Mardi Gras!!!

Brian and I are here in New Orleans, it's Mardi Gras weekend, and we're exhausted. We got in late Wed. nite/early Thursday morning. The flight from Eugene to Denver was gorgeous. Frost was forming on my window as I watched. Tiny, delicate patterns etched in an ephemeral crystal while I stared intently at a blank slate. The segment from Denver to New Orleans was delayed, so I got to chatting with a lady named Risha from Toronto. She also had business in New Orleans, and was going to her first Mardi Gras. She was my age, an engineer for some oil pipeline company, and was so sweet that we gave her a ride to her hotel as we headed to ours.

Thursday I worked for a few hours- I went and made presentations at a Fine Art distributor here that carries our product, then we headed down to the nearest spot to catch the parades for the evening. The locals are amazing! We are NOT in the French Quarter, nor were we down by Bourbon St. so we were in a group of locals who come to the same spot for over 50 years! They were really nice, with their kids, their friends, and they told us lots of lore about each parade. No flashing to get beads, you just stand there and wave and cheer. However, everyone had way too much to drink around us, so there were a lot of high-spirited people all trying to get the cool beads.

There were 3 parades on Thursday - Knights of Babylon, Knights of Chaos, and Krew of Muses. We got 2 LARGE bags of stuff that they were throwing from the floats. The Krew of Muses was loading right outside our hotel so I was able to get a few snapshots in broad daylight. Good thing, since the parades were so dark you couldn't get photos. This photo is the flavor of the Krew of Muses- lots of satire about current events, politics.

It was all women on the floats. To ride on a float you have to be a member of their club. It costs thousands of dollars, and you have to buy your own beads to throw! However, Muses has some of THE best throws (the locals can also vouch for that). I got some really cool stuff from Muses. Knights of Bablylon were a revival of one of the parades from the 1800's so their floats were on the original wagon beds of the old parade. We're talking wooden wheels creaking along under modern floats. Wow!

Between floats are regular parade things- Lots of stunning high school bands, dance teams, cheerleaders, and people on horses. Someone fell off their horse about 2 buildings down from us, which stopped the parade for 10 minutes. By the end of the evening (parades came from about 7 pm to 11:30) we were exhausetd and ready to trudge the 6 blocks back to our hotel.

Friday I had to teach my all-day workshop. Luckily there were only about 10 people in the class, so I wasn't asburned out as I usually get from my workshops. At luch I went to Mulates, a famous local restaurant. I had a fried-Alligator Po-boy for lunch. When we asked teh waiter what Alligator tasted like he said "Like Chicken, squid, and frog-legs". I don't know what frog-legs taste like (nor will I ever, thank you Muppet Movie) but now I do know what Alligator tastes like. Like sweet, rubbery chicken. I liked it. Brian didn't care much for it. For our evening repast we had Asian Fusion. We figured we'd had our share of local food, now we could get what we wanted.

Krew De'Etat, Morpheus, and Hermes were the parades on Friday nite. We thought they said "Herpies" as the parade name,so the locals really got a kick out of those two crazy oregonians. Friday night we had signs saying "love from Oregon". That was the best idea we had all weekend! I got so many piles of beads thrown right at me- it was great!! The locals just thought we were the most exuberant, happy people that they'd met in a long time because it was all so new to us. If anyone wants a good, clean Mardi Gras parade experience, head down to the corner of St. Charles and St. Joseph. On the south side of the street, on the East corner, go down about 1 building. There you will find the nicest, sweetest locals who will give you the best advice on what beads to get.

I gotta get going now. We're driving to Pensacola today. Have a great weekend! I'll try to post more photos later...Until then, we want you to ponder the name of the New Oleans Police- NO PD!