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Today I attended the Little 500 women's race with a friend. The Little Five is a big part of IU and I was excited to see one of the races. I am not going to tackle the men's race tomorrow, maybe next year. More on the Little Five from Wikipedia.

It was really nice day outside not too hot or cold. The group I was with ended up in the bleachers directly in the sun. I got a bit of a sunburn today nothing that bad though.

Since I don't have time to post the photos to my website I put them up on Flickr if you are interested in seeing the rest of the set. Little 500 photos

I recently moved cubes at work for the third time. This time they gave me a window so at least now I have something to look at.

Here is the view if I look out the window while seated.

If I get up and walk to the left a bit you can see the skyline of downtown Tampa off in the distance to the right of the picture.

In late April/Early May I went on a trip to Louisiana, Alabama and North Florida.

Part of my trip was to visit my father and grandmothers who live in North Florida and Alabama respectively. The other part of my trip was to visit my good friend Joel in Houma, Louisiana about an hour outside of New Orleans.

Louis Armstrong Airport

I began my trip by flying into New Orleans from Tampa. As we got closer to the airport we found ourselves in the middle of a fairly strong thunderstorm. I found myself wondering for the first time what would happen if the plane was struck by lightning as I watched lightning strike the land below.

I spent the first 45 minutes of my vacation sitting in the baggage claim of the New Orleans airport because the runway had to be closed due to the lightning this prevented the baggage handlers from unloading the plane. We were told that they could reopen when there wasn’t any lightning within 10 miles of the airport.

The airport still had some visible damage. In the restroom molding brown ceiling tiles drooped down over the paper towel dispenser. As I sat in the baggage claim in a chair worn from years of use I remembered seeing pictures and videos of the airport used as a triage area. I thought of the people who spent their last days on this earth in the baggage claim of an airport. It felt sort of odd to be in the same place where so many sick and dying people had been only 9 months earlier.

During my wait I had an interesting conversation with an older couple that lived on the other side of Lake Pontchartrain. I told them that I was from Tampa and visiting some family and friends in the area. The older woman mentioned that her husband was in Tampa getting back surgery. They were just returning from two weeks in Tampa.

We started talking about flights and airports and she said that there must be a lot of flights to South America and Mexico from Tampa since there were so many Hispanics in the area. She also commented that most of staff in the hotel she stayed in were not native English speakers. She assumed there must be a large Hispanic population in Tampa, which there is, but many are not necessarily immigrants. It was an interesting commentary on how non-locals see Tampa.

As soon as I got my bags I went and picked up my rental car for my drive from New Orleans to Mobile, Alabama beginning the first of four days of driving.

The Great Road Trip

I got a little turned around on my way out of the airport in my little Sonata. After getting some directions from a local gas station and figuring out how to unlock the steering wheel of the car I was off.

I hadn’t been back to New Orleans in many years. The last time I was there was for a brief visit in 2003 to do training in Houma. At the time I wasn’t old enough to rent a car so I didn’t get to see much of the area. I was curious as to how the city looked in late April post Katrina.

As I drove down the highway I saw the city in the distance. I wasn’t going there today but things looked somewhat normal off in the distance. That changed quickly when I crossed over in to East New Orleans.

From the highway it looked like the storm had passed through yesterday. I saw apartment building missing their roofs some missing whole top floors. Business such as Wal-Mart, Target and grocery stores dark with twisted signs missing pieces of their logos. I saw homes that were gutted. The whole area was an eerie ghost town that looked so much like many of the suburbs that you would find outside of any major city.

As I drove further I saw the remains of a sign for Six Flags over New Orleans. I didn’t know there was a Six Flags in New Orleans and later research showed that it opened long after I left the North Florida area.

All along the highway many of the lights were still broken. Huge highway light poles were laying in the median of the highway slowly rusting away. Billboards high in the air missing their advertisements were bent over like diving boards high above a deep pool.

When I crossed in to Mississippi I saw less from the interstate. Passing the exit for Waveland I remembered seeing video on the news about the city essentially being wiped from existence by Katrina. A park near Waveland was still closed from the storm.

