Muddah Nature In His Act

Hellllooo??? Is anyone out there??? It's been 17 days since our last writing. I feel like I need to visit a confessional for my sins of not writing lately. If you haven't noticed, KK does most of the writing, but as she's been overloaded with training for the past 2 weeks, so now is my moment to shine! We have a lot of living to catch up on - there have been weddings, anniversaries, more scavenger hunts, and lots of work ramping up, but before we get to all that - ever more of our Deep South Roadtrip! yay! When I realized how close to the Mississippi delta and bayou we were actually going to be in New Orleans, the first words out of my mouth could have been 'Bourbon St. here we come' or 'Angelina Jolie!' or 'mmmm... Cajun food.' No no. Instead, my mind immediately asks 'Can we please go on a swamp boat!?!' You know, those boats with the big giant fan on the back that look so fun. And so that's exactly what we did. It's shocking that just 30 minutes outside of New Orleans, the landscape changes from such an urban city to swamps and watery roads that people literally call their backyards. Considering it is the wetlands and in the southern tropical climates, we shouldn't have been surprised by the thunderstorms and tropical downpours that rolled in around noon each day we were there. But we were surprised how quickly the storm clouds rolled in. We don't get thunderstorms here. And we miss them. However, lightning storms and big metal boats with supercharged fans strapped to them running across water just don't mix kids. Thankfully, we were able to switch to an afternoon tour and drive around the post-Katrina ninth-ward neighborhoods while we waited. We took a tour in one of the smaller performance airboats that reaches 60 mph, turns on a dime, and can glide down some of the tighter water ways in between the trees. And when we didn't quite fit, well, the boat just hops the dirt/logs/muck/swamp grass in the way. We glided over a very vast calm body of water, hung a left, and all of a sudden everything was green. The water, the trees, the sky, everything! Small lilies covered the water, moss on the grounds climbing the trees, and Spanish moss hanging from limbs as we passed under. It's odd to say, but the swamp was simply beautiful! This literally was our tour guides backyard... as in for real, his family owned part of this green soup. (I still can't get over someone calling the water their yard!) He was born and raised in the bayou, and we couldn't understand a word he was saying. But we had a blast and we highly recommend 1-800-GO-SWAMP. I'm not kidding! You can even have parties and receptions there! Here's KK super excited to be on a boat. Green Watery Road Gator Muddah Nature In His Act

Deep South Roadtrip: New Orleans Katrina tour

So we arrived in New Orleans on Tuesday, and did a whole bunch of fun things before we went on this Katrina driving tour on Wednesday. But, I'll post about those later. I figured we'd start with the heavy stuff and then talk about the restaurants and whatnot. The reverse somehow doesn't feel appropriate. I would suggest clicking to enlarge the photos.

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We only drove around one area, the lower ninth ward, and only one small section of it. It wasn't the part of New Orleans that was under the most water, but it is the section of the city that has the least amount of re-building since the hurricane. The part of town we were in flooded due to a levee breach on an industrial canal right next to their homes. The water rose to between 4 and 10 feet, and remained anywhere between 23 and 29 days.

We were there four years later. It's stark and sad and humbling. Everything is gone - these homes were destroyed and ripped apart and then rotted in feet of stagnant water. Some homes are still standing because their owner hopes to rebuild, but it hasn't happened yet. These homes are completely surrounded by 4 years of grass growth and a lack of care.

Other homes are obviously new. But, very few families have been able to completely rebuild on their own. This neighborhood was not affluent. You can tell when you see three remnants of foundations in an area folks from my suburban hometown would call a "small lot."

Otherwise, you see foundation stones. Front gates. Steps leading up to invisible porches. It's clear something is missing. And it's clear much has been ignored. Some streets are completely covered in plant growth and haven't been cleared. Street signs are handmade by residents. Maybe Kanye West was right.

Four years later.

A good representation. We were in the area where most of the red is.

Afterwards, we drove across the canal back towards the French Quarter and diverted down some side streets.

While homes here were not completely washed away, the amount of water and wind damage you can still see is shocking. Some homes clearly have families living in the them. Others - maybe every third home - is boarded up or abandoned. Many homes still have the spray painted tag on their front - left from recovery personnel the days directly following the storm. Businesses are closed. All the signs stapled onto powerline poles are about how to reconnect your air conditioning, or for house leveling, or putting floors down. The sense that so many people were still living daily with such clear reminders of this event was hard to see. You can see a tag, in bright red, on the house below. The date the house was searched was 9/12. The hurricane made landfall on 8/29.

