Dateline: On the road: (Written on 12/11/16 [ RD3.169 (Day 902)] ** (see note at end!)
For those of you new, this is Mitch, NOT Cheryl. Under a truce we kind of negotiated, I am again allowed to post to the blog, but never about anything except about our adventures but on the road!
This was written Sunday, but generally refers to our travails and travels last week (New Orleans to Houston).
The real Subject line of this post: is:
DWI -- a tale of terror
Now don't get scared gentle reader. That's driving while ill, not, "Driving While Intoxicated".
Those of you who may know us personally will know we've had yearly bouts of Bronchitis for ages and ages.
I like to call this my annual bout of, "walking bronchitis and the boogie woogie blues" because it's painful enough to have to waddle through the 3-4 weeks it takes to get over it, without being coherent enough to drive our rig.
Well shiver me timbers. Not only do I have the bronchitis blues, but my dear soul-mate has it too!!
The only good thing I can say about this is that at least we are staggering our coughing fits.
I had the bronchitis about 3 days before her, so she drove the first 3 days from Atlanta, and I've driven Thursday, Friday and This morning (Sunday).
Unfortunately, it was time to move from our impromptu layover in New Orleans, the Big Easy.
Wow. Nu-Orlinns (as locally pronounced) is as fantastic as imagined.
Being strictly daytime souls, it was not as devilishly exciting for us exploring. We barely made it 6 hrs before we were all pooped out and needed to get back to the rig.
Good news: We took a shuttle from the RV park/marina, no local traffic jams or parking nightmares for us.
Bad news: even walking just half of the French Quarter was tiring for Cheryl, it was about 2-3 miles. I was quite impressed with her stamina, and just wish that she could exercise like this every day, it'd be fantastic for her health.
Great news: We found one town where GM didn't buy and destroy all of the streetcars in the city. N.O. still has a functioning system. (If you're [actually] interested in what that's about, see mitch's other blog about infrastructure in this country). (Link to the post here:)
Thursday, We hit the French quarter until we pooped out. By the time we got home, it was our usual routine--dinner then some movies.
Friday, we decided to go for what one of our friends insisted was a partially passable replacement for Mardi-Gras,--since we were two months early for the real thing. That's called Mardi-Gras World. One large company does most of the planning, logistics,creation and deployment of almost all of the 50 or so parades that occur in the two weeks before Fat Tuesday.
A few words about what we learned. As New Yorkers we have the Macy's thanksgiving parade to use as a analogy. Totally different. One day I'll discuss in details many little known facts about the Macy's parade.
But here in the Big EZ, there are about 50 parades that occur in 14 days. That's 3-4 parades per day, all run by social clubs (called Krewes) that raise money by charging dues, and perhaps a yearly social ball.
Each parade is a single krewe, and has an annual theme. There are a minimum of 14 floats in a Krewe's parade. Some parades are as long as 30 floats.
The krewe itself owns the float, but all the decorations on the float are owned by the studio, which often moves, reuses, and recreates new designs from existing ones.
It turns out that Mardi Gras World has about 15 humongous warehouses around New Orleans.
It was Definitely worth the $20/per person plus parking for the vast amount we learned.
Remainder of our Friday...
We had high hopes before our bronchitis dashed them. N.O. actually has a thriving Jewish community. We were actually going to go to a local kosher restaurant (with kosher sushi every Friday), Oh well. That didn't happen. Ya'all remember Cheryl's new sayings that plans are made not in Jello, but in BUBBLES? Well bubbles broke!
As we were leaving Mardi Gras World, we (mitch) brushed a curb, and the tire pressure sensor monitor started leaking air.
Having lost one sensor previously to a curb that attacked me, I Tried to get a wrench to take off the broken part of the tire extender, but didn't get it off fast enough == flat tire.
Since I've done this before, (flat, problems with tpms,etc) I knew if I drove on it that would break the seal on the tire, requiring more work to get tire working again, so we just sat and waited for a service call. And waited, and WAITED. For 2 more hours. Too late for our Kosher Sushi.
So no kosher lunch.
Sunday Morning and Afternoon. More driving while ill.
We went from the big EasY almost 220 miles to Iowa, LA.
We were now less then a day from our destination of Houston, so some relief from the DWI soon!
** Note:
Yes, I REALLY, really do like MY date format. It tells you (and us) Where and when we've been on the road… I want YOUR opinion. Leave us a comment below if you think my Road.Date.yr.DDD is cool, or just STUPID!
Thanks for coming and asking about our great journey
Mitch!
PS: Deliberate plug: I have 3 different blogs (poetry, daily rants, and the infrastructure blog if you're actually interested.
Wow, bummer you're both sick. At least you got out a bit and were able to see some of New Orleans. Did you know there was a fantastic World War 11 Museum there? I'm not a war buff, but it was amazing. Spent an entire day there. And I like both of your title formats. Since you've been on the road for a while now, I like that Yr/Day, either way you do it. It's too much to figure out how many years/days when you just put days only. --I hate math!-- Sure hope you get to stay in Houston long enough to get better. Enjoy your holidays!
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