Near Gulfport I looked out over the water as I crossed a bridge and saw what seemed to be the large arms of a shrimp boat in the water. When I got closer I saw that it was a shrimp boat still stranded on a sand bar. I was somewhat surprised to see this 9 months after the storm.

Approaching Biloxi I started to see signs for Beau Rivage one of the large casinos that seemed to be desperately looking for people to fill jobs. The casino had purchased between 5 and 10 billboards in a row that listed a bunch of different jobs in a sort of nursery rhyme way. I don’t remember the whole series of billboards but I know they said something to the effect of we are seeking a butcher, a baker, a martini shaker and went on from there.

After passing Biloxi I didn’t see any more damage. I reached Mobile about two and half hours after I left New Orleans.

After spending time with my grandmother I set out for Pensacola the next day. The drive to Pensacola was fairly uneventful. I did see a few stranded boats as I crossed Mobile Bay but nothing the size of the shrimp boat I had seen the previous day.

I spent the day with my dad and he showed me areas that were still damaged from Hurricane Ivan that hit in 2004.

The next day I visited my other grandmother and then drove out to the beach to see the damage Dennis had done.

Dennis’ Destruction

When my family lived in Pensacola we had a house on Pensacola Beach so I spent a lot of my childhood going back and forth between Pensacola and Pensacola Beach.

As I made the turn to go to Pensacola Beach I saw the somewhat tacky Pensacola Beach sign still showed some damage. It is the marker for turning toward the beach was always a note that I was almost home.

I drove toward my old house to see what it and the area around it looked like. I knew the house had survived the storm since I found photos of it online.

I drove down Via de Luna the main road on the beach toward the house. I rounded a corner where a huge Holiday Inn had been. I remembered going there for Sunday brunch and before the Catholic Church was built on the beach they used the bar at the top of the hotel for church services. All that was left of this huge hotel was part of the parking lot; the whole building had been demolished.

Driving further down the beach I saw another hotel that I remembered. The Dunes was a nice hotel with a really great swimming pool. Occasionally my dad used to take my brother and I over there to go swimming when we were younger. It wasn’t really allowed but no one seemed to care. The hotel was closed and the parking lot was blocked off. Construction trucks out in front made it look like they were trying to repair it.

On both sides of the road I saw additional landmarks that were missing or damaged. As I got closer to the entrance of my old neighborhood I almost missed it since the markers for Villa Sabine were missing. As I passed through the entrance I saw damage to a few homes that I had remembered growing up. Other homes were missing some were empty lots and others had the beginnings of new construction.

As I drove by my old house I slowed down and looked at the renovations that had been done. Someone was out in the front yard mowing the lawn and she looked at me sort of funny wondering why I was looking at her house. I continued on down the street past some of the other homes I remembered.

The original house my mom and dad rented when I was very young was gone. I don’t have any memories of that house. Someone was starting to build a new house on the lot.

I drove back through the neighborhood and back out onto Via de Luna toward Ft Pickens.

As I approached Ft. Pickens the damage got worse. An area that I remember having condos and a public park was all just beach now. There were many small condos that had survived but were still fairly damaged. You could see that people were working on repairing them.

Before Dennis you could drive all of the way out to the old Ft. Pickens. The park had an old fort, campground and lots of beach area that was not developed. As I approached this part of the beach I saw a road-closed sign in front of me. Dennis had washed out the road. A small information sign indicated that the road was open to pedestrian and bike traffic but there was a mile to a mile and half of no road where you would have to walk through the sand.

I pulled off and parked my car to walk around a little bit. Walking over to the bay side of the island and looking down toward the bridge coming over from Gulf Breeze I saw a little more damage on the back of some nearby condos.

I crossed over to the gulf side and walked along the beach for a while. The beaches were pristine and white as I remembered. As I walked along I started to see beautiful shells and gathered a few for a small shell jar.

As it started to get later in the day I needed to set out to head back to Mobile to begin my trip back toward New Orleans ending the next day in Houma.

