Big Easy Bird

Greetings and salutations race fans,

It is another blog posting from yours truly for what will hopefully be our mutual enjoyment.

I am in Mesa, AZ tonight. Let me ask you something, OK? Is it still considered a "dry heat" when sweat is rolling off various private parts? Not to be too crass or anything, but this seems like a gross misnomer if ever there was one.

At any rate, I am not posting snaps of the AZ leg due to the fact that I just did this trip a couple of months or so back and, quite frankly, I am too heat fatigued to give a rip about snapping of shots of the Arizona scene.

Instead, I thought that I would post a few pics of the trip to the Big Easy last week. Are you with me people? Big Easy -yes please. The big bird of Phoenix -no thanks, pal. All in favor say, "I." Did you actually say it? Cool.

I didn't have an overabundance of time in New Orleans, but did get a chance to visit the Garden District, the French Quarter (Bourbon Street, etc.), and stay in the Warehouse District. I got some shots, but not a lot.

The Garden District was cool and seemed pretty untouched by Katrina. Stately homes and a real Southern charm.

The Warehouse district was very cool. Emeril (did I spell that right?) has one of his three New Orleans restaurants by the Embassy Suites off of Julia Street, I believe. I know this because I stayed at the E. Suites and paid around THIRTY BUCKS!!!!!!!! for parking every night. The hotel people were cool, though. .. Even though and in spite of the fact that the fifth floor seems to have this yellow habitrail thing going on were you wind around and find your room if you're lucky. "Where's the flippin' cheese already? Man! At least throw me one of those green food pellets so I know that I am on the right leg of this thing."

The French Quarter is what it is. Charming and beautiful by day, a COPS episode waiting to happen by night. One of the ubiquitous coworkers and I ate in the French Quarter the second night (for me) in town. We went to Nola, which is also owned by Emeril. (Pass on the smoked duck -it tasted like Liquid Smoke.) (http://www.emerils.com/restaurants/neworleans_nola/)The restaurant is uber-cool, though and I highly recommend when you are in French Quarter land. The restaurant is either named for the Neuro-Optometric Liability Association or perhaps after his second wife, the city itself, which happens to be named New Orleans, LA. (...wait for it...) You decide. (His real wife's name is Nora, I believe. High on cell phone fumes, I originally stated that we ate at NORA's. I know, I know... cell phones are dangerous.)

Our wait time for NOLAs was about an hour or so out. We went and walked around past the strip joints, hookers, guys carrying massive 64 oz containers of beer while thinking that this somehow qualified them for their "man" card, and, of course, the nice little shops selling "smoking accessories." "Hi. Nice shop. Smoking accessories, huh? Can I get an iron lung to go, please?" We then returned to the restaurant which had been jumping all night with a steady flow of locals and tourists. I walked up to the host who said, "Ah, Mr. ______. You're still about ten minutes early, but I think I have a table open for you." BAM! What a memory. Needless to say, but go to N.O. and have a good time, but leave junior at home with Nana. No use having to explain why a guy named Larry has a club called BARELY LEGAL.

The next day I took off a day and drove up to Pineville to see the father unit. It's a rough gig to watch the parental units get older. On Saturday my father woke me up at 4:00 a.m. so that I could drive back to N.O. in time to catch my flight back to Raleigh. The strange thing is that his normal wake time is around 3:30 a.m. It was a scary early morning drive back to Orleans. I kept altering between doing variations of a stand-up routine and singing bad '80's hair band rock to keep myself awake. "We're not going to take it, no we're not going to take it. We're not going to take it anymore..." "Come on feel the noise. Girls rock your boys. We'll get wild, wild, wild..." Ah the misgivings of youth. When I did finally wake up fully, I road tested the night vision of the camera at seventy miles per hour. The jittery shot was either the car, the road, the camera, or the coffee scalding my privates. Where's my lawyer? Dang fathers and their worthless disposable cups. "I don't recall trying to take a picture while driving in the dark and drinking coffee, your honor. I just remember... the pain, the agony, the screaming at the top of my lungs, 'Why, Daddy? Why?' "

I did make it to the airport just fine and even managed to check the shocks on the old rental vehicle when I missed a turn and decided to jump the curb. After that I flew home to a premature Father's Day din-din with the wife and the chitlens. Pretty cool due to the fact that I had to jump the bird on Sunday for this open oven door they call AIR-A-ZONA. They should call it SWEATY-______-A-ZONE-AHHHHHH!

Anywho, kids, this daddy has been doing inventory in a warehouse all day in Arizona. "Hey, corporate mothership, how about an outside auditor or at least changing the old fiscal year so that we do this gig in April and September. June/July is a brutal, brother. This is why Frank Lloyd Wright lived here in the winter and LEFT here every summer. And what's up with the VP and your national sales guy doing the counting? But I digress. Tired. Must sleep. 64 ounces of beer on the wall, 64 ounces of beer...

Disclaimer: Drinking 64 ounces of beer at one time out of one container in public is stupid and crass. Then again, so is comments about scalding privates and sweaty privates and private parts in general. The author of this blog makes no claims of intelligence. (Did I spell that right?)