It was time to roll. Layla was getting on my case, Sin Wu wasn't satisfied with just lunch quickies, and Coral, well, I won't go there. It was time to pack my sea bag and make for the coast. I hadn't hit an airport since the terrorist attacks and completely agree with what the government is doing to develop proper security measures. I was searched three times and my bags were ineffectively searched. It prompted an idea for a business. It may be that in the future the baggage search business will need to be taken off airport sites. Here's my idea: What if you had your bags searched, certified and taken to the airport by another company? Then when you get there, you're body searched and you go. As in the past, the people doing the searching are far too overwhelmed to handle the job effectively. I was also searched before boarding the plane, again ineffectively.

When I arrived in Houston, the cabby didn't want to admit thathe knew where the port was or how to get there. He nervously drove through the gates and down to the docks. It was dark and the docks were poorly marked, so we had to find markings on some of the ships. Actually, some were such rust buckets that markings and names were difficult to find. We finally reached the scow Leon, which was tied up beside collapsing buildings and next to a dock strewn with busted pallets and battered fork lifts. Some military construction equipment painted a dark green with camouflage treatment sat next to the ship with flat tires.

The cabby nervously waited beside his van as I unloaded my bags. Three short Filipinos in grease-soaked overalls ran down the rattling gang plank to snatch up my bags. I asked the cabby to hang to take me to town for grub, but he refused. As soon as my last bag was gone, he jumped back in his vehicle and split without even charging me. I didn't even have a knife on me; they were still in my bags.

The gangplank was the first indication of the quality of vessel I was escaping on. It was constructed from aluminum angle iron some 30 years ago. The damn thing was only about a foot and a half wide. As it deteriorated, pieces of mild steel angle iron were bolted across it for strength and to keep crew from slipping. Even wood was screwed to it to fill holes. There were no railings, just rope pulled through rings and old netting that wouldn't prevent anything from falling into the oily sewage between the ship and the pier.

The ship is 584 feet long and 85 feet wide. It belongs to the historic Rickmier line out of Hamburg Germany, but doesn't carry a usual Rickmers name. The more I saw of the ship the more I knew why. Tramp Steamer is an accurate description. The first night aboard someone left the air conditioning on all night and we about froze to death. The next night the crew tried to cook us in our cabins. The officers are polish and the crew Philippino. The Captain speaks broken English and so does the steward. The Phillipinos don't speak Polish and the Poles don't speak Phillipino. This particular ships has six cranes and the same number of holds and each hold has several layers. It's a general cargo ship which means it packs anything and everything all over the world. If they can hoist the motherfucker on board, they'll take it. If there's not room in the holds and they can strap it to the deck, they will. This in not generally a container ship, so it usually spends more time in port off-loading and loading more goods.

They were scheduled to depart on Tuesday and I was originaly planning to arrive on Monday and going to have dinner with Billy Tinney, the editor of Tattoo Magazine Monday, who lives in Houston and should be editing a magazine on antique gun sales. It's better that I arrived on Saturday. Sunday after setting up my cabin I took a bus to downtown through the ghetto to the upscale shopping area to buy some much needed communications equipment and gym equipment for my cabin. Monday afternoon the Captain anxiously announced with five minutes notice that we were pulling out. We yanked for the docks by a tug and headed out the canal past Galveston and the Battleship Texas Memorial and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Now go for a ride and have a beer on me, goddamnit.

--Bandit