Out of Character

Yesterday Penny and I went to New Orleans. Yep, just picked up and went. I didn’t do any more planning than to check the weather and scope out a neighborhood restaurant for lunch. For me this is outrageous behavior. I had to fight myself to go without more planning. My mind kept providing logical excuses as to why we shouldn’t go—for example, our books were due at the library that day and I had to return them.

I also didn’t tell Penny we were going until I woke her up at 4:30 and asked her if she wanted to go to New Orleans for her Mother’s Day lunch. With no hesitation she said yes.

We actually left the house at 5 AM and by 9:30 we were parking in New Orleans. At 9:45 we were enjoying café au lait and beignets at Café du Monde on the Riverwalk looking out at the traffic on the Mississippi.

We’ve been to New Orleans enough that we know what we like to do. We took pictures along the river, at Jackson Square and up into the French Quarter. We browsed in the little shops and the French Market. We bought a couple dozen pralines.

It was oppressively hot with only a slight breeze for most of the morning and that made ideal conditions for the full aroma of New Orleans to blossom. I was thinking about our trip to Las Vegas last year at this time. Las Vegas has reproductions of many great cities but not New Orleans. Las Vegas captures the essence of these cities but there is no way to experience the essence of New Orleans except in New Orleans. The history, the architecture, the music, the people and especially that smell cannot be duplicated.

For lunch, the one item I did plan ahead for we went across town only to find that the place was closed on Sunday and Thursday—and it was Thursday. We ended up driving around until we found someplace else. We had oyster po-boys and jambalaya. It was OK but just average quality.

Driving in New Orleans is the pits. The roads are in terrible condition and the drivers are worse. The new GPS did bring a little humor into the drive. This unit announces street names in its instructions and had great difficulty with the pronunciation of the French street names. It pronounced Calliope St as ka-lee-ope. The GPS also has a trip computer that tracks moving time, stopped time, max speed, avg speed and miles traveled. It also has a trial subscription to a traffic alert system. That feature alerted us to an accident just before we got to New Orleans and very heavy congestion at the tunnel in Mobile. The warnings were useful in that I was now looking out for the hazards. The backup caused by the accident in New Orleans came on quickly after I crested a hill but it didn’t catch me by surprise. In Mobile the traffic came to a dead stop for 20 minutes before we got to the tunnel.

Penny wanted to stop at Hobby Lobby in Pensacola so we did. It was about 7 PM now so we got a cup of coffee and opened up the pralines and had one with the coffe as we finished the drive home.

We got home around 8:15. I was beat. I can’t drive as much as I used to in a day without needing lots of recovery time.

The day had one more surprise in store for me. I went out to feed the cats and found a lean medium sized raccoon eating the cat food. He calmly walked to the far side of the patio and watched me as I pet the 2 cats that were there. Then he started coming closer so I shooed him away. His reaction was to just back up a little and then start coming back. I had to shout and clap my hands to make him finally saunter off. I’ve got the trap set up out there now.

I spent most of my time today helping Penny with her quilt and I also took a 2-hour nap as part of my trip recovery. The nap helped and I’m feeling tired but normal now. Today was my walking day but I didn’t. Maybe walking around New Orleans can be considered a substitute.