This area was more emotional for me to see, because supposedly, this area wasn't "as bad" in terms of damage. Clearly though, lives were destroyed. And no one has helped put them back together. We had to stop taking pictures.

Four years later.

Before we left, I wasn't sure what we would see, because most of the updated information or photos I could find were not recent. There is a bunch of information from the year anniversary. And then...nothing new. Naively, I sort of thought that no news meant good news! That things were being rebuilt, citizens being helped, support systems in place. That's not what we found.

Deep South Roadtrip: USS Alabama

Picking up from last time, after we left Montgomery, we drove south to Mobile, straight to a hotel. Monday's drive = About 9 hours, about 525 miles.

We had volunteered to take all the leftover booze from the Savannah rental house, because we were driving right to Houston for another weekend of partying, which made a lot of sense. Except, we had to take it in and out of all the hotels and such, because it was just so hot outside, we didn't want the beer and wine to go bad. Two 12 packs of beer, 3 oversized bottles of wine, and lots of half empty bottles of liquor. Ugh.

Anyway, I collapsed in the hotel feeling all kinds of crappy, but Dan ran me a bubble bath and went out to get dinner (awwwwwwwww. I know right?) We planned to get up the next morning, pack up the car and head out to tour the USS Alabama, which is permanently docked in the Mobile Bay. We ended up having our breakfast, going to the ship and coming back to the hotel to pack up and change. Pat on my own back for good decision making because it was SO HOT that morning. We were at the ship at 9:30, and on the ship for about 90 minutes and were pretty much drenched in sweat. There was no shade to park in, all the booze would have gone bad.

Priorities!

The USS Alabama has quite the history of service, which you can read about here if you would like. It has been a fixture in the Mobile Bay since 1965, open to visitors - along with a submarine (the USS Drum) and several different planes. The Alabama has three different self-guided tours that you can follow, and you can go pretty much anywhere on the ship, which is why we wanted to go. Like I mentioned - super hot, very sweaty, but incredibly interesting. I also learned for sure that I would never want to live on a battleship.

Dan as a sailor. He's still smiling because this was right at the beginning of our wanderings, and he is not yet ridiculously sweaty.

Deep South Roadtrip: Tourism-Lite

We left Savannah both celebrating our awesomeness for helping pull of such a great surprise, and also coughing, complaining and wishing for antibiotics. Well, that second part was just me. I had fully succumbed by Monday morning to Jess's death cough and fever, and Dan had woken up feeling just great! Of course.

On the drive, we had tried to find out if there were things that would be worth stopping for in towns we at least recognized the names of. I knew I definitely wanted to get to Montgomery, AL and Macon, GA is right on the way. Except, there is pretty much absolutely nothing in Macon but one huge, ornate church. We pulled off the highway, stretched, wandered around the church for about 10 minutes, lit some candles, drove around the nothing that is the town, switched drivers and continued on. Yeah, you can skip it in your travels. You're welcome for taking that one for the team.

St. Joseph's cathedral - Macon, GA

4 hours after leaving Macon, we arrived in Montgomery, Alabama. Actually, this part of the drive was probably one of the highlights for me...we got off the interstate and took some back roads, which was really gorgeous. We also got to eat Chick-Fil-A, which Dan was super excited about. I was driving, so I was more excited that I managed to cut an entire hour off the arrival time the GPS projected for us. Best driving time ever!

Montgomery really only had three highlights that I wanted to see. One, state capitol building. It looks shockingly close to another capitol building many of us are familiar with. We walked a lot of the grounds and WOW does Alabama love to commemorate stuff. On the grounds of the capitol are: the Moon Tree (the seeds of the tree travelled in the space shuttle), a statue to the father of modern gynecology, a rock memorializing where the state highway commission started, some creepy busts of Alabam senators, lots of stuff about the "War Between the States" and some other stuff that we took pictures of but weren't sure what they were later. Seriously, there was an insane number of plaques, statues, memorials, etc. Alabama. Land of the Inscription.

