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Remembering New Orleans

We'd learned a lot over the course of our stay there and had seen how the city had been built to withstand (and rebuild after) storm after storm.

Exactly one year later, New Orleans is getting slammed with a category 5 hurricane, possibly the most destructive in US history. I was absolutely unaware until Wil sent his mojo their way tonight. Good luck New Orleans. Here's hoping everyone and all the wonderful history are still there in the aftermath.

"This is going to quickly go from a weather story to one of the biggest news stories in the world, certainly the biggest either of us has ever covered... Everyone's saying "I hope I'm wrong" when talking about this storm. The truth is that we've dodged this bullet so many times before, this is going to be the one." -WWL TV, streaming live here

...conditions are already deteriorating along portions of the central and northeastern Gulf Coast and will continue to worsen through the night. Maximum sustained winds are near 160 mph with higher gusts. Katrina is a category five hurricane.

12:59 am | permalink | /life/travel | 0 writebacks |

New Orleans Travel Stories: Haunted History

New Orleans Travel Stories: Our first night in New Orleans, we arrived around 2pm and immediately began our vacation.

After eating amazing Gumbo (which Sara really liked!) and a 3/4 of a giant turkey club, We ventured into the French Quarter and found ourselves on the Haunted History Tour.

The tour was more historical than sensational, and the guide talked about hauntings with a tongue-in-cheek irreverence. One story is paraphrased below:

"One of the peculiar features of architecture you'll see here in the French Quarter is the galleries that are above you. These are different from balconies in that they extend over the entire sidewalk, and are supported by the iron columns that you're leaning against.

If you look up, you'll notice this gallery has spikes protruding all around near the top of the column. Now these are as much to keep out burglars as they are to protect what's inside, and if anyone here has a teenage daughter, you know exactly what I mean. Here in New Orleans, we have a special name for those spikes, Romeo-Catchers.

One night, at his very gallery, a man was to take out his family to dinner, but his daughter didn't feel up to it. She feigned illness, but insisted that the rest of the family go without her. You can already see where this is going, can't you?

Sure enough, as soon as the family is gone, her beau shows up, and they begin to do exactly what teenagers do when their parents aren't home... Talk politely in the study of course, or at least that's what the daughter would profess to later, because you see, as soon as the father got to the restaurant, he realized, "gawl dang it!" He forgot his wallet. So he starts on home to get it.

When you're a teenager, you know everything, don't you? There isn't anyone that can tell you anything. So the boy, in his brilliance, doesn't go out the back when he sees the father coming, no. He doesn't hide quietly downstairs no! He goes POUNDING up the stairs to the daughter's bedroom.

Well the father he comes in, and he knows something is up, he hears the noise going up the stairs, and he does what any good southern man would do in his situation... He grabs his shotgun.

His daughter wailed, and tried to stop him, she didn't want him to go upstairs and kill her boyfriend, but he simply moved her aside, and went on up the steps. Now later, the father would say that he didn't load that shotgun, or at least that's what he said in the official police report, which was in the paper, which you can find down at town hall. All of our papers were transferred onto uncatalogued microfiche, so you'll have to search, but it's there for you to find.

Now the boy had gotten a brilliant idea. He was going to slide down the gallery pole and let go just as he passed the Romeo-Catchers, and then grab back on. He was all set, and had just let go, everything was going well when BOOM! The father bursts in the door.

The boy sees that angry father, and he sees the shotgun, and he's so scared, he grabs right back on to that pole.

The Romeo-Catcher catches him in the leg, but it doesn't stop there, It tears up through his thigh, through his pelvis bone and up through his stomach, crack crack crack through his ribs, and finally breaks his collarbone, and the boy falls to the street below.

Now the head, they say it can survive 45 seconds without proper blood supply, and they say the boy looked back up at the Romeo-Catchers from where he lay and saw, streaming up from his stomach, the eviscerated bowel which had just been ripped from his body trailing back up to the iron spikes.

So if you're standing out here on a warm spring night, leaning on that very pole that you're leaning against, and feel something dripping on your shoulder, and go up to touch it, and realize that it's a bit sticky, you look at your hand. Suddenly, you begin to panic, because you realize that there's blood on your hand, dripping into your hair, and you look up and see the gore oozing down that pole, you're going to scream. You're going to run up and down this street, screaming that someone's been killed on the gallery, but no one's going to come out.

Nope, they've heard it before. Multiple reports of the same story are in our papers, dating back for ages. I've seen the papers down at the library, but I'll let you look for yourself and make up your own mind.

