Whoa.

WHOA.

WHOOOOOOOOOOA!!!

Okay, so I guess we’ll start with the elephant in the room. It’s been a crazy few weeks for us, and I don’t think we really understood or appreciated what was going on with this thing. It wasn’t until we got back to the trailer Sunday evening and finally started reading and catching up that we realized how bad the shit was hitting the fan.

For starters, it was absolutely jarring walking around New Orleans for a weekend, listening to people make jokes about it and pack into tiny bars, and then come back and watch the news. I’m sure the bars weren’t as full as they would normally be, and we did what we could to find places we could grab a corner away from people. But holy s**t, I didn’t hear one person talk about it like it wasn’t some big joke. Or even a thing to be concerned about, really.

And I’ve been trying to figure out if this is the best or worst time to be doing what we’re doing, and I can only settle on… it’s a little of both. We went to Universal the week before it shut down. We went to New Orleans before it will inevitably be shut down (I sit outside Houston as I write this, and they have shut down all bars and clubs starting tomorrow morning… and if Jenny and I want some good restaurant food it’ll be carry out of delivery… which honestly I’m pretty okay with). The truth is after New Orleans, we’re mostly headed west with the main goal of getting as far away from people as possible. So in that case… good.

But we’re the healthy young adults who could have it, spread it and not even be showing symptoms. And we’re rolling into RV parks with a mostly older clientele. So in that case… bad.

So I guess the point is… this blog will probably be pretty boring for the next few weeks. We’ll be mostly hidden away in our trailer enjoying the scenery and maintaining our distance from the people around us. We hit our irresponsible and selfish quota for this pandemic. And I still owe Jenny a po’ boy. 

Friday

First stop was the Garden District for po’ boys at a place called Parasol’s. Met a lovely older couple who struck up a conversation with Jenny, and proceeded to give their life story when they found out what we were doing. It included swimming with sharks and renting a car and driving through Africa. Something like that.

Then a dog ran in from the street right up to Jenny, stuck around for some pets, and was gone again. He was so quick we couldn’t even get a picture. WE DON’T EVEN KNOW HIS NAME. I dream about him sometimes…

I told Jenny we should get the food sooner rather than later. She disagreed. So we waited after a few drinks. Then I went to get the food, and they were closed. I came back and told Jenny. She cried. We cried together. It was sad.

After that letdown, we walked around the Garden District a little bit more, I took a picture of a gas station, we ate Mexican food and then we went home.

Saturday

Woke up super early, like 11:30am or something, and went to Cafe Du Monde because OF COURSE WE DID. Guess what we got?

The rest of the day, in absolutely particular order:

• Ate beignets
• Drank coffee
• Listened to a steamboat rock out
• Drank alcoholic beverages
• Went on a tour of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
• Saw Nicholas Cage’s tomb (seriously)
• Saw Marie Laveau‘s tomb
• Drank alcoholic beverages (Purple Drank at Lafitte’s… not the cough syrup one)
• Went BACK to Parasol’s and got the po’ boys
• Drank alcoholic beverages
• Saw some bands on Frenchmen street
• Drank alcoholic beverages
• Almost got a tattoo
• Drank alcoholic beverages
• Ate fried chicken

Check the Instagram for some highlights. I host my own website so videos go elsewhere. And “drank alcoholic beverages” towards the end of the night roughly translates to “Chris had to order two beers to meet the $10 minimum for the credit card since he never carries cash, so he double fisted those AND finished Jenny’s drinks because we couldn’t bring them into the next place and Chris got f**king wasted.”

Roughly translated.

Sunday

Sunday turned into a much more relaxed day. Mostly out of pure hangover necessity, and partly out of sheer laziness.

Started the day with brunch and mimosas at Court of Two Sisters which was super expensive and super worth every goddamn penny.

Then we spent about an hour looking for an ATM and a valid place to break a $5 bill that wouldn’t be a waste so we had change for the St. Charles streetcar. 

Long story short, I own a pack of gum now.

Ended up down at Audubon Park, where I deeply regretted wearing jeans instead of shorts in the 80 degree weather. The path is one big loop around a golf course and a lake, and is full of awesome looking trees like above that have probably been there for LITERALLY a million years. Literally.

After that, we walked through the neighborhood and by some ridiculous houses, and ended up at Superior Seafood & Oyster Bar where some oysters and frozen French 75’s rounded out our New Orleans adventure.

Once we got back to the trailer I realized I still owed Jenny a po’ boy she wanted from earlier in the afternoon because she wasn’t thrilled with the one she had at Parasol’s. (Not busting her chops… I agreed with her.) But I definitely was not getting out of the trailer to go find one again. So after alllllll of that, we left New Orleans two po’ boys short of a completed hand.

So we’re outside of Houston now, and the plan tomorrow is to buy some hazmat suits and get some po’ boy goodness in our lives.

Everyone be smart out there. Smarter than we’ve been so far. Please?

And big thank you to our buddy Frank for hooking us up with some killer NOLA spots. See you in Cali in a few months.