From Home to Houma

I left Mobile fairly early the next morning to begin my trip.

On my way back into East New Orleans I looked for the Six Flags Park that I had seen the sign for on my way out. Off in the distance I spotted the amusement park. It was completely dark and ominous in the middle of all of the destruction in that area of town.

I started to run low on gas and needed to stop and call Joel in Houma so I could get directions. I pulled off the highway on the edge of East New Orleans thinking I might find a gas station. At the bottom of the ramp all I found was an intersection with no electricity and closed gas stations and fast food places.

I drove a bit further into New Orleans and hopped off the interstate one more time and luckily found an open gas station.

As I pumped my gas I looked around the neighborhood. Construction was beginning to restore some of the homes while others were untouched. Many of the homes in the area still had spray paint markings that indicated a rescue crew had checked the home for people and bodies. Most of the other people getting gas looked like construction workers.

I drove further into New Orleans and then called up my friend for directions to Houma.

I had been to Houma in 2003 but I wasn’t driving and I remembered the person who came to pick me up driving me down this small two-lane highway through the swamps. If you saw The Skeleton Key just picture the roads she drove down to get to the mansion.

This time I took mainly highways and didn’t really feel in the middle of nowhere until I got off of the highway to drive toward Houma. My friend Joel met me at a Shell station outside of Houma since he couldn’t give me great directions to his house. I was very happy to see him since it has been almost a year since we had seen each other.

From his place we planned out our trip back to New Orleans for the second day of the first weekend of JazzFest.

Bloody Marys and JazzFest

On our way we stopped at a small roadside bar that had self-declared famous Bloody Marys. The bar was a definite dive bar full of locals and we looked a bit out of place. We walked up to the bar and they gave us two Bloody Marys to go. This was my first experience with being able to take out alcohol from a bar, which I quickly discovered is commonplace in Louisiana.

We decided to park in the French Quarter by the Jax brewery and take the shuttle to the JazzFest. This only part of New Orleans I am very familiar with.

The bus weaved through more destroyed neighborhoods in city toward the fair grounds. Through the windows of the bus I clearly saw dark lines on the buildings that indicated where the floodwaters had been.

We arrived at JazzFest and wandered around a bit before heading over toward the Acura stage to check out the scene over there.

Originally we thought we could watch the Dave Matthews Band for a while and then wander over to another stage. Neither one of us had been to JazzFest before but after seeing the crowd we quickly realized we wouldn’t be able to travel. We worked our way through the crowd to a fairly decent place on the lawn in front of the stage. They had a nice big screen up so short people like me could see.

Joel was a great sport about it all since Dave Matthews Band is on his list of the three things he hates along with Kevin Bacon and water chestnuts. He said he did enjoy the concert and I appreciated him going to see them with me since they are one of my favorite bands.

During the whole evening we were wondering if it would rain since there was a chance of it that evening. At the very end of Dave’s set it started to rain. Coming out for an encore he did JTR, which has a refrain that was appropriate for the current weather “Rain, rain, rain down on me Again and again Rain down on me.”

After working our way though the crowd to leave we boarded the bus and headed back to the French Quarter.

The Hurricane, Not Katrina

We got back to the French Quarter around 9:30-10 but the night was still young. We were both covered in dust that was carried by the winds blowing around the fairgrounds but many other people were also so we decided to hang out for a bit.

Joel called a friend and got a recommendation for a great little restaurant I wish I could remember the name. The atmosphere was really cool when you walked in the door off to the left was a band playing among the tables instead of on a raised stage. We had to seat ourselves but there wasn’t any room when we walked in so we waited for a bit and a large table got up so we grabbed two chairs by the window and had a great dinner.

Afterward we went to Pat O’Brien’s a New Orleans bar that is famous for it’s red drink served in a glass that looks like a hurricane lamp. I had a Hurricane and Joel had a Cyclone while we waited in line to get into the piano bar.

The bouncer at the door only let people in when other people left. Two out two in, three out three in. Eventually we got to the front of the line and after two left we were in.

