Friday
What a morning. Bill had arranged a “critical mass ride” through the French Quarter, led by the varsity coach of the Tulane University racing team, who is also a local hero because right after Katrina, he snuck through police lines, stole a boat and saved something like 28 people during a 5-day period. When they caught him, they made him a Coast Guard honorary boson or something like that. We chose not to participate in this ride. The streets were narrow and crowded, and even though the concept of the critical mass means that you can run lights as a big group, there would be lots of starting and stopping in close quarters. Not fun for tandems. Many hearty souls did go, however, and said it was great, even though there were a few bikers that went down. This ride was not sanctioned by the police and Bill and Jan rode up front with the guy “so I’ll get arrested, not him.” Needless to say, nobody got arrested.
Meanwhile, we had to get our bike ready and repack all our stuff because the truck was going to carry whatever we didn’t need for the next 3 days back to Memphis. We got our bike down early and then went through the ridiculously excruciating hassle of repacking and deciding what to send and what to keep. Got our bags down to the truck by what we thought was the deadline. According to Bill, who told us in no uncertain terms, that the bags were supposed to be down before bikes to fit everything into the truck, which was almost full. Huffing and puffing in more ways than one ensued. I exited stage left, while Joe helped Bill and others unload some of the bikes so that our luggage (and one other couple’s, thank heaven) could fit and then the bikes on top. Yikes.
On a calmer note, we then took off with our neighbors Tim and Francine for a short carriage ride through the French Quarter (see pic), had lunch—Po Boy of course—and did some gargoyle shopping (see pic). No further comment from me. Drop by our house if you want to see it for yourself with your own eyes. We take no legal, or any other kind of responsibility, for what might happen to you next.
Finally, out to dinner with our lovely niece, Sarah, her new husband Clint and lovely stepson Devlin (see pic). It’s always a rollicking good time with Sarah and this was no exception. We went to a very cool pizza place where the cooks have to train in Naples before they can work there. Yum! Sarah kindly drove us back to the boat. We were sad to say good-bye.
Saturday
Good news and bad news on this day. OK, good first. We disembarked early without incident and made it to the Hyatt where we would be staying for the night, and they actually had our room ready at 8:AM. This was Joe’s plan all along and of course it worked. We had a fun lunch with a high school friend of Joe’s and his wife, Manny and Pam Fuentes. We had gone to their wedding 32 years ago and might have seen them once in the intervening years. It was good to catch up; especially for Joe. Those life-long friendships are precious. Later that evening (after some bad stuff) we strolled back into the Quarter and ended up scoring a table for two, at Mr. B’s Bistro (B for Brennan…. Breakfast at Brennan’s anyone? Not this place but the other place on Canal Street), actually run by the original Mr. Brennan’s niece. Great meal in a hopping, packed place.
Bad stuff: We checked into the Hyatt (see good stuff above) after an early morning short cab ride over from the dock, with the woman cabbie complaining the whole time basically about how income inequality was not fair. No question. We agree. I, for one, certainly can acknowledge the squirm factor, given our position. Be that as it may, while Joe was checking in, I looked down at the bags and suddenly realized that my purse was not among them. Heart jumps into throat, mad dash outside to try to catch her, security guy checking camera to see if he can find a cab number (of course we did not note it on that short ride). No luck. Meanwhile, Joe calmly sits down and tries to do an Apple “find my phone” for me. I can’t remember my Apple password (gotta fix that soon). More calm thinking, thinking, thinking from Joe. He remembers that we have an app called Life 360, on which I am registered along with Joe and Anna for emergency location (Emilia, Dave, Brian, Hetty, get on the stick!!!! Don’t you want us to know where your phone is every minute of your lives???????). He locates “me” a block away. I start running and by the time I’m out the lobby rotary door, the cab has pulled up. I dove into the back of the cab, with our cabbie friend saying, in her Hatian or West African accent, “I didna touch it, I didna touch it!” I’m like, “Thank you, thank you, I believe you, thank you, thank you so much.” All I had in my wallet were two $50 bills. I whipped one out and she said no, no and I said yes, yes, thank you so much. Whew. Faith in humanity renewed and another big lesson re-learned. Actually a few. Know your iPhone password, get Life 360, and oh yeah, don’t leave your purse in a cab.
Other bad thing. The weather was cloudy but OK in the morning and at lunch. Our afternoon plan was to head straight to the New Orleans Jazz Fest, which I had been looking forward to for YEARS. The night before, they closed it down an hour early due to storms with lightning. We’re just about ready to go: downpour with lightning. OK, we’ll wait till it lets up before we hop on the shuttle to the fair grounds. The last one leaves at 4:30 and the Fest closes for the day at 7. 2 PM pouring. 3PM pouring. I’m looking out the window every few minutes. We were sadly not equipped to spend a day in the rain and the mud. No rain gear, no chairs, no guts. We did not know that Wellies (rubber rain boots for the uninitiated), raincoats and portable chairs were the JazzFest uniform. With a broken heart, I gave up hope at 4:30. Of course the rain stopped and the sun came out at 5, just as The Who took the stage for what was reportedly a kick-ass two hour set, opposite John Legend at another stage and Robert Cray at another. Heartbroken. So what do you do in that case? Snuggle in to watch “American Sniper” in a hotel room, of course. THEN, after that and it still hurts like hell, when one item on your bucket list falls through, what do you do? You add four more: Newport Jazz Fest, Montreal Jazz Fest, Montreux Jazz Fest and New Orleans Jazz Fest (do-over)!!! We are going back armed and dangerous. We rationalized by telling ourselves that we were trying to squeeze in too much by adding a no-other-option-mad-afternoon-dash to an already overwhelming vacation trip. Next time, we need to go down just for the Fest and go prepared. Live and learn. Nevertheless, the heartache (literally and physically, for me anyway) lasted for the next two days.
Sunday
We took it easy in the hotel in the morning. Walked two blocks to the train station lugging our luggage (I guess that why it’s called luggage). Got to head up the “seniors” line to board The City of New Orleans back to Memphis. Those who need assistance first, then seniors. A few advantages to admitting your age. It was a FREEZING and super-rocky 9 hour ride. Interesting to see all the little towns from the tracks. Both sides of the tracks often seemed to be the wrong side, and we had several discussions about what happens in rural America when all the dying little towns actually die. I don’t know. Does anybody? At dinner time we shared a table in the dining car with a very young woman pharmacist who travels for Freddy’s Pharmacies all over the south training their employees. She said Freddy’s is trying to preserve the hometown feel of a neighborhood pharmacy. I put my foot in my mouth when I expressed my delight with mail-order pharmacies. “We hate them,” she said without a smile. End of discussion on that topic. We moved to her two-year-old and our kids and granddaughter.
When we arrived in Memphis at 11:PM, there was a white painted school bus waiting to take us to the hotel. More bag-lugging from train to bus and squeezing all the tandem riders from that train into said bus. It was as cold out in the air in Memphis as it had been on the train. A hot bath back at the hotel would be the cure.
RSS Feed