the great vacation: part 3

new orleans...oh how i love thee!

i'm not joking.  love new orleans.  love all of louisiana that i've seen for that matter.  can't say much about baton rouge as i didn't actually see much of it, but i can say baton rouge did manage to make road construction not as obnoxious some how so that alone gets that great city my vote.  but new orleans has entered my heart in a way no other place has...even my current home which i love.

the last third of my time in louisiana was spent in the big easy. you know the place...mardi gras, the french quarter, beads, hurricanes (the storms and the drinks), beignets.  well, i missed mardi gras by 4 months, didn't buy, wear or share any beads, nor did i eat a beignet (i'm trying to be all healthy, remember?!), but despite that, i still managed to have a great time.

the great vacation: part 2

i wrote an entry awhile back about how i was going to be seeing an old friend from my time in texas while on this trip.  old friend #1 (of1 from here on out) is someone i hadn't seen since my last trip through louisiana nearly 10 years earlier.  i was a little nervous about seeing someone i hadn't seen in that long and stressed about it a little going into the trip.  well, leaving oak alley the stress level jumped about 100 levels because it was time to finally go meet up with of1 in baton rouge.

to give you an idea of how i was feeling, let me tell you a little about this phobia i have.  i don't really like crossing bridges.  especially bridges over water.  even more especially bridges that get really high when they go over really large bodies of water.  if you put some crazy iron work over the top of those really high bridges over very large bodies of water and i pretty much have a heart attack before we even start driving across.  on the way to see of1 i had to drive my car over such bridges spanning the mississippi river no less than 3 times.  that alone made my pulse race, my blood pressure sky rocket and my palms start to drip sweat.  add into that the stress of seeing someone who was important to me 10 years ago for the first time in that many years and i was pretty much a basket case.

but we made it.  i managed to ring the door bell, his dog didn't eat me and we managed to settle pretty quickly into the same easy friendly friendship we had living in texas all those years ago.  and that starts phase 2 of the great vacation...

the great vacation: part 1

over the course of the last week i've driven a lot (around 2300 miles), sweat a lot (it was around 105 one day i think), caught up with some old friends (jay and ed, it was great to see you and let's not wait so long next time) and fell in love...profoundly and forever in love.