Sunrise over New Orleans

The last full day was better than I expected. I “slept in” until 5:30 (as usual). We ended up watching the sunrise over the river. Our room in the Sheraton is very nice, as one would expect. But I just can’t get over this amazing window we have. It’s a floor-to-ceiling window about 4 feet wide. I can walk up to it and almost look straight down the building. Couple that with our amazing view and the perfect weather, and it’s just breathtaking. (That black mound you see at the bottom of the pic is my feet, propped up on a foot stool.)

I decided that I would head downriver, visiting the CBD and Warehouse district for the morning; then take the St. Charles streetcar to the Garden District. I started out with a NOLA breakfast which naturally included grits. I’ve eaten crawfish, collard greens, and several other new foods. But in the past, I was never able to eat grits. I asked them to put the grits on the side. My breakfast included a large bowl of grits, which I was quite surprised to find I liked immensely. I ate them all, and scraped the bowl.

B24 Liberator

Then I was off for a quick stop at the WW II museum. That’s where my plans fell apart. It’s overwhelming. If you are ever in NOLA, make sure you see this museum. It is new, modern, large, and attractive. It is filled with all kinds of WW II artifacts immaculately restored to brand-new condition. It tells a quite complete story of the war with movies, posters, “war boards”, and display cases. I know a lot about the general history of WW II, but there was enough detail that I learned quite a bit more. It has a Tom Hanks movie “Beyond All Boundaries” complete with a huge screen (larger than IMAX), snowflakes, flashing lights, buzzing seats, small screens that pop out of the stage floor, and miscellaneous hardware that comes down from the ceiling. In spite of all the gimmicks, the movie tells a cohesive story with an emotional impact. It has an interactive submarine exhibit that simulates a US sub battle. (I was the torpedo firing officer.) As usual in really great museums, I saw and overheard people who were experts discussing various weapons or items that were on display. The thing that had the largest impact on me was the personal histories. They had several stations where they had selected 4 people to offer a 2-minute personal history on an event or time in the war that was being discussed by the exhibits in the immediate area. I couldn’t resist listening to each person’s history. Here’s a cool thing. My bike tour guide told me his ex-mother-in-law was one of the people who had a history in the museum. A company in NOLA designed and manufactured the landing craft used for amphibious landing, as well as PT boats and several other small watercraft. I found her history and heard her story, along with all the others. I finally got overwhelmed in the afternoon and went back to the hotel.

Cochun Butcher Halloween Display Case

Of course I needed lunch. Just 2 blocks from the museum is a very nice restaurant called Cochun’s. Those in the know walk behind the restaurant and eat lunch at a less formal place called Cochun Butcher. This place has world-class sandwiches. I enjoyed mine immensely. (Pulled pork, swiss cheese, and grilled onions — what’s not to like?) It’s a good thing we’re going home, because looking around, I noted that everybody else’s sandwich look at least as good as mine.

Danita and I joined up for dinner. We had a Muffaletta sandwich — something that is peculiar to NOLA. Danita didn’t care for it very much. I thought it was OK, but nothing special. We decided the music scene on Tuesday is probably not a lot better than on Monday. So we got a bottle of wine. We’re spitting our attention between our magnificent view and “Iron Man”.

Last night’s dinner was great. I had crawfish and collard greens (both for the first time). Both were excellent. Danita had very good crab-salmon patties.

This morning, while Danita went to her seminars, I took a historical bike tour of the Frubourg-Marigny district (just downriver from the French Quarter). We rode crazy-cool bikes with “handlebar mustache” handlebars. There was one forward gear and coaster brakes (peddle backwards to stop). They had very wide saddles with soft springs. The tires were an inch and a half wide. These were perfect for touring the city. The tour was excellent. The guide was a nice guy, knew is history, and presented it coherently and in  an interesting manner. It didn’t hurt that we had perfect weather. I was surprised to learn how old the buildings are in this district. Most of the houses were built with barge lumber. Before steam ships, it took great effort to go up the Mississippi. As a consequence, people who wanted to move goods downriver built barges out of wood. When they got to NOLA, they broke the barges up and sold the wood. The people in NOLA used this barge wood to build their houses. Our guide owns a creole cottage in Frubourg-Marigny. he stripped off several layers of various coverings and ended up with interior walls that were either barge wood or exposed brick. It was a perfect morning and early afternoon. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pics. My phone was in my backpack, which I left with the bike shop while on tour.

