Sailing Right Home

The last stop at my “Uncle Brian’s” in Illinois was a perfect ending to our extended vacation. After an early arrival to the marina at Lake Carlyle where he has his sailboat – we had some breakfast, reorganized the car as he went food shopping, waited for his son, Brandon to arrive and hopped on Barefoot, his 32 foot (I think) sailboat! He said he was his worst nightmare come true because I finally made it out to visit, and of course there was no wind. But we headed out anyway and tied up to 4 other boats and just hung out for the afternoon. What more could we ask for than floating in a lake with some cold beers and good company? We had a small, late lunch and eventually headed back to the marina with a little bit of a breeze so we were able to sail for the majority of the time. Aly and I did pass out on the deck for a little while because we were still beat from not sleeping the previous night.

After making it back to the marina, we threw some steaks and asparagus on the grill and contributed to the marina wide weekly Saturday night dinners at the clubhouse. It was really cool how everyone contributed a dish and then it was just a free for all buffet of everything you could imagine. Brian was sure to hook us up with some meat since I told him we had been deprived of meat and protein for a few weeks. Thanks Hole!

Aly, Brandon and I returned home to shower and get ready to go out in St. Louis. We went to the City Museum, which is nothing you would ever anticipate it being. Brandon said it basically was a huge playground that was designed for older kids/young adults. It was a wild place – climbing, sliding, crawling all over the place in and out of crazy holes. Aly described it perfectly by saying she felt like she was inside of someone’s imagination. Pretty wild place – it had some bars too so after we got warm and sweaty from climbing around we were able to cool off with a few local beverages. Brilliant, really. Needless to say we were totally beat by 1am when we got home. We had successfully stayed up about 38 hours with only a few hours of napping here and there. Talk about a great night’s sleep. We were both out cold. Thanks for the bed Hole!

Sunday started off with some awesome breakfast burritos, which go back to when I visited Brian’s family when they lived in Maryland when I was probably in middle school and had not a clue what beans and enchilada sauce was doing on the breakfast table. This time, they were delicious! Loved them. Headed back to the lake for another day in the sunshine, which is exactly what we got. Unfortunately, Barefoot had some engine problems and we wound up having to be towed in by some friends of Brian’s – then going out on their boat to do some more floating, drinking and eating. Didn’t get a good sail in because there was no wind, but it was all good. I also got to meet Brian’s girlfriend Dee, who was really sweet and from Vermont so we had some good east coast conversations.

The night entailed seeing Brian’s other son, Jason, and his wife and 3 week old baby girl! She was absolutely beautiful, a little peanut at 6lbs. After that visit, we went out for a nice dinner with huge helpings. And back home for another solid night of sleep to be off to Ohio fairly early in the morning!

We arrived in Columbus around 5pm and went to the Columbus Brewing Company for some drinks and dinner while we waited for Aly’s friend to come home from work. Had a nice relaxing brewery visit, then off to Joe’s we went for a very relaxing night of chatting and watching TV. No complaints, we were pretty beat.

And here we are only about an hour from home! The drive through Pennsylvania was obviously brutal. Between the truckers and the fact that we did the drive already and that we just want to be home at this point has made it go by slowly. But we’re almost there!

HIGHLIGHTS:

Finally going to visit Brian after all of these years he has been asking me. I get to see him occasionally when he comes to visit back in NJ, but often I am at school and we miss each other. This was great to get to see him out in his hometown. Reconnecting with his twin sons was awesome too. I hadn’t seen them in probably about 10 years. We got to spend a lot of time with Brandon and it is cool seeing what he is up to these days.

Being out on the lake for a few days and just relaxing made us feel at home. It was a perfect ending to the trip.

NOT SO GLORIOUS HIGHLIGHTS:

The lack of wind and therefore lack of sailing was a bummer, but that just means I’ll have to make it back there again for a good weekend!

The engine acting up and having to get towed. Aly and I clearly brought our luck with that from Memphis. Hopefully it’s just a minor fix!

