Greetings from away

It’s hazy and humid outside. The weather app tells me its “83 degrees but feels like 90.” There’s some cloud cover though, so I’d say it feels no hotter than a mere 87 interrupted by only an occasional breeze.

It’s the kind of hot you walk out into and think “Wow, it’s pretty nice out.” before walking a few blocks and then thinking “Jeez, it’s sticky out here.”

I love it.

Nice to see you again, New Orleans. I’ve missed you.

For nearly half my life, I made an annual trip down here right around this time of year. A tradition with friends who were closer to brothers. A group of four sometimes joined by a fifth, sixth, and seventh. It was an immoveable post. One weekend each year. A music festival. A few days of eating and drinking and listening to music. Long hot days having fun and then nights that grew shorter as we got older.

Hey, man, at some point, a nice comfortable bed has more appeal than a seventeenth cocktail.

My friends had been going for years before I joined. I was 25 the first time I came, I think. Kept it up religiously until a few years ago when I just couldn’t swing it financially. That was a hard letting go. Still is. I miss that trip terribly. I’ll rejoin someday.

Over all of those annual installments though… one year at a time, one trip at a time… I spent the equivalent of about half a year here. There is no city other than my own that I’ve spent that much time in. So, beyond just missing the time here with friends, I’ve missed the place.

It is so good to be back… and this time, with my son. It’s his first time here. We’re staying in the same hotel I stayed in my first time here too. I picked it primarily for its location. It’s the perfect spot for a wide-eyed first time.

The hotel itself is the kind of ‘long in the tooth upscale’ you get in places where buildings aren’t torn down and replaced but are instead renovated and then renovated again to stay fresh despite old bones.

I like those kinds of hotels. They have a sense of place. They belong right where they are. What they lack in room-size or modern touches, they make up for with their old marble and internal courtyards with citrus trees and fountains ringed by balconies with wrought iron railings.

It was out in one of those courtyards where I first started typing this post… but per the intro, the weather today is the kind of sticky that makes air conditioning feel like the first sip of a cold drink on a hot day.

I’ll have more to say over the next few days but for now, let me just catch you up and bring you aboard so you’re seeing through the same windshield. You can’t really bring people along with you on a trip by abruptly starting somewhere around Mile 1,842. You have to go back to Mile 0 and then hurry them up to the present. I promise to speed us along.

We got in last eve. The path to get here was a bit of a cluster.

The clouds of the impending clusterfuckery began to gather yesterday morning as I was running the last of my last minute errands: running off to the barber for an overdue haircut. Got there a couple minutes early. Figured I’d check us in for our flight… and then got an error message saying “I’m sorry. Your check-in could not be completed because your travel is…”

“…more than one month away.”

I’m sorry. Three hours from now is decidedly less than one month away.

Tried again. Same error.

Sooooo… cutting to the chase, I had booked the wrong dates.

We were booked for the first Tuesday in May. Yesterday was very much not the first Tuesday in May.

I had no idea if I could change our flights but knowing United, it would have taken approximately 74 days on hold to find out that answer regardless. I was literally in a barber’s chair with no flights booked for a trip with my son that come hell or highwater, I was not going to cancel. So, I did what seemed like the best of the available options: I booked the same itinerary but for the right days this time.

The replacement itinerary cost almost double what it should have but the alternative was not going. Missing this trip with my son. Our first in almost two years. Our first flight together for a vacation ever. No. While that might have been an option, it was not a choice.

So I plunked down the money; finished getting my haircut; popped back home to collect my son; and off we went.

Flight was only as eventful as all commercial travel is these days. Easy check-in followed by getting turned away by TSA for some alleged error in that same check-in. Then back through the same two lines and then to the gate - which was conspicuously absent a plane to board… and then a gate change and a walk to the new one only to find it, too, was severely lacking in the required having of an airplane. But then the plane arrived and de-planed and then they turned it quickly and boarded quickly and off we went.

On the destination side, the arrival was downright pleasant. Our bags came out quickly and then the taxi line… wasn’t one. It briefly held my son and me. And then it went back to having no one waiting at all.

So, despite ticket snafu and travel hiccups and all, we still somehow managed to make it to our quaint old hotel smack in the middle of Bourbon Street while the sun was still up and the scene out front had yet to become the complete spectacle it would be in a few hours.

