Farewell tour and New Orleans

** Note: I realized recently that I had set my blog to not accept anonymous comments to my posts. I have since turned that setting off, so feel free to comment without having to create your own account. Thanks to Choks for pointing that out.

Today was my designated "day off", along with Paul, Catherine, and George. The four of us decided to take one of the rentals out to New Orleans to check out the city. But since it was no more than an hour away, and there wasn't much to do, we were going to leave in the afternoon. That left the morning to work. I decided to ride on 3059 with the morning crew so that I could say goodbye to some of my people. Jo, the lady who I have been training to take over for me, called me a "good man" for doing it, because the morning driver Thelma was getting on everyone's nerves and no one wanted to ride with her. I don't think I've ever been called that before in a serious manner. Jo's a very interesting lady, and I'm going to miss her. The fact that I had her respect meant a lot to me because she was an accomlished volunteer herself. Back in Missouri she cooks all of her food from scratch, including churning her own butter and grinding her own wheat. Her husband's an engineer for a NASCAR pit crew. These are just some random facts to help me remember her.

The farewell run was nice. The few people that I had "bonded" with were very warm. Most shook my hand, gave me a "God bless you" and told me they really appreciated me coming down. MS Baa gave me more beads and a hug. She told me to "stay focussed and on the good path". Just like my Baa would say.

New Orleans was really interesting. It is right on the Misssissippi River, which I expected to be much bigger (it was no wider than the mighty Sacramento River). They skyline was nothing fancy. Most of the buildings downtown didn't seem that badly damaged at all. The Superdome had a bunch of visible water damage on the roof, but in general it looked decent. It was also not nearly as large as I thought it would be. Apparently the French Quarter had recieved a foot of water, but that was about it. About 35% of the businesses there were open. But almost all of the bars and restaurants on Burbon street were open. In general it didn't seem too damaged. Jo had told me that New Orleans had gotten it much worse than Gulf Port, but I haven't seen the destruction at the level of what was back at Bay St. Louis. Driving up to the city, you could see destroyed buildings and smell some mold, but it wasn't flattened like it was in Waveland, for example. I think that the higher population density in NO meant that more people had been affected (and much of the area's population were elderly, something like 50%), but the damage to the area itself was probably less severe than Mississippi.

The Fench Quarter had a very unique feel. The streets had interesting architecture with a look that you would expect to be similar to a city in France. There were mostly standard souvinier shops, and a ton of bars and places to eat. We stopped at one bar that had live music. The band was really amazing... the electric guitar player and singer (who played trumpet for some songs) were awesome. They played some BB King, but they also seemed to perform a few songs they wrote about the hurricane (it was hard to make out all the lyrics). One really nice, emotional song had the chorus "Louisiana! You're gonna wash us away... you're gonna wash us away..."

One store we walked into was particularly noteworthy. It was an antique guns and coin shop. They were mostly from various periods in American history, but they also had coins that had come from the Greek civilization, etc. The item that immediately caught my eye was a display of old slave documents from the South, including titles of ownership of "young negro boy", etc. There were several of them, and they were for sale at a price of between $700-1000. I was shocked. It seemed really wrong that such a dark relic of this country's past was for sale. Who buys this stuff? I actually asked the store's owner, and he was sort of vague, but said that (individual) people travel the country collecting such documents. I was expecting him to say museums or something like that. I immediatley left the store, disgusted that this guy was selling such a thing. Apparently there are still people in the South profitting off of slavery.

We had dinner at a really nice restaurant. The food was amazing... I had a dish called stuffed Redfish that was outstanding. It was nice enjoying the company of the three others. I had an interesting conversation with Catherine about the ridiculously bleak situation of the Philadephia public school system. I was trying to push her to get some insight about whether there was something I could do to help from a technology standpoint for when I begin grad school. I suspected that the root of the problem was economic, but I intend to look into it further when I can.

As we were driving home, the last thing I remember in the car was that the road was really dark. When I looked around I realized that none of the homes along the freeway had power, and the streetlights weren't working either. Two months and counting without electricity for NO residents.