I can’t believe this journey is over. We were on the road for 33 days, drove just shy of 10,000 miles and traveled through 22 states, hitting 10 National Parks. So I’m down a little less than two grand, but I took advantage of this summer and did what I wanted to do that I may not have the opportunity to do for years and years. We saw so many awesome, awesome things. Met amazing people. Reconnected with old and current friends. Tried new foods. Witnessed amazing sunrises and sunsets. It’s a journey that I will never forget. This trip gave me the ideas of where I would like to go back to and spend more time. It also determined places that I am content with what I saw and have no need to return to. Thank you SO much to all of the hosts and those who gave us advice and guidance along the way. What an epic journey, but as always, it’s good to be home.

Debauchery in NOLA and Memphis

Backtracking to NOLA. What a trippp. Such an awesome city. We were staying at the W right downtown which was a hotel that was way over our caliber – we didn’t exactly belong there, but we rocked it like we did. Upon checking in the concierge said, “Two beds, two nights, two ladies do this trip right.” Off to a good start. After freshening up a bit after the 9 hour drive from Austin, we took a cab out to a restaurant named Jacque-Imos, which we read rave reviews about. The meal was INCREDIBLE. Tell me how weird this sounds: alligator, shrimp, sausage cheesecake. Yeah we ordered it anyway. Possibly the best tasting thing of this entire trip – no joke. And then my entrée of blackened redfish was perfect. Yet again, good start.

Took the street car back to the French Quarter, hit the hotel for a little bit to get ready then decided it was our turn at some debauchery on Bourbon Street. Started off at a good pace hanging out at some balcony bars. The night quickened a bit after some original Hurricanes at Pat O’Brien’s piano bar. Met some guys from Toronto and chatted/requested songs for the pianists. Those hurricanes were bomb. Glad I experienced the original after I’ve been drinking down the shore for years now. What a drink.

Then the night sky rocketed after walking into the Bourbon Cowboy and meeting a group of Coastguard folks who were down in NOLA for training. A few of us road the mechanical bull, did some country dancing, had some hand grenades, etc. We were there for awhile…

Ran into the Toronto boys again later in the evening and went to Voodoo Lounge? Maybe? Which was a bizarre little place. Great people watching. Fun bartenders. Good storytelling on all ends – we had all done pretty extensive traveling so had some good adventures to share. The bartender sent us on our way with a very large lit candle to help us “guide our path”. Needless to say I abandoned it a few minutes later after the wax was dripping all over me. We then made our way into a diner looking place because I owed one of our new friends a shot from a bet I lost. Of course, I ordered a lunchbox – the person working behind the bar wasn’t a bartender to begin with so she was all frazzled by this request. But I walked her through it and low and behold, lured another soul into the heavenly world of lunchboxes. Maybe they’ll even spread to Canada now, eh?

The night was capped off with a late night hottub session back at the hotel and we finally crawled into the most comfortable beds in the world around 7am as the sun was starting to shine through our windows. Successful night in New Orleans.

Our second day didn’t begin until we finally stumbled out of the hotel around 6pm. We took advantage of our hotel room to say the least. We caught another great dinner at DeaNees Seafood with Chad’s fraternity brother and former roommate Jeremy who is living in New Orleans doing Teach for America. I got in the necessary crawfish meal and it was delicious. Crawfish prepared four different ways – a perfect little combo.

We walked off dinner along the river and saw a great sunset over the Mississippi and did a little shopping before getting the night started. I purchased to Mardi Gras masks, which only means that a Mardi Gras party is in order upon the return to Rochester. Wednesday night we headed to Frenchman street to see some good live jazz. We were told just to walk into a club that sounds good – so that’s exactly what we did. Saw a great band at Café Negril. There was a great vibe there, lots of good dancing. So we spent a few hours just hanging out there taking it easy and enjoying the talented musicians. We called it fairly early (compared to Tuesday night) and headed back to the hotel around 1am to get some sleep.

We were up and out early Thursday morning to bring LilMoos to get her oil changed (that appointment was originally for Wednesday morning at 9am – clearly didn’t happen). We walked to Café duMonde to get the infamous beignets and café au lait. It was cheap and delicious and exactly what I expected. It was brutally hot and humid so we were ready to get into the AC car and onward to Memphis it was!