Showed my son around the place and then trotted him off to eat at a favorite of mine outside of the French Quarter. Ate alligator and rabbit stew with dumplings and their trademark slow-cooked cuts of pork. Finished it off with a pineapple upside down cake that was nothing short of sublime.

We walked, ate heavy, went back to the hotel, and then slept heavy.

And that was just what the doctor ordered for a first night.

A comfortable walk with my son to a place I know. Giving him the lay of the land on the way. Then a wait for a table long enough to take you right up to the perfect level of hungry enough to devour all that you’re served before leaning back in your chair full, satisfied, and at ease.

This morning, my son slept in. I woke up and walked over to Café du Monde and employed the veteran move of going to the back takeout window for a bag of beignets and an iced café au lait to take across the street to Jackson Square. It was the way it has always been on every one of my early morning visits. Quiet and peaceful.

Found my usual bench. Somewhere off behind me down toward the French Market, a small street band was playing jazz for the first tourists. In front of me were the neat green gardens of Jackson Square which ring around a statue; and then spill out along paths lined with roses in bloom. I’ll bring my son by tomorrow or Friday.

He slept in today – and that was just fine. It gave me time to make an old, familiar, little pilgrimage. It gave me a chance to go sit in a quiet spot I know like the back of my hand from over two decades of making that same walk and buying that same paper bag of warm beignets and then sitting down on that same bench and turning the bag over to shake up the powdered sugar.

Routine eventually becomes ritual and there is a certain comfort in that. This early morning walk before New Orleans wakes up is a routine that is now ritual.

And just like I have in every prior edition, I sat and ate them all; washed them down with my iced café au lait; and then took my time walking back. When I got back, my son was still asleep and I was in no rush. So I just let him sleep.

An unhurried couple hours later, we walked off to another favorite. It’s a brunch place just outside of the Quarter that bustles with a good crowd gathering for good food. The offerings are all wonderfully terrible for you and delicious and worth the wait. The servings are large; the coffee is strong; and the prices are fair.

It's the kind of place and kind of food that leaves you happy for a good, long walk back to the hotel… and then thankful for the cold air in the lobby and comfortable bed in the room and time to lay about doing nothing for awhile.

And that’s what we did.

My son hasn’t been keen to hustle off somewhere. To be honest, neither have I. This is just how we travel. We see no need to run a gauntlet through a place checking boxes of the things one is supposed to do. We feel no pressure to fill hours with activity just for the sake of having “made the most of the time.”

We are not ‘rushers’ despite having descended from a long line of them. My father’s side of the family – and his mother, in particular - were absolute masters at ceaselessly hastening about while on vacation as if racing against some looming judgment which would be visited upon them if they didn’t.

My grandmother approached sitting still with all of the ease of someone on the run from the law. When she and my other relatives would visit us in New York City, they would fill every waking moment with some go-see driven not so much by an interest but by some internal pressure to always be going and seeing. It was exhausting as a tour guide. It didn’t seem like it was any less exhausting for them.

They treated vacations as if they were sightseeing regimens. I am not that way. Neither is my son. Nor are we when traveling.

Today, had we been working against a regimen, little of it would have been accomplished. Instead, we rested up and relaxed and enjoyed doing exactly what it was we felt like doing. Which was very little.

In a couple hours, we’re heading off to catch a basketball game. The Pelicans against the Grizzlies. Our seats aren’t great but they were only $35 and it’s a thing to do and we wanted to do it. That’s enough reason.

On the way, there might be a stop for some crawfish and jambalaya and red beans and rice. Or maybe there won’t. And that would be fine too.

Laissez les bons temps rouler.

Let the good times roll.

We spend our lives exercising control. We schedule and manage and perform. We set times and agendas and operate against a clock. We cordon off little windows hour by hour and day by to day until they are weeks upon months upon years.

There is a freedom in letting go and just letting life roll as it will. Unencumbered. Unhurried and unbothered. At ease with the person you’re traveling with and happy to be with them. Unfettered by time or to-do’s.

“Laissez…”

“Let...”

“…les bons temps rouler.”

“…the good times roll.”

We let… and they roll.

These are good times. These trips. These times away with my son. They are like the feeling of being a kid again, riding a bike on a hot summer day, cresting a hill, and then taking your feet off the pedals to just let momentum and gravity do all the work. Warm air in your face. Nothing to do but enjoy the motion.

These are bon temps. On they roll.