After grabbing some complimentary pastries from the lobby of La Quinta,
Day Four began with a whole lot more Texas behind us than in front of us.
Just for the record, by the time we get to Louisiana, we will have crossed
eight hundred and seventy-some-odd miles of Texas. Whoo-doggie!!! At 10:15,
while we were passing through Beaumont, TX, which is clearly the ass-end of
Texas, we stopped for our 100-mile breakfast break at a very sketchy McDonald's.
The restaurant was surrounded by factories belching unidentifiable, though
almost certainly noxious, fumes into the air. And the general area was
populated by all kinds of heavy-industrial blight. As we stepped from the car
we were assaulted by waves of odor that we feared might actually be coming from
the McDonald's. Suddenly we didn't feel so much like eating, but we forged ahead,
and everything turned out fine until… we decided to use the bathroom on the way
out the door. There were two stalls and the doors were open, and sitting on the
toilet was some sort of bum, who looked like he had been there for quite a while
and had no plans to leave anytime soon.
At 11:00 we crossed into our fifth new state: Louisiana. As an aside, an annoying
travel note is that when you're headed east, maximum speed limits go down, so just
about the time you wish you could go much faster, because you're getting sick of the
road, you can't. It's just not possible to flirt with 100 MPH, like we did in
Arizona, when the speed limit is only 70.
We had a lunch date at the Crawfish Kitchen in Breaux Bridge, LA at 12:30.
Although we were 220 miles away when we woke up this morning, we never really
talked about what time we should leave; our departure time was chosen almost
completely at random, by virtue of the fact that our alarm clock did not go off.
Despite all that, we arrived at the Crawfish Kitchen at 12:35. Now, that's a
well-executed piece of travelin'.
Apparently, word of our endeavor is spreading far and wide, because we arrived at
the Crawfish Kitchen to find a jubilant crowd, waving banners and cheering our
arrival. We were whisked through the crowd into the relative warmth and safety of
the 'Kitchen,' where we sat down to a Cajun buffet with Mon Mon and Paw Paw Theriot,
Louis and Amalie Guillot, and Libby Mannina. According to Amalie, this is the only
Cajun buffet we may ever see. The food was fantastic, the conversation hysterical,
and it was fun to catch up with everybody. Thanks to all the Louisiana Theriot's who
were able to make it, and we missed those of you who were unable to come. And we'd
especially like to thank Desireé and Ryan Dugas for making the signs, even
though they were unable to make it to lunch. After posing for a picture underneath
the restaurant's plaster crawfish (which may very well be the largest in the world,
for all we know), we were back on the road, headed for New Orleans.
We were nearly forty miles beyond Breaux Bridge when tragedy nearly struck. We were
laughing about something or other, when Lars happened to look down and see that the
fuel warning light was on. For how long, only the gods knew. We had previously
calculated that, in an extreme emergency, we could travel sixty miles on the two
gallons that are left once the warning light comes on. Problem was, as far as we
knew, we could have been driving for 59 miles with that light lit. It was a tense
five miles to the LA 73 exit, but all was not sandstorms and locusts. When we pulled
out our Interstate Exit guide, we discovered that LA 73, in addition to life-giving
gas stations, also had a Krispy Kreme. Now, the Krispy Kreme was actually just a
booth inside the Exxon Kwik-E-Mart, and the donuts had probably been sitting there
most of the day, but… aaaaahhhhhhhh, sweet Krispy Kreeeeemes.
After a couple of wrong turns, we finally made our way to Jimmy Theriot's (Lars'
Uncle) pad in New Orleans. On the way, we passed City Park Cemetery. All graves
in New Orleans have to be above ground because the city is 8 feet below sea level
and if you buried people, you'd have family members floating down the Mississippi
every time it rained. The convention makes for some really cool, and creepy-looking
cemeteries. Jimmy lives on Canal Street on the bottom level of a duplex, so we found
the hidden key, dropped off our stuff, and headed for the French Quarter. We took
pictures of anything and everything. So many in fact, that we're going to break
with tradition and display them in a kind of photo essay format. And awaaaaay,
we go:
Mike in front of the Dixie Queen Riverboat.
Lars in front of the Natchez Riverboat.
Here's a pretty cool photo of Jackson Square (the heart of the French Quarter) at sunset.
This one is for everyone who's ever heard me bitch about Paul Prudhomme, the man who accidentally scorched the hell out of an expensive piece of fish, told some tourists it was "blackened", and started a marketing blitz that convinced the world that Cajuns like their food burned to a charcoal crisp.
I call this one: "Happy Man, With Beer".
Bourbon Street is pretty at Christmastime. And damn cold.
This one's for the Waz: It's the Winky... Dinky Dog!
Mike at one of the cooler intersections in the Quarter.
Lars is very excited to be outside of Pat O'Brien's, the bar that invented the Hurricane.
This picture is just cool. Deal with it!
Who knows what evil lurks inside of Harrah's Casino? ... The Shadow Knows!
And now. . . Misc-Silliness.
Here's a photo essay we call "Road Tedium Begins to Set In"
Advances in technology help rejuvinate a tired joke.
While looking for the bathroom, Lars stumbles upon the Video Poker booth.
We took this picture to show that Tobasco is made right down the street from where we were eating. (Go check a map!)
The pastries were complimentary for a reason.
After grabbing some complimentary pastries from the lobby of La Quinta,
Day Four began with a whole lot more Texas behind us than in front of us.
Just for the record, by the time we get to Louisiana, we will have crossed
eight hundred and seventy-some-odd miles of Texas. Whoo-doggie!!! At 10:15,
while we were passing through Beaumont, TX, which is clearly the ass-end of
Texas, we stopped for our 100-mile breakfast break at a very sketchy McDonald's.
The restaurant was surrounded by factories belching unidentifiable, though
almost certainly noxious, fumes into the air. And the general area was
populated by all kinds of heavy-industrial blight. As we stepped from the car
we were assaulted by waves of odor that we feared might actually be coming from
the McDonald's. Suddenly we didn't feel so much like eating, but we forged ahead,
and everything turned out fine until… we decided to use the bathroom on the way
out the door. There were two stalls and the doors were open, and sitting on the
toilet was some sort of bum, who looked like he had been there for quite a while
and had no plans to leave anytime soon. 