The Capitol is pretty though.

One of the smallest plaques of the day, for one of the most interesting facts. This star marks the spot Jefferson Davis was sworn in the first and only President of the Confederate States. (Which in above photo is between the 2nd and 3rd columns from the right)

The second thing I wanted to see was the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Church, where Dr. King was the pastor from 1954-1960. I sometimes have trouble conceptualizing that such intense events happened where I am on any given peaceful "normal" day, idly taking pictures. But, there they were.

The last thing was the Civil Rights Memorial. It's the only memorial that honors those who died during the Civil Rights Movement. Reminiscent of the Vietnam Memorial, it's a black granite circular fountain, with the names of those who died around the edges like a clock, which is front of a large granite wall, also a fountain, with one of Dr. King's quotes on it. It's a pretty powerful place.

Sorry, Mobile will have to wait until later. Also, New Orleans approaches. I know you can hardly wait.

Deep South Roadtrip: Savannah

Stop One on the roadtrip was Savannah for Ben and Jess's surprise bachelor/bachelorette party. As I mentioned in the last post, Carrie and Brian had planned most of it - we rented a vacation house for the weekend, and basically partied it up.

The house was supposed to sleep 7 people, and we had...18. And a dog. It was awesome. Head count: Ben, Jess, 5 of us from Reston, Ben's sister Gen, her boyfriend, and three of her friends, 4 RPI folks and one of their friends, and Ben's cousin. Ben and Jess's dog Puck, who is the best dog I've ever met, also hung out most of the weekend.

Dan and I flew into Jacksonville, which is about two hours south of Savannah, and landed at about 11 PM. Then we had to get our luggage, pick up our rental car, and you know, drive there, which put us at the rental place at about 1:30 AM.

Apparently, though, it all worked out to plan, as Ben and Jess thought the surprise arrivals had ended a few hours earlier with Ben's cousin Charlie, who came in after dinner. When we pulled up and walked up the steps, it was probably the best Ben face I have ever seen. Totally, completely flabbergasted. And you know, Ben is pretty expressive, so it was great. He ran inside and up the stairs to get Jess, who was getting ready for bed at this point. She was also pretty excited. (See below).

Laura, Franklin and Josh (who had been driving straight since leaving Philadelphia!!! that morning) arrived at about 3 AM, which made for another round of great surprised faces, especially since they came bearing fantastic gifts from South of the Border (which included funny hats, an enormous fly swatter, and sparklers, which Franklin promptly burned himself with). So that night, before all was said and done, we probably got to bed about 6 AM.

Saturday we woke up not nearly as late as you think, and headed to the beach on Tybee Island. Carrie had packed us all some food, we had games to play, and books to read, it was a great day. It's super fun going to the beach with that many people because when everyone gets in the water, it looks like you brought quite a posse with you (which I guess we did). There was always

enough people for bocce ball, and soccer. The weather was perfect, it was just a really good day. Around 6, a wedding started on the beach behind us, so we stuck around to watch, and tried to avoid being in their professional wedding pictures. (Aw, honey look, it's our first kiss! Who is that in the bathing suit behind us?!?)

We had a fantastic BBQ dinner, and then we separated by gender to do the official bachelor and bachelorette party business.

Here we illustrate the differences between "good times" for men and women. The men, after pouring lots of straight liquor into a coke bottle to share, headed to Forsyth Park, and proceeded to get drunk and have a huge water gun fight (serious PVC pipe water guns) and then head to the nearest pool hall. The women got dressed up, went to the local swanky lounge, sat in VIP and drank lots of wine. The contrast provided for lots of entertainment. I should note that Jess was being a fantastic trooper at this point, because she had the death flu that we all had later on, and

was still smiling and even willing to go out.

Anyway, we all eventually met up at the pool hall, shut it down at 3, poured into cabs, got back to the house...and kept drinking. I know for sure we saw the sunrise around 7. I think we all thought we were 18 again.

Sunday morning, a lot of folks had to leave after brunch, but those of us who stayed had a pretty quiet day. Many of us were by now feeling the early symptoms of Jess's illness, and also had only gotten a couple hours of sleep over the past two nights. How Josh drove all the way back to Philly on Sunday morning is beyond my comprehension. Anyway, Ben us showed around Savannah, we rented a movie (Bolt...because we're all under 10), and we had dinner and a movie night. It was very relaxed, as by now, we all felt like great friends even though many of us had just met. But...we had been through quite a bit of drinking, and the aftermath, together. I hope it was entertaining for Ben and Jess to see their worlds colliding together at high speeds.