That was the end of the good times for today. Danita and I met up at the room at the end of the day. For dinner, we went to a small “Cajun-Italian” restaurant that was supposed to be the most romantic restaurant in the city and have excellent food at a reasonable price. This place is upstairs from a Jazz bar on Frenchmen Street, which is were the city’s best music is supposed to be. The price was reasonable. But the place was not at all romantic and the food was pretty bad. We started with a salad (romaine lettuce with a rather poor Italian dressing). The entrees had plenty of meat, but that was all they had. The sauces were over seasoned and very salty. The place was noisy. It took an incredibly long time to get the food. When we finally got out, we walked up and down “music ally”. The bands we heard weren’t very good. Of course, it being Monday night, several places were closed and I’m sure the best bands weren’t playing. I was thinking of grabbing a drink when we got back to the hotel, but instead of a quiet bar with tinkley music, they had a projection screen with the World Series on. All-in-all, the evening was a bust.

Oh, well. It was a perfect day, and we’ll have another evening tomorrow.

How does one write “New Orleans”?. It’s lots of letters and more than one word. Certainly an abbreviation in order. “NO” is not a good abbreviation for obvious reasons. In reading a guide book, I saw the term “NOLA” — New Orleans, LA. One can even say it as a word. And that’s what I’ll be using.

Haloween Parade

We arrived about 6 PM Saturday. Transportation to downtown is not so good, so we grabbed a taxi to our hotel. The ride took longer than I thought. Traffic on Saturday evening was a mess. Our first night was at the Comfort Inn. (There were no rooms at the Sheraton.) When we got there, we found ourselves in the business district, bereft of tourists and tourist eateries. I found a possible place on the internet, but when we got there, one look through the window convinced us that we didn’t want to eat there. So we just started walking down the street. We saw a nice-looking eatery before long. About the time we found it, we heard police sirens and saw people lining up. So we went over to watch the NOLA Halloween parade. It was a blast. They had quads, bands, equestrians, floats, music, and dancers. Most of them were throwing stuff to the kids — candy, plastic cups, frisbees, even beads. We were standing in a shower of “stuff” with kids scrambling around our legs picking it up. Taking a pic of moving people at night with a cell phone camera doesn’t work very well, but here’s a pic that might help give an idea.

After the parade, we went back to the eatery and had a NOLA sampler: gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, fried green tomatoes, remoulade, and the best biscuits I have ever had. One order was plenty for both of us.

This morning, we got up “early” (for NOLA). We wheeled our suitcace to the Sheraton then walked over to Cafe du Monde for those wonderful beignets (NOLA donuts covered in powdered sugar). The cafe has a large outdoor dining area under roof. When we got there about 8, the outdoor tables were closed. There was a small indoor area and we sat down right away. By the time we left, there was a long line waiting to get in. After Church, the outdoor tables were open and completely filled, and there was still a line. Next up was a historical walking tour of the French Quarter, followed by lunch (genuine NOLA Po Boy sandwiches). Then a tour of the Cabilido (the antebellum seat of power in Louisiana). Finally, we sat down and listened to a brass band doing a street performance. All of this was right around Jackson Square, the focus of the French Quarter. I didn’t take any pictures. There are a zillion pictures of the French Quarter. I couldn’t possibly come close to what everybody has already seen. As much fun as it is being here, I must say that there is one advantage of looking at pictures over being here — you can’t smell anything in the pictures. NOLA is filthy.

View from Room

It was time to check into the Sheraton. The hotel is amazing. We have a room on the 31st floor with a beautiful view of the river. Just as we got into the room, they had another parade. This was a small parade with two high school bands. This time, we were content to watch the parade from our room.

