Hello, My Darlings!
And welcome once again to another Travelin’ Thornberries Travel Yarn!
Yes, we’ve recently come to call our installments “Travel Yarns” because the term “Travel Narrative” seems specific to deep self-exploration, existential confrontation and growth of the storyteller in mind, body and spirit. In other words, it makes for a dense, heavy read. By contrast, Jennifer and I just want to drink beer, have fun and then write about it without busting your crania all over the paper or computer screen on which you’re reading these words. “Travel Narrative” doesn’t really seem to capture our unique blend of zaniness, word lore, closet philosophy and self-indulgent hyperbole.
So onward!!
This trip was basically another amenities trip, one in which we went to sample good food and positive atmosphere, rather than try to take on nature. It began on Thursday evening, when Jennifer and I, our suitcases and cooler looped around our ankles, feet extended toward the darkening sky, our travel bags clenched in our teeth, our attention savagely focused on the Interstate stretching into the distance, walked unsteadily on our hands for two hours.
….Hmmm,
Or at least getting to our first destination in such a fashion would have been faster. No, we attempted to travel by car, only to find the Interstate was blockaded for what seemed like a third of the trip by construction equipment. We spent huge amounts of time traveling half the speed limit, when we weren’t stopped completely, or driving backwards. I swear there must be some guy in an orange construction helmet out there who gets paid by the state just to stand out in the middle of the road, looking at his watch, so he’ll know to give the “all clear” to rope off a lane right at rush hour! **Snort**
That being said, however, there is really little else to tell of this point. Jennifer and I were traveling to spend the night at her parents’ place, so we could hit the airport early the next morning. We brought a cooler of beer, siphoned it down our throats while talking with her parents, then hit the hay. By the way, it should be mentioned, Jennifer and I were very grateful to her parents for helping us out!
Friday, September 26, 2008—The Hard Road to the Big Easy
The next morning, the alarm clock Jennifer’s mother loaned us slammed into my skull like a pack of stampeding elk. I was yanked unceremoniously from between the thighs of sleep, glorious sleep, and left starkly exposed as a victim of a crime in progress: morning time. It was 6:00 a.m. [Groan!] Jennifer and I staggered through our ablutions, lugged our stuff to the car and prepared to head out to the airport. Oh, then we woke up. Sorta.
Mother-in-Law MonologueJennifer’s mother is a morning person. For her, the early morning hours are a time of productivity, be it grocery shopping, house cleaning, decision-making or cooking. By contrast, mornings for the Travelin’ Thornberries are a time when they have to concentrate just to reliably swallow their saliva every few seconds.
So it was that as she drove us to the airport, Jennifer’s mother was chatting about the area. Her monologue included the impact of the windstorm on the city from the tip of Hurricane Ike, back on September 14.
Jennifer grunted.
I blinked.
She went on to speak with great enthusiasm about the politics of the neighborhoods, the changes in the educational system, the plights of the ball teams, the constancy of Pi, how to solve a quadratic equation and the major theories of how the Roman Empire collapsed in Western Europe…
Jennifer parted her lips slightly.
My pupils dilated.
But we eventually perked up enough to unload the car, bid her a thankful farewell, and then submit ourselves to the airport.
The Usual Plethora of Airport Hassles
This chapter appears in all of our narratives, simply because an airport story completely without headaches and hassles is out there somewhere next to those about Hercules or Pecos Bill. In other words, legendary. So it was that Jennifer and I hauled our baggage around the registration area, figuring out we were all the way across the building from where we needed to be. We walked past all the counters, with their bustling, professionally dressed attendants, until we found the terminal for our own airline.
Which was deserted.
Yes, three or four passengers were lined up at a counter covered in cobwebs, dust, rotten fruit and a promotional poster for the newest Charlie Chaplin flicker show. We waited for several minutes, wondering whether this part of the airport was even open for business. Then finally, a lone guy showed up, and I thought we were in luck, until I realized he was wearing a frumpy flannel shirt over his beer gut and carrying a set of bolt cutters. Nope, this wasn’t our guy. But eventually someone did show up to run the counter. Jennifer put her ID card into the ticket generator, which of course, didn’t work. When the young buck-toothed woman behind the counter accessed our account, it showed we were booked on two flights at the same time. Arrg!! Fortunately, she was able to un-pooch-screw that situation, and we were on our way. Well, almost. We had a brief scare at the security checkpoint, when the scanner ate my $40 clip-on sunglasses. I thought I was going to have to abandon them, but one of the guards took pity on me and searched around until he found them for me.
In order to perk up our not-really-morning-people selves, we stopped by the airport’s Starbucks. They put us on a conveyor belt, put funnels in our mouths, poured coffee down our throats as we trundled by, stuffed our jaws with scones and then held our chins while they forced our teeth up and down to masticate them. We were most definitely “processed” quickly, most likely because the employees were trying to stay ahead of the morning rush hour. I only ordered a small version of my usual Café Americano, but the server gave me an extra espresso shot because she found me so sexy and irresistibly charming; either that, or she made an extra shot by mistake and figured she’d give it away rather than waste it. I prefer the former explanation, because I know deep down that it must be the right one. ;) We enjoyed our coffees while waiting at our gate.
