Then a girl with no shoes dances on the same floor where you just stepped. So she now has dog poo particles on her feet. Yuck, man. This is the same reason why I never eat anything that has fallen on the floor?five second rule or not.

By The End Of The Night, The Place Is Flooded Like Katrina
“Louisiana” and “rain” are synonymous in my mind so to have an outdoor wedding is verging on insanity. However, people still do it and Terry and Vanessa were willing to take their chances. Mother nature held out just enough for them to kiss and get inside before it started pouring. The outdoor ceremony wasn’t as picturesque as they had originally hoped?at one point Scott O’Brien was holding an umbrella above the couple’s head. During the reception it poured for hours. By the time we left, the entire area we were sitting in during the ceremony resembled a lake. You could see about half of the bench backs peeking out of the water, gasping for air.

Someone Refers To Himself As “Paran”
In Louisiana, a child’s Godfather is often called the “Paran” (with a French accent). When I heard a guy refer to himself as Vanessa’s Paran I knew exactly what state of the Union I was in.

Two Or More Types Of Seafood Are On The Menu
I’m not talking about those cheesy, bland cocktail shrimp you find at other places?things like shrimp pasta, spicy seasoned fish, crab cakes, crawfish étouffée, and so on. If there are more than two of the above dishes on the menu, you may just be at a Louisiana wedding.

The Oldest Guy In Attendance Does A Somersault
One of the oldest guys at Terry’s wedding, Vanessa’s Paran actually, got down and did a few break dancing moves just after Strokin’ was finished. This was wildly entertaining, but not nearly as crazy as an even older guy getting down and doing a full backwards somersault in the middle of the dance floor.

Everyone Says Y’all
I notice this more and more each time I go to the South now. I suppose I used to say it, but now that I’m not around it much, every time I hear someone say “y’all” it sticks out like Spinner riding trails with Aitken. Phrases heard throughout the weekend include:
“Y’all have a good trip.”
“Can I have y’alls attention?”
“Y’all get up here to catch this garter.” (I caught it, by the way.)
“What would y’all like to drink?”
“Does this annoy the ever-living shit out of y’all too?”

For a three year stint back in college I lived in a ratty old house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana right across the street from LSU’s campus. It was a prime location on a corner lot, but a complete fucking dump.

Over the years I had a slew of people live with me and stay with me. Everyone from cool friends, to deadbeat acquaintances, to bands, to hot chicks, to professional bike riders, and more either lived in or stayed in that house at one time or another. There were also a hell of a lot of rats that lived in that house over the years as well who helped themselves to whatever they wanted.

Besides the dirt cheap rent ($425 a month for a three bedroom), the best part about the place was that I could make up to $450 during a big football game by letting football freaks park on my lawn. There are more bad things about the house than I could ever write in a single blog entry, but here are a few that stand out right now, helping give 709 Aster St. the nickname “Disaster Aster.”

I didn’t have any photos of the house, so here’s a screenshot from Google maps.

- It smelled like shit and made anyone who set foot in the door smell like shit for at least three days. I lived there, so I didn’t shake the stench for about a year after I had moved out.
- Rats ruled the joint. Over the years I caught and killed more than two dozen of the varmints ranging in size from “Awe, it’s kinda cute.” to “Holy fuck that thing is a monster!” I once found their stash of food?they stole entire packs of hotdog buns and ramen noodles out of the pantry and somehow brought them to a room out back, leaving only scraps of plastic wrappers and bags to be found.
- The insulation was so bad if you didn’t run the window air conditioning units on full blast at all times mold would grow on everything from the kitchen table to the leather armchair. I learned this the hard way, of course. Damn the Southern heat and humidity!
- For the first year or so I lived there the roof leaked when it rained?which in Louisiana was several times a week. We finally got a new roof after “the ugly room” caved in from all the water pouring into it.
- It had “the ugly room” as we called it, which was a room that was so destroyed, dilapidated, and disgusting, there was no fixing it so we just put a shower curtain over it and never looked in there.
- The floor was several different levels and the windows and door frames were anything but straight and aligned. It basically felt like you were walking around a fun house without the fun.
- It got broken into one morning while I was donating plasma for a whopping $25. That’s right, while I had a 14 gauge needle in my arm, pumping out blood for cash, some bastards kids kicked in my door and stole my entire camera gear bag, my laptop, and my bike among other things. As a rider, graphic design student, and photographer, they took pretty much everything I had. I hope they at least found the naked photos on my computer and figured out how to unlock the file.
- Squirrels ran around in the ceiling, making scratching sounds all day and night.
- A good friend of mine was practicing some hardcore dancing moves and kicked a huge hole in the wall. We just hung a picture over it to cover it up. Same with the BB gun breaking windows…just Duct taped them up the best we could.
- The back room flooded when it rained hard. The worst incident ruined a huge box of old BMX magazines and an awesome Pee Wee Herman Halloween costume along with a bunch of other shit. And to cap it off, the new mattress I had just bought was sitting back there too because I hadn’t set it up yet. So the queen size mattress that I had just drained my bank account for was sitting in a foot and a half of water when I got home from school. But you know I rung that shit out the best I could?I didn’t have money for a new one and my girl at the time said she wouldn’t sleep over until I had an adult size bed…
- When it was cold, there was no heater. Luckily it didn’t get cold that often in Louisiana, but when it did I was shit out of luck. My only savior was a tiny space heater from Walmart that blew the fuse every 20 or 30 minutes.