Well, it’s getting to be dinner time. We’re going to try Olivier’s Creole Restaurant — “Elegant but casual bistro serving classic Creole dishes made from old family recipes.” It sounds like good food and good fun.

I am writing this on Sunday, 10/20. There are no pics this week.

Danita only went to her Dad’s house one day this week. That was Monday. I stayed home doing chores. I used my bike to do most of my chores, but when it came to taking several boxes of books that had come from Bud’s house to Goodwill, I decided that there can be a pretty convincing advantage to using a car. With a trunk.

Tuesday I had my once-every-other-year appointment with Dr. Ludmer, my rheumatologist. When we moved to Columbia, I changed all my other doctors. But I like Dr. Ludmer a lot, and I only see her every other year, so I drive up to Towson every once in a while to pay her a visit. I was out of the doctor’s office by 9:30 and Tuesday was a beautiful day. I decided that as long as I was going to be in Towson, I might as well take full advantage of it. I brought my bike and took a ride that starts at Oregon Ridge in Hunt Valley. I had an old 60-mile route that I saved from many years ago. I didn’t have time to ride that long, so I made some changes to take 10 miles off the route. The changes worked out splendidly. I spent a good amount of time riding through Baltimore County farms and horse country. Most of the rest of the time was in the wooded areas surrounding Pretty Boy Reservoir. I spent a small amount of time in residential areas, and passed exactly one eatery, which just happened about lunch time. The roads were all great. The weather was amazing. The countryside was beautiful. The lunch was fine. I got back home in time to make our yoga class.

I intended to take another long ride Thursday. I found a new group of cyclists, “Cycle2Health”. They are retired folks who are also accomplished cyclists. They have a group ride every Thursday. There’s generally a short, easy ride for beginners and a longer, more difficult ride for experienced riders. Unfortunately I made a mistake and went to where the prior week’s ride started. I was 15 minutes early for the ride, but much more than 15 minutes away from this week’s ride. So instead of a long bike ride, I ended up riding to the grocery store to pick up some lunch food. I hope to be more successful next Thursday, if the weather forecast holds.

Friday was the annual Howard County Senior Expo. This is held at one of the local high schools on a teacher professional development day. I like to go for several reasons. They often have an interesting keynote speaker. They have a free performance by the “Capitol Steps”. They give out free flu shots. And I get to ride up to the front door while everybody else parks at the mall and takes a shuttle bus. (This because I ride my bicycle instead of driving the car.)

This year the speaker was a neurologist who talked about preventing memory loss and dementia. His recommendations: Many factors influence memory loss. One’s risk of Alzheimer’s is 2%. The risk doubles if a close relative has Alzheimer’s. However, the risk goes up by a factor of 16 based on lifestyle choices. Exercise. Eat well. Sleep well. Avoid stress. Use your memory. Meditate.

The Capital Steps is a renowned singing/comedy group that “… has been putting the ‘moc’ in democracy for 30 years.” They do a wonderful parody of current events. The auditorium was packed, and everybody was in stitches. An sample joke: Russia’s leader Putin was planning to attend a conference with Obama, but he couldn’t go because he got “snowed in” (Snowden).

Instead of going to Bud’s house yesterday, we had Bud to our house, along with Ed and Lynne. We had our annual sour beef dinner. We could have invited a lot of other folks, but with so much going on in Danita’s family, we wanted to keep the dinner small. It was really great food. Danita made candied nuts and cheese straws for snacking. The sour beef was as good as it ever gets. She had cooked carrots and onions (one of my favorite veggies), sesame asparagus (very good), as well as the traditional coleslaw. Ed and Lynne made the dumplings. (Bud prefers their more traditional recipe.) For desert, Danita made lemon bars which were served with either ice cream or sherbet and raspberries.

I used my “go to” wine store to come up with the wine. It’s not so hard to find a red wide that goes well with sour beef. The challenge was finding a white. (Lynne only drinks white wine. Some people would say this is not right, but who am I to judge? I drink red wine with fish, for crying out loud.) I ended up with both wines being from Germany, which along with the Oktoberfest beer option made it a theme dinner.

