Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Rough Side Up
Wednesday
January 21, 2004
"If you think you might come to California, I think you should..."
-Counting Crows "A Long December"
It's a lock: I'll be hitting New Orleans next month for some Mardi Gras season fun.
Southwest Airlines' flights that connect Tampa with New Orleans are incredibly cheap, and New Orleans is one of my favorite cities (most recently visited in March 2003). Not counting airplane layovers and the like, I've had four visits to the Big Easy:
1. March 1991. It was my first visit there, and I loved it. We ate at the Cafe Du Monde, and visited the only Hard Rock Cafe I've ever seen with decent parking. I was 14, and there on a family vacation, so the French Quarter wasn't in the cards. But we did go on a tour of the Superdome.
|  | | J.C. Cuadra (left) and Matt Pickney (right) are veterans of the Mardi Gras fun in New Orleans. |
2. February 2000. My first Mardi Gras. Mike Miller (my friend from high school who lived in the city at the time) was a great host, and we discovered just how insanely crowded Bourbon Street could get the Saturday night before Mardi Gras (which is actually the busiest night of the whole season, even moreso than the Tuesday night of Mardi Gras itself). The only time in my life where a crowd has been so thick as to physically pick me up and carry me with it (I'm not talking crowd surfing, I'm talking packed like sardines). Unexpectedly running into Donald Wolfe AND Josh Tenisci's dad within twenty minutes of one another, both on Bourbon Street. My first chance to find out how insanely good a hurricane could be. And then the chaos of trying, with the help of my brother Matt, to find Mike at the end of one of the evenings.
3. August 2002. The Phi Tau national convention was held there, and I jumped at the chance to head back to the Big Easy. I'll forever have memories of an insanely free-spending Matt Parker paying for a bunch of us to keep getting round after round of free drinks at a gentleman's club while spent a long, long, LONG time in the back with one of the ladies. I think Matt may actually owe me $20 for betting that the Packers would win the Super Bowl (giving me the other 31 teams in the field), but considering how much free booze came by way of him that weekend, I don't think I'll hold him to it. Drinking with some of the old Evansville crew on Bourbon Street was a surreal experience.
|  | | James Maynor hits Bourbon Street for the first time next month. |
4. March 2003. A damn fun time with my FFL crew, and proof that the French Quarter is a fun place even after Mardi Gras is over. Having the SEC Men's Basketball tournament in town didn't hurt things any.
This time around, it's going to be my friend James Maynor and I. This should be extreme. James is one of my favorites for going out and hitting crowds with. We've booked the
Canal St. Marriott, which has become a traditional spot to stay for trips to the Big Easy (that's where I stayed during my past two trips there). And, in one of those classic James moments, he called down there and managed to talk the per-night price from $279 down to $146. He's freaking amazing with that stuff.
It's the weekend before the weekend before Mardi Gras, which should help things be less conjested (but it'll still be packed). Hell, two weeks after Mardi Gras last year there was a nice crowd in the French Quarter (even on a Sunday night). And when it comes to New Orleans, you never know who will come out of the woodwork... Maybe my bro Matt and some of his friends from Mississippi State might make the trip down. We'll see.
Also, as long as we're talking trips, I'm in the final stages of booking a trip to San Francisco in March. See, I have a Southwest frequently flier roundtrip ticket to use... but it must be used by March 21. Flights from Tampa to New Orleans are dirt cheap (relatively speaking), but Tampa to Oakland should be a worthwhile use of the ticket. I can't fly to San Francisco, since Southwest doesn't fly there. But no worries, I can rent a car and drive across the bay. As it turns out, I have a number of friends in town: Glenn Brown, Ronnie Aquino, Nimesh Patel... and it turns out that Laura, a girl that I met by chance last year in Clearwater (by way of James), is moving to San Fran early next month. Jackpot. So free plane ticket, free places to stay with friends, the only real expense will be the rental car. That's my kind of vacation.
Free time has been at a premium as of late, but I did finish another season on WWE Smackdown: Here Comes The Pain, ending with Mitsuharu Misawa as the World Champ (beating Ric Flair to retain the belt at WrestleMania). I need to see if there are some newer CAWs posted online to download onto my memory card before I start the next season (and yes, that sounds incredibly dumb to many of you, I know, but I assure you that it's fun). Or I might have to get back into playing Tiger Woods Golf 2004 (aka virtual heroin).
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