11:54 pm | permalink | /life/travel | 0 writebacks |

A First Taste of New Orleans

At first brush, the French Quarter seems a historical center-point spoiled by tourism. The bars that literally line the streets, separated only by Voo-Doo T-Shirt vending tourist traps, have great walls of rotating slurpee machines, all ready to dole out multi-flavored lightly alcoholic beverages at the pull of a lever.

As you get closer to the essence of New Orleans, though, you begin to realize that this isn't a seedy surface painted on by tourism - this is the continuance of a tradition that goes back almost 300 years.

At different times in its history, New Orleans has been controlled by the French, the Spanish (during the inquisition) and then finally, the American Government. Code Noir, or a set of laws which allowed but limited slavery, contributed to the large population of Free People of Color and that population helped further diversify New Orleans' history.

All of this history even predates the Civil War, and the well of history for each tour guide to draw from is rich and long.

If you make your way to New Orleans, expect to be surprised by the grit of the real industry driving this city: tourism. New Orleans is and always has been a "Service Oriented" city, and it's current status isn't a corruption of the history, it's a celebration of it. Once you embrace that, there are tales waiting to be woven by the expert guides in almost every square inch of soil here.

4:04 am | permalink | /life/travel | 0 writebacks |

Subway on the Water?

The trip took roughly 3.5 hours for me, taking me from Astoria, down through Manhattan, through Brooklyn, and finally into Far Rockaway, where the scenery suddenly changes to that of a run down amusement park complete with rusty railings, fake looking buildings on stilts, and waterways.

Amazingly, the subway not only becomes a transway (superway?), riding above the ground, it then drops down to ground level, running like an Amtrak train.

The final, and most mind boggling change of scenery comes when riding across the shallow bridges of Rockaway, as the subway car seemingly skims across the surface of the water. It was surreal.

4:15 pm | permalink | /life/travel | 0 writebacks |

We've Booked the Honeymoon!

Next we firm up with the Caterer, and then it's on to "Save the Dates" this weekend! This is getting fun!

3:14 pm | permalink | /life/travel | 0 writebacks |

Easiest bus ride ever!

Well, for all my bitching, getting upstate by bus on Wednesday was pretty damn easy. First off, Julie let me off early (you know that bit about the coolest boss? Still right up there.) Then, Greyhound had about a billion extra people working (or port authority did,) either way, the place was working like clockwork for once.

See more ...

12:00 am | permalink | /life/travel | 0 writebacks |

This Dreaded Day Of Travel

Well, tomorrow we head to our respective homes for the Thanksgiving break, and join the travelling masses once again. I forget how amazingly awesome NYC's public transportation is until something like this comes along. Day in and day out I get to and from work without much of a thought. Sure, sometimes the trains are delayed a bit, but really, I've been a lot more pissed off sitting in traffic than I ever have been waiting for a train.

Now, granted, I will be sitting on a bus for this trip, but that's actually what's got me worried. See, originally I had planned to check with Greyhound and make sure that they were going to be running plenty of extra buses and have someone at Greyhound reassure me that they do this every year, and delays are expected but everyone eventually gets there. If the customer service person laughed at me and asked what the hell I was doing taking a bus the day before thanksgiving, I was going to suck it up and pay the extra bit for the train.

Well, I found myself a bit sidetracked by life, and although incredibly happy with the life stuff that occured in the time when I was supposed to be doing all this travel planning, i've left myself with sold out trains and the realization that customer service at greyhound bus is "claire, your virtual service representitive."

I know claire... I know her all too well. I've unleashed my fury on Sprint's "claire" many a time and needless to say, we're not on speaking terms.

So, seeing that I'm a web geek by trade, I did what any self respecting nerd would do and scoured the Greyhound site for any sign of preparation on their part. What I found instead was a digitial "go screw yourself if you're travelling tomorrow." The site basically says, if your bus is sold out, get on the next one if there are seats, but that one's sold out too, oh, and the one after that, and by the way, we're still selling tickets for said sold out busses, so it may be till, oh, maybe saturday before we can get you there. By the way, no refunds or exchanges. Suck it, and have a nice day.

Wish me luck.

12:00 am | permalink | /life/travel | 0 writebacks |

Virgina Trip Pictures

The photos are up.

We had a great time, and I'll elaborate more soon, but for now, if a picture says 1000 words, then this is a 134,000 word novel.

8:56 pm | permalink | /life/travel | 0 writebacks |

Well, we're in Sunny old VA, soaking up the rays on the beach.

I'm proud to say I'm not sunburned yet! When we get back, I should hopefully have lex 5, a review of the stowboard, and pictures from the trip... I've got 200 pictures left on my 64 meg card... Let's see how much I can use up!

1:28 am | permalink | /life/travel | 1 writebacks |