Days 109 & 110 - Kicked In The Ass By Mardi Gras

Author - Grant
Based In – New Orleans

Day 109 Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157614258937513/

Day 110 Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/32017704@N03/sets/72157614340466554/

Days 109 (Saturday) and 110 (Sunday) have been combined for the purpose of this blog but they couldn’t have been more diverse. Saturday involved copious amounts of drinking, laughing, partying, hilarity, eating, beads and a few stray boobs. As a result, Sunday consisted of serious hangover nursing. Let me try to help you understand exactly why…

Saturday started innocently enough with a trip to the seedier part of New Orleans (of which there are many to choose from) to watch Tucks, one of the daytime parades which one of Miles’ friends was due to be riding in. Contrary to my first instinct, it turns out that being one of the float riders is a super-cool thing to do which explains why people pay up to a couple of thousand dollars for the right to ride. Half of the money is for Krewe membership which is presumably spent to decorate the float and the other half is spent on the copious amounts of beads and goodies that they constantly fling for the four hours the parade is in motion. Anyway, the advantage of knowing one of the riders is that they give you loads of free stuff. The disadvantage is that the delivery system is particularly violent. Because the riders’ anonymity is usually protected by a mask, we missed his friend but luckily he saw us and I was nearly decapitated by the resultant barrage of goodies. Beads come in a variety of sizes and design ranging from tiny plastic ones that barely fit over your head to massive glass baubles which, I was assured, are well worth keeping hold of for the rest of the day as they have street value. Unfortunately that street is the vomit and pee sodden Bourbon Street (where doing the Stanky Leg is not optional) but fortunately the currency is boobs. There would be ten hours of drinking to do before this exchange occurred though.

Then it all started going downhill rapidly. A quick visit back to Miles’ mansion to check on the love progress of the smooching puppies (Molly and the ever-insistent Winston) started an unwise dip into the world of Vodka Red Bulls to keep up the energy levels. With the promise of a gaggle of “cute chicks from Florida”, we headed over to one of Miles’ old school friends. Whilst this debilitating marriage means that I am no longer able to take advantage of cute Floridian chicks, I was delighted to see that we had arrived just as two steaming vats of jambalaya and shrimp pasta were being served…now that’s a pleasure I can indulge in without ending up with only half of my original assets.

Armed with a pint of vodka and enough cold beers to keep a boat load of pirates tipsy for a month, we hit the road to find a good vantage spot to watch Endymion, the biggest of the parades with over 2000 people making up this SuperKrewe. The contrast with the previous evening’s parade couldn’t have been starker. Replace the frolicking kiddies with drunken hoards. Swap the eye-level view of the floats with 10 deep crowds lining every inch of the seven mile route. Exchange the tiny quaint home-made floats for three story floats the length of football fields. And substitute the 10 kid high school bands for 100 man monster bands flanked by majorettes, flag girls and cheerleaders. It was all quite a sight to behold but it was definitely harder to get beads and goodies. But beads and goodies aren’t the preoccupying thought of most revelers whilst watching parades…exactly where to unload your bladder legally is the number one concern. Access to bathrooms is more heavily guarded than access to the Queen’s pyjamas and the portapotties on the streets are either privately owned (that’s right, people actually bring their own portapotties on the back of pick-up trucks…that’s how much of an issue peeing is) or publicly available but that invariably involves a 45 minute wait in line followed by a nauseating experience that you don’t ever want to repeat…a bit like the average ride at Universal Studios but with more sanitary waste. Enter stage right our Guardian Angels...Mitchell and Hope. By design, I think, we ended up outside Mandina’s (the awesome seafood place visited after Barkus) where Mitchell and Hope, in an act that ensures them a season pass to heaven and it’s associated theme parks, slapped a couple of barely used wrist-bands on us that got us past the security guard on the door of the restaurant guaranteeing us clean bathroom breaks for the rest of the night. But it gets better…it also meant access to their free bar and buffet. Not one to pass up an opportunity for free stuff, within 10 minutes of having the band on my wrist, I was elbow deep in fried oysters and drowning in rum.

Once the parade had finished it was time to move on and we innocently ended up in a car captained by Aunt Patty, Hope and Miles. Little did I know this was going to turn out to be a life changing experience. Whilst I can’t go fully into details in fear of being posthumously arrested on thirteen different counts, I can divulge that the 15 minute ride packed in action from security guards, a minor collision with a thankfully stationary object, hiding from Aunt Patty’s more conservative sister and a suspicious amount of hilarity. The destination was The Columns Hotel for yet more beverages but I have little recollection of this part of the night, or the subsequent ill-advised trip to the skanky French Quarter which, I am assured by my infinitely more sober partner, was about as nasty as you can imagine by this late stage of the evening and a traumatic experience that her Ugg boots will never recover from. After trading in the beads for a particularly perky right one, the taxi drama began. Who would have thought getting a cab in the French Quarter at midnight on Mardi Gras Saturday (Samedi Gras?) would have been so tough? Everyone including the remote tribes of Papua New Guinea, that’s who. You’d have thought that would be the end of the night, but you’d be mistaken. Honorary fat boy Miles insisted on a late night burger at Beach Corner (“WITH BACON!”) accompanied by a few more beers. Perhaps this was what sent me over the edge but it seemed like a genius plan at the time. I remember the burgers being big, succulent, flavourful and served by a freak of a woman. Beyond that, I remember nothing. It’s probably best that way.

The downside about Mardi Gras is that it lasts for over two weeks and the really concentrated part of the partying is over four days. Disappointingly I woke up on the morning of the second day with a hangover I wouldn’t have given to Joseph Goebbels and it was to seriously impede the day. The first half I spent in bed sleeping whilst Kate took advantage of the hangover movie marathon including Turner & Hooch and Grease. 2pm came round all too quickly which signaled the time I had to start stirring if we were to watch the Bacchus parade to pay homage to, of all people, the god of wine. Despite nearly backing out on the journey to Miles’ house (thanks mainly to my wife’s decision to eat the smelliest sandwich know to man in the car…I think it was tripe, sprout and blue cheese on garlic bread…and if you are salivating at that then you have a problem) we made it to our destination and I have to say I was gutted to see our host looking and feeling so perky. Either I just can’t cut it with the kids today or he spiked my earlier vodkas…needless to say I’m going with the latter.

The rest of the day isn’t going to take long to explain as we headed over to the beautiful house of some of Miles’ parent’s friends where I went from non-communicative single-celled amoeba to slightly more chatty human trying out a beer or three in such a short period of time that it left Kate both in awe and slightly worried. It wasn’t to last very long as, after about an hour of watching the parade, it became clear that I just really wasn’t joining in with the evening’s conversation so, given that we had another two full days of parades to go, we happily headed home to fully recuperate for the impending Lundi and Mardi Gras festivities. Apparently someone fell off the top deck of one of the floats that night but he’s OK. It wouldn’t surprise me if some aggressive professional parade-goer caught him and put him in their swag bag before realizing what had happened.