So what got me thinking about this shit hole of a house today? The video down below… On a recent trip to Louisiana from Las Vegas, David Gamble stopped by ole’ Aster for a quick visit and threw some of the clips in his Louisiana edit.

Ya see, after I moved out and went on to bigger and better things over here in So Cal working at Ride, the Aster legacy lived on through friends and fellow riders of the area. Not too long after I was gone, the living room ended up becoming home to a ramp, a motorcycle, and a few more people than it could handle?and shit was getting more wild by the day. First the ceiling in one of the bedrooms fell in?completely, then a few months later the entire place caught on fire, putting a grand finale end to it’s rain of terror on humans. Then after it was sitting vacant for a while a tree fell on it during a hurricane. And today it is still there, waiting for the next thing to happen to it before someone buys the land from the slumlord holding onto the property…

May Disaster Aster forever live in infamy though our thoughts, stories, and through this blog post.

Not quite gone, but trying hard to be forgotten…

Screenshot from David’s video showing the tree on the house.

Screenshot from David’s video showing the trashed inside of the house how it sits today. That’s my dad’s old couch he gave me when I moved in there.

David Gamble’s Louisiana trip edit:

- Saw a girl get into the bed of a random pickup truck in a parking lot, squat, and take a piss. I almost didn’t believe it until I walked close enough to hear the trickle of tinkle on the plastic bed liner.

- Saw Terry Adams stand on his driveway and piss into his grass when he got out of his car instead of waiting to use his toilet in the house.

- Saw Ooti Billeaud piss in the road in front of his house then walk towards Andrew Sanford, pointing the urine stream at him. When Andrew ran, Ooti commenced urination on his neighbor’s driveway.

- *NOTE: That’s three public pissings in two nights, not to mention the time I pissed in Terry Adams’ yard because he wasn’t home yet. Long live the South and their redneck ways!

- Met a girl while walking home from the bar and within about 3 minutes blew my nose on the bottom of her jeans. She claims she doesn’t touch her jeans down there anyway. I blame Louisiana…I wouldn’t have had to blow my nose if bars weren’t so smoke-filled!

- Stayed out until 4am two nights in a row after waking up at 4am for my flight the night before that. Yuck.

- Rode the amazing no-bikes Hammond cement park. The local skaters were stoked, even when I did a grind on the coping. One kid even filmed me flowing the bowl. They need to bite the bullet and let bikes into that effing park already!

- Rode the infamous Buck Nutty’s Skate Ranch in 80’s attire and did my first-ever one-footer on a quarter pipe just to stay in character.

- Rode the new park in Pumpkin Center called X-Plex. If you are in the area, hit that place up. They could use the business as they are in the boonies. (See: Two miles from Terry Adams’ old trailer.)

- And of course saw a bunch of old friends… Shout outs to Andrew Sanford, Brock Gomez, Cody Miller, Ooti Billeaud, Jon Rogers, Brad Jensen, Rob Crews, Gus Gus, Weeber, Cory Meadows, Rory, and the rest of the Louisiana riders. Thanks for the good times!

- Oh yeah, I also shot lots and lots of photos of Terry Adams for Raising Cane’s.