New Orleans means business and all that jazz

After the RDR in New Orleans in August, I knew I wanted to spend more time in the area and check off one more thing from my list. In religion class my sophomore year of high school, our teacher had us make a list of goals or things we wanted to do, so I tried to tally up all the things I thought would be fun or fulfilling before I died. Since then, I have been so fortunate to be able to check off so many of them such as skydiving, SCUBA diving, traveling out of the country, and even going to the top of the Empire State Building at night. Attending a real Mardi Gras actually on Fat Tuesday was one of those things. The New Orleans Hash House Harriers set up a Mardi Gras weekend, so I knew this was a perfect opportunity to go.

A week before I left, I sent a shout-out to their local email lists to find some kind of lodging arrangements. Within a couple of days, I had several offers from various locals inviting me to crash at their place. Even as a back up, I had a few responses from locals on couchsurfing.com that also welcomed me should my other plans not work out. I was able to stay with Angela (FillMeUp) for the week. I flew over early Friday morning and, having previously downloaded the bus routes before leaving, rode into town on the local routes. My host seemed quite surprised that I was able to travel on my own from the airport on the local bus line having made at least two transfers without any problems. The GPS with the downloaded maps and pre-set waypoints proved to be invaluable in helping me find the most direct routes during my stay. Once I made introductions with my gracious host and the other out-of-towners crashing at her place (PicOfTheLitter and ClapOn), we had breakfast and went shopping for costumes. I picked up some gladiator costume that would be my secondary outfit for when my Afghan Burqa got too hot to wear. Since we were already out and about, FillMeUp drove us to the Ninth Ward area of New Orleans. This was a place where you saw the most devastation due to the levee break. The damage even 6 months later is nearly indescribable. Homes were often laying in the middle of the streets with overturned cars and even houses on top of cars were still an extremely common sight. We stopped and even checked out a couple of the homes up close. The smell of mold was stifling and I nearly feared that I would return home with Black Lung if I lingered too long.

We returned to the house and got dressed up to head to the hotel for hash registration. One aspect I like about away trips is the opportunity to meet so many new people and hang out. After mingling for a while, we circled up and left for the evening pub crawl through the downtown area. We hit three bars or so and got to see a bit of the upper French Quarter. All too soon the evening ended, so we retired back at the house to prepare for another long day.