After drinking pretty much the whole Hurricane plus a Cosmopolitan from the piano bar I was feeling a bit tipsy. I joked if I would have had anymore to drink Joel would have had to carry me to the car.

We sat at the bar and listened to the pianos for a bit and watched the guy tap the metal tray full of change creatively to the beat of the songs.

At about 12 a.m. we left to go back to Houma and meet some of his friends at a bar in Houma.

Y Is This Bar In Houma

We rolled into to Houma at about 1 am and met Joel’s friends at the Y bar. He had told me that it was one of the very un-Houma places in town. I wasn’t real sure until we walked in and then I suddenly I felt underdressed.

A place with the atmosphere like the Y bar in Tampa would have a fairly upscale dress code and would have not let either of us in.

At the Y bar I had another Cosmo and hung out with four of his friends from the papers in Houma and Thibodaux.

After about an hour I was getting tired and really wanted a shower since I was still covered in sand from JazzFest so we left.

That night I was happy to be not looking at making at least an hour drive to another city and another state.

Boudreaux The Crawfish

Sunday morning the papers were sponsoring a crawfish boil. I am a very tolerant vegetarian and so I said I would go but not partake in the crawfish.

On our way to the boil we passed a drive through daiquiri stand. Joel had told me about these places when he first moved to Houma. He offered to pick up some drinks. I didn’t think it would be open since it was 11 am on a Sunday morning but sure enough they were. They handed us the daiquiris in a “closed container” which was a Styrofoam cup with the straw opening taped shut with masking tape.

Since I work for the corporate office of the same company I wasn’t sure how kosher it would be for me to show up at a company event with a daiquiri at 11 am on a Sunday morning. Joel assured me it would be ok and that they would be disappointed if we didn’t.

We got a little lost and were told to look for a building with a lion out front. Eventually we found the Cajun Center. This was the beginning of the full Houma experience for me.

We walked into a large room with long plastic tables covered in white plastic sheeting. At the front of the room was a large blue bin that contained boiled crawfish. The ceiling was decorated with white drapes leading to the center of the room where a small gold chandelier hung. The walls were concrete block and metal. Needless to say it was a classy joint.

We picked a table and I sat down while Joel and his friends went through the line and got food. They came back to the table with a tray of crawfish, a piece of corn, a piece of sausage and a tray for the crawfish shell.

This is where it got a bit gross for me. In order to eat a crawfish you break the tail off of the body and then eat the meat out of the tail. Often the tail meat had this greenish crawfish guts but you would eat that along with the tail meat. At one point someone cracked open their crawfish and the greenish guts landed on my hand. I just took a napkin and wiped it off but it was pretty gross.

Joel picked up one of his big crawfish and named it Boudreaux and had it dancing around and talking to me about how he, the crawfish, was good to eat. It was sort of funny and it didn’t really bother me.

I have watched people eat lobster, crab and shrimp with the shells on before and that never even slightly bothered me but the crawfish was almost more than I could handle.

After the crawfish massacre, just kidding, myself, Joel and his friends set out for another day of JazzFest.

More Festivities and More Destruction

This time we parked in the neighborhood surrounding the fair grounds. The day before we didn’t really know where we were going but this time we had someone in the car that knew where to go.

Driving through the neighborhood I saw more flooded homes and flooded cars still sitting in the driveway or street where they were before the storm. This was also a very eerie feeling. The neighborhood was sort of a frozen in time from last August but had this layer of dust, dirt and dried muck covering the cars and homes.

This day we had more time to explore the whole festival since we were there much earlier. We wondered to a few different stages and heard a bunch of different acts. Two of Joel’s friends spotted Mayor Ray Nagin and had their picture taken with him.

By the end of the day I was exhausted. The highlight act of the day was Bruce Springsteen. We tried to get close to the main stage to see him but ended up only being able to find room in the walkway and kept getting bumped around so we move back where we could see the big screen and hear the music.

A few songs into the set I was ready to go. We had been out there all day after the daiquiri in the morning and then another daiquiri later in the day along with some beignets all of the alcohol, sugar and sun were getting to me.

