New Orleans Finale: The Rest Of The Story
10/1/1

After we finished our breakfast and packed everything up on Saturday, two an a half days in the past for me now, we went up to the gift shop at nine to see a tour of the plantation. The lady said the tour was at 9:30 and that we should be at the front of the big house to see the tour. She suggested while we waited that we could go look at their pathetic attempt at a civil war museum.

Now, naming is everything. It�s like that proverb that it�s better to wait to be invited than to invite yourself and be asked to leave. If they called it their Civil War Exhibit, which would be better than to claim that little building with the cool, armored rust boat and some lame crap was an actual museum.

We waited until 9:45 and no bell and no tour guide. We decided to drop the key off and hit the road. Aisai bought around three dollars worth of postcards and we were off.

Since this is also a bit of a summary of the vacation, I may need to mention that every day of the trip was beautiful with temperatures in the high seventies and never getting out of the eighties, and never a cloud in the sky. For an area covered by marshes and swamps, the visibility was very good.

The traffic on I-10 leading into New Orleans was quite bad. This was due mostly to the road construction which had us down to one lane, but also because of the crazy college football fans headed into the Big City to see the Big Game. After almost having the nice old man behind me smash his lovely black Mazda Mellinia into my car, I chose to take I-55 up to I-12. At worst it would cost me around 20 mintues, but I had already lost 20 minutes in the traffic hassle.

I-55 took us past the Middendorf Restaurant in Manchac. Before we got onto I-55, I stopped an got another cup of instant cappuccino out of the instant cappuccino machine at the convenience store. They didn�t have regular flavor, or Italian, which should really be renamed toasted marshmallow, and rather than Mocha, they had hot chocolate. I refuse to drink any vanilla flavored coffee type beverage, so it was hazelnut.

I found out that Aisai is a hazelnut coffee vampire. Aisai does not like coffee, not one bit. But she drank a good 10% of my drink before I stopped that action. She wanted more. And she had a big 500-calorie thing of chocolate milk she�d barely touched.

We ate lunch at Applebee�s and I had the blackened fish and Aisai had some fajita rollup which is garanteed to make you feel ill while travelling in the car. She has a knack for that. But both our dishes were the most lame. It was the worst food that I�d ever had at an Applebee�s. It was odd that I ordered a blackened fish dish in Lousisiana and it was handled so hamfistedly and with too many of the wrong spices. But Applebee�s is like Olive Garden, it�s all just really good TV Dinners. I joke about Tia�s, one of our favorite, or at least most frequented restaurantss, that my enchaladas were made by a machine in another state.

Worse than the food sucking was my thoughts that I was losing time. I don�t like to drive the last few hours of a nine hour drive in the dark. It�s not big fun for me. Also, I missed Zapato so badly.

For some reason, when I think of the cats and how much I miss them, I focus on Zap. However, as I write this from upstairs in the Library [which I must clean and then take a fisheye picture of] it is Velvet who is sitting at my shoulder, and oddly not bugging me. V is a great little cat.

Though the Voicestream coverage map showed that as soon as we got out of Louisiana that we�d have the phone back, my 3390 didn�t pick up a tower until mile marker 49 on Interstate 59. Aisai was dozing at the time and I was listening to One A.D., an ambient dub collection.

When she woke, she called her mom and then Tom. Tom reported that the cats were picked up and looked fine. Mouse and Vel were a little wary of Tom, but Zapato was a �love pig.�

About my phone, in the current, high priced Nokia ads, they show some really hot phones as the couple turns on and off parts of the city in the valley, but the phone they show at the end is my phone exactly. It�s a Nokia 3390 with an Arctic Silver cover. Man, we had to pay for that much-more-attractive cover, rather than that skanky blue/grey. It�s mildly irritating that it�s about to be the giveaway phone.

When I-59 turned into I-20/59, everything changed. There is an unwritten rule that all roads that lead to Atlanta must be filled with at least 40% semi trucks and the balance be made of rude SUVs. Scary scary.

We stopped at Sonic just north of Birmingham and got shakes.

Let me tell you about a thing we were using the whole trip. As a gift, Aisai got me what is called an Autopilot. It is a small, calculator sized device where you enter in the state, choose a road, enter the mile marker and choose the direction, and then pick what you are looking for. You can pick restaurant and then, rather than have the closest ones listed, you could type in AP for Applebee�s and it will tell you where they all are. One irritating part is that you really can�t tell it when you�ll turn. When we were still on 59, the next Sonic was in Atlanta. Once we changed to I-65, it was in just a few miles.

We located a Cracker Barrel in Cullman and ate dinner there. It was dark when we got out, but I was nearly in our back yard. We got home between seven and eight. The cats were very happy to see us, but there was an awkward moment when I had to move the cat carriers out into the garage again.

Mouse actually didn�t come down in the first few hours. Then she was very social for the rest of Saturday and Sunday.

Sunday morning, while getting into the car for church, I saw in the frame of my open door a little lizard like Mr. Lizardo from the State Park. He must have crawled in there for warmth but he got trapped by the door�s weather-stripping when we went to the Global Wildlife Center. He wasn�t crushed, but he was dead.

My overall impression of New Orleans as a vacation spot isn�t very favorable, but I didn�t see it under ideal situations. If I could have toured the Superdome, then Wednesday would have had more interest to me. If I was a lush and there were more people in the French Quarter, then I would have possibly enjoyed that more, though everyone I mention the French Quarter here says that, yeah, it�s a slum. Why didn�t they tell me before?

The parts I can definitely recommend are the zoo-quarium-boat that Audubon had, but most emphatically I must recommend the Global Wildlife Center/Refuge/Whatever it is. I recommend Cracker Barrel�s four vegetable plate when travelling and Texaco gasoline.

I got 34.4 mpg on the way down and 35.2 mpg on the way back. I�d been getting 26ish around town.

And speaking of town, Huntsville really has no traffic problems. I always forget this. All the roads are overdesigned. An inconvenience in Huntsville is having to drive ten miles an hour below the speed limit. That is one of the reasons that I never had any trouble with the car overheating here, I�m out of the driveway and going 45, 55, or 70 mph with maybe a two minute sitting time at a light every ten minutes.

But I�m back. If there is a 2K2 vacation, we�re thinking Williamsberg, VA, maybe staying at a State Park again [I liked that], and seeing the big stuff in DC. Two thousand three will be the year of the big family vacation where Dinoback and her family from the UK, Tom and his group, and Longwinded and hers, will go to Florida and we�ll all rent a house. Oh, and Aisai and her mom will be there. And me. Lord willing.

And, as I said in the French Quarter when Caf� Du Monde filled my caf� au lait too full and I had to pour some on the ground, �Love to my homeys.�

It�s good to be back.