While Bud was here, we took advantage of our internet connection to work on his “change of address” list.

I don’t usually write about upcoming events, but I’m making an exception this week. Danita is attending a conference in New Orleans, and I’m tagging along. We’re leaving Saturday, 10/26 and returning Wednesday, 10/30. We’ll have all day Sunday together in the Big Easy. Then Danita will be attending the seminar during the day while I look for ways to goof off.  I don’t think I’ll have to work very hard. We’ll hook back up for dinner. The good news is that we’ll be together in the evening when New Orleans wakes up. The bad news is that we’re not night owls. Life is just filled with challenges. Here’s our itinerary:

Saturday: Southwest 661 BWI – MSY, 1:20 PM to 4:50 PM

Hotel: Sheraton New Orleans Hotel, 500 Canal St

Wednesday: Southwest 2352 MSY – BWI, 2:05 PM to 7:40 PM

My Email service is still not working. To be honest, I’ve mostly been waiting for it to fix itself, and I expect to be busy most of this week. I’ll post to the blog site most days that we’re in New Orleans, along with pics, but you probably won’t get the email. If you want to see the posts, please check in at www.quarkleaf.com. It’s too hard to separate the pictures from the text manually so I can send an email. (Or maybe I’m just too lazy.)

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

I am writing this on Sunday, 10/13. There are no pics.

We had a lot of rain this week. The remnants of the tropical storm came through as predicted on Monday. The weather cleared up the next day. But it was back with a vengeance Thursday. It gave the sump pump quite a workout. It’s been raining ever since. There was a weather forecast that the rain would clear up and that next week would be nice, but the forecast keeps on changing … and always in the direction of a little more rain.

I tried going on a group ride on Columbia trails Sunday. I decided that trail riding just is not for me. Margret started this ride group, and she is the only driving force. I give her credit for having the moxy to start the group, and she is a kind person. But she has absolutely no street smarts. She stops without clearly calling out what she’s doing. Generally the stop is either just before going up a hill (that leaves no chance to use momentum to help yourself up the hill) or at a choke point on the trail (if folks behind don’t see what’s going on, they have nowhere to go to avoid hitting somebody ahead who has stopped). But mostly I just don’t enjoy riding the trails.  I find the trails to be narrow. I’m concerned about rolling off the edge of the pavement. Pedestrians and leaves make the ride more challenging. I guess I’ll just stick to playing in the street. I had another group ride scheduled for yesterday. It is a fund raiser for the local bicycle advocacy group. It looked like a nice ride, but it was postponed due to the rain. They re-scheduled it for next Sunday. The ride starts early in the morning. Being retired, I have a lot of flexibility — up to 6 1/2 days a week for riding. But Sunday mornings are committed. Maybe next year …

Bike riding was sparse this week. We had nice weather Tuesday, but I wanted to do some chores in the morning and only got a short ride in the afternoon. I went up to Baltimore County to do a long ride Wednesday. It was fun to easily ride up hills that used to be extremely challenging. But for some reason I felt tired, it was cloudy and cool all day, and I found Palmisano’s picnic pavilion to be distressingly dirty. I managed to get a short ride in Saturday between the morning and evening showers.

We ate out a lot this week. Danita is spending 2 days a week at Bud’s house, trying to help him downsize for his upcoming move. Ed and Lynne are also going down to Bud’s. They did a wonderful job cleaning out and painting the garage. Bud is living in a large house, overflowing with everything needed to support a family of 6. He is moving to a spacious apartment in a senior community. He realizes his apartment will be smaller than his house. He understands he has to downsize. But when it comes to deciding which of the pots he won’t need, it’s hard to make a decision. Extend that out to everything from bed sheets to wine glasses –it’s a lot. In addition, the family is looking at options for selling the house. A neighbor might be interested. A real estate person came to offer advice (and ask for the listing). All this becomes quite overwhelming for Bud and somewhat stressful for Danita. Danita was at Bud’s Monday and again on Saturday. She’ll go back again tomorrow. We generally go out to eat when she comes home from a day at her Dad’s. In addition, we had an evening of shopping and ended up eating out Thursday. Then we had a neighborhood party Friday.

