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Got in safe and sound, but rush-hour traffic’s a bear, so the official VM fiancee & I have hit a mall (with a Mac store) in NJ before we try to make it into NYC to drop her off.

We’re about to head out to the airport, and we’ve packed away a couple of MREs for next weekend’s photoblogging session. Once we’re settled in, I’ll get my French Quarter photos posted up here, so you can see that it’s not THAT bad.

Sorry if my long post about Saturday’s trip sounded too depressing. Seeing all the (re)construction going on down here, I’m pretty optimistic about the city’s immediate prospects. I’m concerned about how it’ll deal with the long term, of course, but I’m concerned with how you’ll deal with the long term too, dear reader.

In all, I’d say it was a good trip, insofar as I gained a better understanding of the after-effects of the flood, along with loads of funny stories about Amy’s family members.

In the Times-Picayune this morning, there’s a neat (lengthy) article about Jabar Gibson, the 20-year-old kid who stole a school bus to evacuate his neighbors during the post-Katrina flood. Turns out he was a convicted car thief, is awaiting charges for possession of crack, had never driven a school bus before, and may have changed the direction of his life.

Read the story (not sure how long the Times-Pic keeps these links active).

We’re heading for NO,LA in a few minutes. We spent yesterday visiting Amy’s extended family, and hearing lots of stories about the last few weeks.

There were plenty of tales about the day-to-day disruptions, the massive lines at the Wal-Mart, the limited menus and lack of napkins at some restaurants, and the like.

On top of that, everyone has stories about people spending Red Cross or FEMA money on TVs and DVD players. Amy came back with a story about a woman who tried buying a TV with her Red Cross money issued on a debit card, then grew irate when told she couldn’t use the card to pay the sales tax.

The official VM father-in-law-to-be was suggesting various places we could go for lunch today, while the womenfolk are off doing womenfolkly stuff, like looking at dresses for the maid of honor. One of the hangups about getting a meal out here is that so many places closer to the city are closed, and the remaining sites are pretty busy.

We settled on “figuring it out once we’re on the road.”

So I sat out back to read some (it is a vacation for me, remember), when John came out and said, “Y’know, if you want a real treat, we could break out some MREs!”

Yup: The family actually received a couple of boxloads of Meals Ready to Eat after the flood. He said, “You’d be surprised at what they put in those. I tried a jambalaya one a little while ago, and it wasn’t bad! Came with a little bottle of tabasco, too!”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I assumed that MREs were insanely standardized, with carefully quantified ratios of whatever nurtrients their main consumers (the military) are likely to need. I really didn’t expect to hear that they were capable of sealing up an MRE jambalaya. I asked if they were the “local brand” or something.

He said that he didn’t know, but there aren’t any markings indicating that they’re only prepared for a certain region.

My curiosity running wild, I headed over to the garage to check out the MRE stash. There was one open box, with 6 remaining meals. Each one was sealed in a light brown plastic bag with an “entr�e” contents label (but no indication about the ‘extras,’ like tabasco or coffee). They all sounded pretty good:

Vegetable manicotti

Chicken with cavatelli

Beef teriyaki

Chicken with noodles

Chicken tetrazzini

Spaghetti with meat sauce

At least, they sounded better than that Jack Daniel’s marinade-in-a-bag experiment I tried a few months ago. If I try one out this weekend, I’ll photo-blog it.

Not much exploring planned for today. The official VM fiancee’s off (accompanied by her mom) to a salon where she’ll get a test-run of her wedding-day hair and makeup. For the daytime, I figure on chilling out, reading some Fitzgerald (Tender is the Night, which I evidently read in late 1992, but don’t recall much of), and watching/reading some local news.

The big stories were about how relocated kids may not be attending school in their new districts, how cases of identity theft are proliferating (really macabre story, but after reading about 9/11 identity fraud, nothing really gets to me), and how the bar owners in the French Quarter are protesting the midnight curfew by throwing a big ol’ party tonight.

One of the big questions I have, coming into this trip, is what New Orleans is going to try to rebuild itself as. Is the goal to return to its identity as a tourist destination and haven for drunken frat boys at Mardi Gras? It seems like that’s pretty much a recipe for going back to the socioeconomic messed-up-edness that left so many people stranded 7 weeks ago.

But what can you do to diversify the economic base here, after developing better protection against the weather? (As I read the Times-Pic this morning, I realize this is going to be a really difficult process, insofar as the exact dynamics of the floodwall failure are still unclear.) Is there some sort of industry they can build up here? What will it take to get companies to move down here (and induce employees to relocate)? The city’s been so focused on tourist dollars for so many years, I don’t understand where it can start to change.

The mayor’s short-term fix of adding casinos to several of the large hotels doesn’t seem like a viable plan to me. If you put your city in competition with Las Vegas on that stuff, you’ll get your ass handed to you.

I’m rambling. I’ll try to get a little more coherent once I’ve gotten out to see some more of the place and chatted a little with some people.

Fats Domino got to return to his house yesterday. It looks like a total loss, but he wants to move back when it’s rebuilt.

Sorry to cut out abruptly in my last post; the official VM brother-in-law-to-be walked in, so we talked about post-hurricane life for a bit. Now I’m being Uncle Gil for his three-year-old, whom I’ve previously noted sounds just like Meatwad from the Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I’ll show him a bunch of pix from the San Diego Comic-Con folder on my laptop, and try to explain to him that people actually try to make a living by drawing comics. That oughtta distract him.

Back to Thursday afternoon: When we got into the parking lot of the airport, I saw a mini-van that looked as if it had been lived in for weeks. It was the first real sign of what’s going on down here.

It was a pretty freaky experience to drive through some of the residential neighborhoods. From the highway, I saw some garden apartments with massive piles of debris outside, the contents of each home lying in heaps in the parking lot. Massive trees were uprooted and just about every sign and billboard was blown down or wrecked. Windows were blown out of office towers and hotels. I can’t wrap my brain around the idea that all these areas were underwater 7 weeks ago. The absoluteness of it depressed the hell out of me; the idea that nowhere was really safe.

That was compounded by Amy’s parents’ stories about various relatives and acquaintances down here. Some doctors have left the area, with no plans to return. Some have come back, but have almost no clients left. On the highways, there were millions of small signs posted, advertising reopened stores and restaurants, contruction / demolition / de-molding services, lawyers pursuing class action suits against the levees or something. Boarded windows everywhere.

Made it into the New Orleans airport around noon today, about an hour late. Because the weather was so bad in NJ, we were stuck waiting for a connecting flight from Boston that had a bunch of our passengers. When they boarded, I saw that they were all FEMA, military, and DHS personnel, so I kinda figured it made sense to hold up the flight for them.

Much to the official VM fiancee’s chagrin, I got another first-class upgrade. I promised to let her sit up front next time they give me one of those. Unless it’s on a long flight or something.

Driving through the outskirts of the city on the way to her parents’ house, I was dumbstruck by the amount of wreckage and debris everywhere. More to come…

The official VM fiancee & I are supposed to go to New Orleans tomorrow. The weather forecast down there is 86 degrees and sunny every day of our trip. Unfortunately, ridiculous quantities of rain have led to flooding here in NJ/NY, and flights are delayed all over the place.

I’m glad I keep my sense of humor about this stuff.