Prologue: The Road to New Orleans

A recent study found that over half of all recorded marriages occurred in 2007. The December 29th wedding in New Orleans (Ashley and Yannos') was, according to a groomsman, "the first recorded marriage ever." I took his words to heart. This meant something.

My arrival on 26 December 2007 turned me slightly European. It was a clear night, temperature around 18.5 degrees centigrade (again, slightly European). I met up with the groom -- a descendant of Greek heritage -- and felt even more European. This, too, meant something.

The agenda for that fateful night: a bachelor party and divine inspiration.

The fun started innocently enough. Dinner at a restaurant with enough local color to turn you bayou-green (I was also beginning to feel like a pulp writer). The waitress, a petite brunette sporting a bandanna, spilled water on me. Later, she juggled lemons for us. It was good, clean fun, among good, clean people. But that all changed after the alcohol set in.

Next stop: Bourbon Street. We started at the end. Not the end next to Canal, but the other end. Out near Oz. Oz, it turned out, is nothing like the wonderland portrayed in the movies. It's a dark, isolated bar with plasma screen TVs of shirtless men gyrating to techno music. "There's no place like home," indeed.

Oh, but if only it had ended there! Curse those demons that set us afoot down that damned street of debauchery! There were the hand grenades (drinks, not artillery). The large-ass beers to go. The drunk man from Delaware who, upon seeing Yannos' ball and chain, said, "I know what that means!" then kept asserting the fact that he was from Delaware. The strip clubs. The strip clubs. The strip clubs.

And it was then, on Bourbon Street, somewhere between Barely Legal and Lipstixx, that it came to me. My European ancestors had already spread Christianity to the Americas. However, I could do them one better. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed Ben's number.

"Ben," I said, "we need to go on a cross-country journey. And we need to leave in less than a week."

Ben's response: "Less than a week? That's not a lot of time for me to pr-"

"Let's bookend our trip with two of the most liberal, the most godless cities we can. Surely there we will find God."

And so that is how it came to pass. Amtrak's rule of having to enter Canada at some point accounts for the stops in Toronto and Montreal. Otherwise, this would be a clean, simple journey in only the most Christian of nations.

But in Canada... In Canada, God help us.