The shopping trip was to get a watch for Danita. After 10 years, Danita’s old watch stopped working. This is not a hard problem to solve, but it turned out not to be trivial.

Q: We have lots of gadgets we have that tell time, does Danita need a watch?

A: She is frequently in meetings where having a watch is very useful. Plus, she likes wearing the watch.

Q: Danita takes good care of her stuff and the old watch looks great. Should we fix the old watch or buy a new one?

A: A repair is $50, and it isn’t guaranteed to fix the watch. How many more years will the repaired watch last? The jeweler needs time to get the watch fixed, during which Danita won’t have the watch. We can buy a new watch in a single evening.

Q: Where should we go to buy a watch?

A: Danita wanted to see and touch the watch before buying it. That means we need a brick & mortar retail outlet. We almost never go to the mall. It’s too big and too noisy. But in Columbia, that’s the only place to go to buy (or fix) watches. (I checked.) I went to the mall during the day to pre-shop (figure out our options and select the best store to visit). I found the mall entrance that is closest to the store I selected. We went to the mall right after work. But there is rush-hour traffic to contend with. It takes time to look at different watches and make a decision. The band has to be adjusted. The sales people were great, but it took over an hour to buy a watch. After all that, maybe we could just grab a pizza for dinner.

We decided to see the movie “Gravity” today. We went to the matinee. There are plenty of critics on the web. I agree with most of them. But at the end of the day, this is a tremendous movie. It’s well worth going to watch. The only thing is, I didn’t realize it would be in 3-D. I really prefer the “old fashioned” movies where the picture stays on the screen. This movie added lots of spinning and turning to the usual 3-D affects. Danita was a little woozy when we came out.

I just received some really good news. For those of you who aren’t in the loop … Glen got home yesterday. He is having some difficulties. There will be ongoing at-home OT and PT. There will be lots of doctor’s appointments. But both Mom and Glen are delighted that he is home.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

There are no pictures this week. I am writing this on Sunday, 10/6.

It’s October and we are well into Fall. The days are shorter. The leaves are turning. The high temperature is 90 degrees. We might get the remnants of a tropical storm tomorrow. One thing stays true. If you don’t like the weather in Baltimore, wait a bit. It will be different.

I tried staying home Friday. We wanted to have the dryer vent cleaned. (You clean yours every 2 or 3 years, don’t you?) I decided that after the tech left would be a great time to clean the deck. I like our deck because it has a great view, and because it doesn’t get a lot of sun. Unfortunately, that latter point means that green stuff grows on it and I have to clean it twice a year. I don’t know how anything grows on the chemically-infused lumber they use for decks. It must be tenacious stuff, because it even grows on the plastic-covered railings. After the deck was cleaned, I had the power washer out, so I went ahead and cleaned the garage. After all that, I decided it’s too way much work to stay home. I need to spend more time riding my bike.

Danita was also home Friday. She saw the doctor Wednesday and was sick by Friday. Is that how that’s supposed to work, or did I get something wrong? I also started feeling something coming on, but I was no where as sick as she. We started taking Cold-Eze and now we’re both better.

There were no parties this week, but we’re getting pretty good at finding really great excuses to eat out. For example, “The car’s in the driveway. We’ll have to start it to park it in the garage, so we might as well eat out.” And, of course, if you have a bit of a sore throat, ice cream is a great throat-soother.

As everybody knows, the government is shut down. Danita’s research team is largely government funded. So far, there is little effect to her team. The scientists that work at Godard don’t have access to base. Mostly that means they take their lap tops home and do whatever it is scientists do all day. Fortunately, her team is under a grant that was already funded through Nov, 2014. Some of the scientists will eventually run out of work  because they can’t consult with the civil servants, or because they need data from government servers, or whatever. But for now, everybody is working.

