New Orleans

My Dad and brothers completed their epic bike ride along the Mississippi River Saturday at the point where the road ends between the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.  Bill and Dad started in 1998 ~ and resumed 11 years later to make 5 more trips (for a total of 6 week long trips) to make the 2500+ mile trip ~ most of it on a tandem bike.  My brother, Bob, joined them for half of the trip (not as easy for Bob to get vacation days).  And I joined them all for the party.
We left 80° & sunny Cleveland on Thursday morning and landed in 68° & rainy New Orleans.  We took a $60 cab ride into town and were the first to the hotel.  Of course we could not check in, so we dumped our luggage and headed out in the rain.  The only souvenir we bought were the Bourbon Street rain ponchos (to go with our Indians rain ponchos and our Disney rain ponchos...eventually I'll start carrying rain ponchos).  We walked up to the Super Dome and down to the mighty Mississippi.  We had shrimp creole & jambalaya for lunch ~ Then headed back to check into the hotel.  Mike and I were the SAG wagon drivers who went the 40 or so miles west to pick up the bikers that evening.  Interstate 10 is build right on the swamp...(I guess it's called the bayou)  So strange to have the whole interstate system be a giant bridge.  We found the guys riding route 23 along side the levy that keeps the river from flooding everything.  Bob said they'd ridden all week without seeing much of the river ~ it's held back by a levy for 100's of miles.  For dinner we had alligator bites, turtle soup {much to Maggie's dismay..."But I love turtles.  How would you feel all dead in someone's stomach, Uncle Silly Mike?"}, and oysters on the half shell.  Oh yum. ~ as was the banana foster ice cream cake for dessert.  Mike's a big fan of the Abita beer ~ 'specially the Andygator ~ I just found some on the web...
That night in the hotel, I realized, you don't go to Bourbon Street and expect to get a good night's sleep.
Friday we walked Bourbon Street in search of breakfast {who needs to ask where to go?} and ended up in the diviest of dives...down in the 'bad' part (really, there's a GOOD part) of Bourbon Street.  The plates were chipped, the walls were dirty, but the food was cooked to order and very good.  I just went to the website...yeah, it looks nothing like that...(maybe it was Katrina that did it in)

While the riders rode, we rode the St. Charles street car to the Garden district ~ and toured (on our own) the Lafayette Cemetery.  I just find this little detail of living below sea level fascinating.  They have to bury their dead above ground so they don't float up!  Some of these crypts were from the 1800's.  We found one where the person had died of yellow fever.  There were also new dates; we found one from 2009.  If you look at the picture, the white wall at the end of the row is the wall that encircles the cemetery.  It also contains remains.  Why does this seem so much creepier than a expanse of green grass with small marble markers?  On are way out of the Garden District we saw a car accident and police trying to get into a house...we didn't stick around, in case we'd get caught in the crossfire.
On Saturday, Mike and I had to run 8 miles (as per our training schedule).  We figured we'd get up run early ~ but the boys wanted to get their last 32 miles done...so we ended up dropping them off, driving 24 miles, jumping out of the car and running the last 8 ~ that was the plan anyway.  But the trip out of town may have been the biggest adventure of the day.  Mike was driving, we had two iPads and 5 navigators, and we still managed to get lost.  We had to turn around at an extremely busy intersection.  Mike turned left ~ and realized, "I don't think we want to be here."  We were headed the wrong way on a one way road with bumper to bumper traffic on the cross street.  When the light turned green, we would have 100 cars barreling toward us, head on.  We were able to turn into the flow of traffic before the crash, but it was iffy for a while.  Dad had the best comment, "Good think I wasn't driving.  I would have panicked and tried to merge into oncoming traffic, killing us all."  Mike took it all in stride, be he wasn't happy!
Running the last bit of road in America was weird.  The Mississippi was on our right and the Gulf was on our left.  We were surrounded by water, and we couldn't see any of it.  We were running in the ditch between the two levies.  I can't believe people choose to make their homes in a place that is one storm away from total devastation.  We ran 5 miles, in the 75° heat, sweating, trying not to get hit by the cars that refused to move over (even though they had two lanes to drive in).  At the 5 mile point, we found my mom and the rest of the gang ~ the road was flooded two miles from the finish, so they were going to wait where we were.  Mike and I decided to keep running and then come back, but we both got nervous that we'd miss the fun of the finish, so we turned around at 6 and only got 7 in that day.  We had a ceremonial finish, the the guys really wanted to put their tires in the Gulf, so down the flooded road they went.
After all the pictures we all went to lunch.  As we were eating, Mike watched Mary Grace (age 4) go into the restroom.  Then he watched a lady walk out and turn off the light.  He nudges me and says, "Get into the restroom.  Mary Grace is in there and a lady just turned out the light."  I get there as fast as I can.  Just as I open the door and turn on the light, I see MG look up at me as she's trying to crawl under the stall door.  "Hi, Aunt Becky, I was coming out to turn on the light."  I would have been freaking out, but not MG.  She was taking care of it.  What a kid.
We had a great day that finished with a party!  We all met for dinner in a private room and had a great time.  Clare needs to be a party planner!
The next morning we got up early, and headed for a taxi to the airport.  As we were waiting there was a woman in the lobby, clearly not thinking straight.  She was on the hotel phone, "No one cares about me.  I don't care"  ...blah blah...drama...drama... Then she says, "Dad, she doesn't have anyone to straighten her hair."  Like it's the most horrific thing that can happen to a soul.  ???  A good object lesson about what can happen if you drink too many days in a row.
Bourbon Street is Geneva-on-the-Lake all grown up.  Quite the adventure!  But in Cleveland we saw Z in the airport (at least it was a REALLY tall guy who looked like Z.  How many of those can there be?)