BOING!!
Yes, we were awake now!! I could feel every air current on my eyeballs, which I thought must be projecting 80% of the way out of my skull. Jennifer and I felt like our little girl kitty, whose name is Smudges. She has eyes like snow globes, or what one of our friends (Hey, Mitch!!), once described as “perpetually startled.”
Kitty, Smudges Thornberry, has a gawk so prominent it's audible.To the credit of the airlines, there were no further mishaps. Jennifer and I had a three-hour layover in Charlotte, North Carolina on the first leg, which we killed off by having lunch with a couple of beers. Yes, one virtue of a multi-day trip is that it frees us from all our rigid routines and allows us more indulgences! }:-)
Driving the Thong Way
We arrived in New Orleans right on time. Hailing a cab wasn’t as difficult as I had feared, and we got a driver who was quiet, unresponsive and impassive. He had the personality of a chunk of slate. He was perfect. Neither Jennifer nor I were in the mood to talk by that point, feeling worn down from being awake (mostly) since the wee hours of the morning. Instead, we stared out the window as we made the twenty-minute commute to our hotel. What I remember most was that almost every billboard was advertising strip clubs, with slogans like “Thousands of beautiful girls…and three ugly ones,” or “Doin’ it the Thong Way.”
A Super-Breasted mannequin busting out of her suspenders in a Hustler store window on Bourbon Street. New Orleans is...different.
The hotel was a pretty snazzy place. For one, the checkout process was almost painless. We were given a room on the fourteenth floor, which we finally were able to reach once Jennifer realized the elevators would only work when the room card was swiped through a scanner. This being a casino as well as hotel, it seemed they were taking precautions to keep drunken, destitute folk from the latter out of the former. Our room wasn’t opulent, but it was quite nice. It sported a wide-screen television, king-sized bed, small refrigerator, a chasm for a bathtub, a useful independent shower and a sink next to a convex mirror that magnified one’s pores to the level of lunar craters. We were pleased it had curtains that would close completely and prevent sunlight from scorching our retinas in the morning. The room helped redeem our view of comfort in the Deep South, which had been mixed. Our stay in the Beau Rivage (2004) of Biloxi, Mississippi had been like a king’s castle, but our follow-up in the Renaissance Hotel (2005) of Charleston, South Carolina had been difficult (see our respective stories on these hotels to get the details!)
We only had two criticisms. One was that they really gouged us on the use of their WiFi connection. I mean, once they pay to broadcast their signal, that’s the end of their overhead, right? But they still expect guests to pay an additional $12 per day just to connect laptops to the Internet. And of course, they must know that once a traveler has lugged their computer a thousand miles, they aren’t going to opt out of the service. Which I didn’t. I paid for the connection, if only to be able to check back with Dan (hey, Dan!), who was watching our kitties for us, and to send reassuring e-mails to my father about our arrival and intentions. The other criticism we had was aimed at the bathroom. It was one of those types where the toilet was split off from the rest of the room. That seems ideal on the surface, except that the door between them was basically little better than a Venetian blind. Jennifer and I have strict rules of privacy in that department, so having such a sheer door didn’t really help us much in terms of splitting use of the bathroom.
We would ultimately only visit the hotel’s casino area a few times. The first was just to make a pass-through and see what it was like. We’ve seen a couple of casinos in the past, enough to know they aren’t really our proverbial cup of tea. This one proved no exception. Filled with flashing lights, a constant drone in the background from all the slot machines and a haze of smoke, it is just overwhelming on the senses. Here, you can briefly sample our experience of it here:
Chaotic, isn't it? All the visions of the beautiful casino women of Las Vegas aside, this place seemed a magnet for the desperate, the hopeless and the forlorn. Everywhere we looked, people were pulling passively on electronic levers, watching their money disappear. Most were overweight and they looked prematurely aged by a lifetime of smoking. Jennifer speculated the demographic might be different among the card tables, but that was certainly our view of the people on the slot machines. Our only other visits to the casino were to cut through to the hotel’s resident Starbucks.
Beer-Soaked Berries
As noted in the introduction above, this trip was part conference and part amenities vacation. We were here in New Orleans to enjoy the cuisine, the beer and the entertainment, and that was pretty much how we spent the time actually there. We closed out our first night by visiting a restaurant and brewery called Gordon Biersch. The visit went largely without a hitch, though there was a tense moment where the hostess told us to seat ourselves if we wanted to dine outside, and we found there were no tables available. Jennifer went back inside and slapped the girl’s face for promising something they didn’t have (and exerting little effort to escort us). I think both of us have grown weary of young, attractive hostesses with vapid personalities and zero social skills.
But the place was divine otherwise. We split a delicious cedar salmon filet covered in pecans. Then we had three mini desserts, concurrent with four beers (between us, not each!) Seafood is always a delight for us, since we never get it fresh from our landlocked state. And lager beer, especially brewed in the restaurant itself, is the heart of a good trip!
Knowing I had to get up early the next morning for the conference, both of us retired reasonably early.
A few drinks, and we hit the proverbial hay.
NEXT: Jennifer’s N’awlins Experiences.
Click for Part II
No comments:
Post a Comment