We left shortly before the end of the Springsteen set since we were all pretty exhausted.

Walking back to the car I was looking at the lines on the homes in the area and noticed that they were as tall as me. If I would have been standing where I was after Katrina I would have been underwater.

We walked past a FEMA trailer and I looked over and saw a lady looking through her blinds at us as we passed. A few of the homes in the neighborhood had been restored and people were living in them a few other homes had signs out in front indicating that they would be back.

On our way back to Houma I notices tons of flooded cars under the interstate. Most had been broken into to steal anything that was usable. The cars ranged from fairly new cars to crummy old cars that could have been there from before the storm but they all shared the mucky grey color of the dried floodwaters.

The Un-Houma Tour of Houma

Houma is a very small town in the middle of a bunch of bayous. There really isn’t a whole lot to the town but it is still an interesting place.

In the afternoon Joel took me on what he called the Un-Houma Tour of Houma. We went to this nice little place for lunch where they had a good veggie wrap. The last time I was in Houma the only place they could think of to take me for lunch was to the health food store.

After lunch he showed me around the town. We drove out to the mansion where The Skeleton Key was shot. Then we went over to this neat little store that imported things from Asia mainly Japan and China I believe. I found a neat yin and yang fish painting.

That evening we went to a sushi place. I am a big fan of sushi and I was surprised that this place was pretty good. One odd thing they did was to bring us fried Chinese noodles with our miso soup. That didn’t really make sense to me but this was Houma after all.

That evening we went to a movie and then picked up a book that Joel had recommended that I read.

I decided to spend my last day of vacation wandering around the French Quarter.

The French Quarter

The next morning I told Joel goodbye, thanked him for his hospitality and drove back to New Orleans.

I ended up getting a little twisted around and missed the Canal St. exit and got off at another place. Once again I needed to get some gas for my car and ended up on a quest to find an open gas station and a public restroom.

Normally when you drive down the street and see a McDonalds or some other fast food place you know you can usually stop there and get a restroom. That doesn’t work in New Orleans right now. The first couple of times I saw a McDonalds I thought that might be a place I could stop real quick but as I got closer I saw the water lines and realized they were not open.

After driving for a little while I found a gas station. I think they had just opened since they had a now open sign out in front of the station. I was in luck since they had gas and a public restroom.

With a little bit of gas in my tank I headed toward the French Quarter. As I got closer to downtown I saw the water lines again.

Driving through downtown I saw people dressed for work in suits and business clothes walking in between the buildings. It was good to see some signs of major businesses returning to the area.

In the French Market I purchased a necklace from one of the vendors. He told me that he had lost everything in the storm and was living out of a FEMA trailer and waiting for money to rebuild. I asked him if the JazzFest had helped his business and tourism a lot. He told me things were picking up but the JazzFest didn’t usually impact his business a lot since it was in a different part of the city.

I spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the streets, taking pictures.

The thing that struck me the most about the French Quarter was the stark contrast between that area and the rest of the city. If you were dropped into the French Quarter without seeing the rest of the city you probably wouldn’t know what had happened here less than a year ago.

In the downtown area and the French Quarter it is hard to find very much storm damage. The French Market was missing some of the canopy over the open-air market. The missing areas were covered with blue tarps but that was the only major damage in the area I saw. I did see a few crooked lamps and street signs but that could easily be from a drunken person hanging off of it.

I left the French Quarter for the airport as a rainstorm started to close in on the area.

After seeing all of the videos and pictures from the days after Katrina I knew what I was going to see but seeing it on TV or Online didn’t have the same impact as seeing it with your own eyes.

More photos from my trip.

I am going to be posting a few things that I hadn't done yet since I wanted to wait until I got the header redone. I just wasn't happy with the way it looked.

Paddle Boat Wheel

This is the wheel of the paddle boat I rode on during the dinner cruise at the Saxotech User Conference earlier this month. We went from a dock down the Intracostal Water Way along St. Pete Beach and back.

The food was marginal and the band was worse but the company was good.