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.

James Russell Lowell asked, “What is so rare as a day in June?” Here’s one answer — two 4-day weekends in a row. As you know, this was a weekend to visit the grand kids. The weather was just about perfect. Highs were in the 70s with lots of sunshine. We wanted to do this trip a little differently. We usually drive over to Frederick and then down I-81 in the Appalachian Mountains. We decided that since we’re there, and since the weather is so great, we should take advantage of the opportunity to enjoy the great outdoors a little bit. We started out by walking up to REI and buying a walking sticks. Manufacturers have done a lot with walking sticks. These days, they are sold in pairs. That works fine for us.  I use the left pole, Danita the right. (The difference is obvious, thanks to the bold red “L” and “R” on the wrist straps.)

Woodstock Fire Tower

Friday, we left early, drove a couple of hours, and ate breakfast at IHOP. We got quite a deal. We ordered one omelet and a spare plate. They split the omelet for us, giving us almost two whole omelets. They upgraded our pancakes to double blueberry. And we had a coupon for 20% off.

We drove for a couple of hours and took a hike to the Woodstock Fire Tower. Getting to the trail head was at least half the fun. It was a very narrow, gravel, mountain road with extreme switchbacks. The fire tower is a little wobbly, but the view from the top is amazing. I understand that on nice weekends, the tower is mobbed, with a line of people waiting to get to the top.

Falling Water Cascades

We drove a couple of hours and stopped for lunch and another hike. The lunch was at an old-time grill on Main St in Buchanan, one of the little mountain towns in the area. Danita made the better selection and had a very good Ruben sandwich. The hike was to Falling Water Cascades at Peaks of Otter on the BRP. This trail goes downhill first, which means that once reaching the bottom, there’s not many choices about how one gets back up to the parking lot. The hike and the water fall were both great.

We drove a couple of more hours and stopped for the night at an independent motel. The was cheap, well maintained, and very clean; but there were no extras. Not even a box of tissues. The room would have been fine, but the internet access was the slowest I have experienced in many years. We won’t be going back there.

Daniel Stowe Gardens

Saturday morning, it was only a couple of hours drive to get to Jul’s house for breakfast. The second thing Elizabeth said is “I want to go on an adventure.” Throughout the weekend, she kept on asking for assurance that she would get an adventure each day. Saturday we visited a small museum near one of the nuclear power plants. The museum wasn’t much, but the lake and the green space was quite nice. We enjoyed a picnic lunch. The most fun we had was scaring the geese. Fortunately, the geese were scared in three separate groups. That let grandpa demonstrate how it’s done, then Bryon scare some more, then Elizabeth scare the rest. Geese are beautiful when a group take off in flight. Sunday Jul joined us as we visited Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens. They did a wonderful job of creating a series of beautiful outdoor rooms, and the orchard house was fantastic. The kids had a great time running around and getting soaked in the walk-through water fountain. We finished the adventure with a stop at Cold Stone Ice Cream. Poor Elizabeth was so tuckered out she couldn’t eat her last spoon full of ice cream.

The view from Sharp Top

Coming home we left after dinner Sunday. We planned to drive two hours, but after an hour and a half I was ready to pull over. We splurged at a Holiday Inn Express with a pretty decent free breakfast. Monday we drove back to Peaks of Otter. The fall colors were just beginning to come in. We were amazed at how much change there was in just a few days. We took a hike that was quite ambitious for us.The trail to Sharp Top is 3 miles, with an altitude gain of over 1300 feet. Of course the view was spectacular. Sharp Top is so popular that they run a bus on weekends and during the fall for folks that can’t walk all the way up. By the time we got back, it was almost 1:00 so we had lunch at Peaks of Otter Lodge, which was a little on the expensive side.

Sharp Top as seen from Peaks of Otter Lodge

The rest of the ride home was uneventful. We normally have dinner at 6. Come 6:00, we were driving right by Bare Bones, our favorite ribs place, and the only place in the area that serves onion loaf. That made our dinner selection pretty darned obvious.

That’s it for this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.