Coming up: Macon, Montgomery and Mobile. All places I don't need to go again.

Deep South Roadtrip 2009: Introduction

So, the roadtrip evolved out of two separate events that happened to be one week apart in very different areas of the country, and also about as far as possible from where we live. Carrie, the maid of honor in Ben and Jess's wedding, and Brian Baum, the best man, who many of us have gotten to know over the years, planned a secret bachelor/bachelorette party for the bride and groom down in Savannah, where they live. They basically invited anyone and everyone, on the condition that no one spill the beans beforehand. Dan and I were invited, and since I felt bad about not being able to attend the bridal shower, I sort of hunkered down and tried to figure out how we could get there without spending enormous amounts of money. The problem was that Brian and Christy's wedding was in Houston the following weekend - actually, we were scheduled to fly in on Thursday. There was no way that we were going to go to Savannah, fly back to California and then go back to Texas four days later. No thanks. We toyed with the idea of heading up to DC for a few days, and then I started looking around at other options. Recently, I've decided that I want to visit all 50 states - and I realized that I'd never been to Alabama, Mississippi, or Louisiana. And then one day I found a SUPER cheap deal on a one way rental car, to use all the way from Savannah to Houston, and just sort of booked it without having any other plans...good thing Dan is flexible, and that we usually fly on Southwest, who doesn't charge you extra to change your flights (which is really awesome, if you think about how much you pay for that crap on other airlines) As we talked about what we wanted to do, and where we wanted to go, we decided to: ~Fly into Jacksonville Friday night and drive up to Savannah (2 hours of driving) for surprise party, stay through the weekend ~Leave Savannah on Monday, drive to Mobile AL to spend the night (8 hours of driving), stopping in Macon and Montgomery for some tourism-lite en route ~Visit the USS Alabama in Mobile on Tuesday morning, and drive to New Orleans (2 hours of driving), stay until Thursday morning ~Leave New Orleans, drive to Baton Rouge, do a drive through tour, and head on to Houston (about 6 hours of driving) ~Hang out in Houston, attend wedding, have various good times and fly back to Cali on Sunday (I know that our plans totally just made my mom have convulsions) Honestly? It was rad. The whole thing. We didn't even kill each other about directions, parking, whatever have you - because usually when Dan and I fight, it's in the car. But yes, it was totally worth the time, money and hours in the car. 3 new states off the list!* Tomorrow's post: Savannah, with Franklin's pictures. Because Dan and I get lazy whenever Franklin pulls out his camera, as his photos will inevitably be better than ours. *States count as visited if you obviously stop there OR drive through them. Layovers at an airport in that state do not count. I have 24 left to go. How many states have you visited?

Back Safely

Well, we have returned safely from our 2009 Deep South Roadtrip. It was a blast.

Some stats:

States visited - 6 (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas)

Different homes/hotels stayed in - 4

Cars rented - 2

Huge surprises pulled off - 1

Alligators seen - 10+

Miles travelled - 1500+

Suitcases ruined - 1

We will be blogging the heck out of the trip for the next little while, we have so much material to cover! However, I will not be starting this evening, because I have been backsliding into the illness I picked up in Savannah ever since we got back to the West Coast. Plus, getting back into working after 10 days off has not been fun, just mostly exhausting.

Just as a sneak preview, however, please see the highlights below from the very tail end of our trip. When we arrived safely in Oakland from Houston, Dan's suitcase was...not in great shape. The frame had been bent really bad, and there were holes in the sides of it that basically looked like they were the result of being burnt. The holes went all the way through the sides, to some of the stuff inside - ruining a pair of pants and a pair of dress shoes.

The guy in the Southwest baggage office told us that most likely, the bag fell of the cart and ended up being dragged over the pavement, which caused all the damage. Whatever, we put in a claim and they should be either replacing it or sending Dan a check. Hooray! The bad news was that we had to leave the damaged stuff at the airport, which meant we brought all of his stuff home in a new Southwest duffle bag. Good times.