We arrived in Memphis right around 5 and dropped our stuff off at Keenan’s apartment and got ready to head to the Peabody Hotel for the weekly Thursday evening rooftop party. They had a nice buffet line of snack foods and a live band playing on the roof – exactly what we needed after the drive. We did not see the ducks (as they come up around 5), but we heard the whole story. The hotel itself was beautiful. After the Peabody we headed to Rendezvous, one of the famous rib establishments in Memphis. Although the food was good, the ribs were dry rub, which I wasn’t a huge fan of. But I DID have shredded pork shoulder and that was absolutely delicious. As was the coleslaw. Overall, successful meal coupled with great beer. We then met up with a few of his friends at the Silly Goose which was a fun, modern bar with good music and expensive drinks. After some redbull vodkas, I was feeling energized for the remainder of the night. Next Stop: 152 a “huge, sketchy club” on Beale Street. It was basically exactly what I expected, and we had some funny laughs there and eventually ended the night there.

Day two brought on an awesome BBQ lunch (great pulled pork sandwich and baked potato salad) followed by going to Graceland! We hadn’t really thought about going to Graceland, but a few people had mentioned it along the way, and Keenan had a work connection that got us free passes so we figured why not. It was a really cool audio tour and it was a funky 70s house with a lot of character and I learned a lot about Elvis that I never known before! I think his airplane Lisa Marie was my favorite part of the tour – what an awesome private plane he had. Everything was gold plated and had wild fabric. I wouldn’t mind Ballin out on that back in the 70s (or right now).

Headed back to the apartment complex and had some beverages poolside which was very nice and relaxing and an appropriate activity to be doing in the hot humid weather. After some R&R we headed downtown to Bluefin, a sushi restaurant! We had some great food there and Keenan and I rewound to our freshman year of college by partaking in some Saki bombing today – an old pastime for Collegetown. We then strolled down to the Flying Saucer, a bar that has over 200 beers on tap. The selection was overwhelming to say the least, but I enjoyed them all and then we played some pool and smoked two old guys that were so hammered they would consistently shoot and not hit a single ball on the table. We THOUGHT we were being smart by heading back home at a decent hour since we had to wake up at the crack of dawn the next morning to head to my uncle Brian’s in Illinois. Well, just a few miles shy of Keenan’s apartment, he runs out of gas. This happened at roughly 1:30am. You can only imagine the what happened between then and 4:15am, when we finally made it home. Cops, Triple A, taxis were all involved. Pouring a gallon of gas from an empty water jug and needing to be jumped because the battery had died took that long. What an adventure.

We were pretty frustrated at being robbed our night of sleep, so instead of sleeping for 60 or 90 minutes on the futon, we just decided to hit the road and power through the early morning hours to get to Illinois earlier. I drove until about 630 while Aly slept, then we switched off so I could get about 2 hours of sleep. We made it – and actually stayed up until about 1am that night, but I’ll cover that day in my next post. Lots of shenanigans in Louisiana and Tennessee, what else do you expect from the South?

HIGHLIGHTS:

Staying at the W Hotel – Aly’s friend Paige works for the W so was able to hook us up with a great discount. Besides the room being awesome and the bed being so comfortable, it was the best showers I have had the whole trip. The staff there was also super friendly, helpful and hilarious.

Meeting so many people on Bourbon St. There are very few locals that go there, so everyone was on vacation having a great time and buying drinks for us like no other. Actually turned out to be a cheap night for us. I’ll take it!

Tasting the original Hurricane at Pat O’Brien’s

Taking my first shot ever at riding the mechanical bull. Champion? No. Successful? Yes.

Spreading the deliciousness of the lunchbox to Canadians – hopefully it will continue to spread.

Planking with my two new coastguard friends.

ALL OF THE FOOD WE ATE IN NOLA – every. Single. Thing. Was to die for.

Abita Beer! Diggin Purple Haze

Making New Orleans the new Vegas, for us.

Splitting a “Memphis Diver”, which is the southern equivalent of a Fishbowl

Poolside beverages with Keenan getting to catch up and talk about old memories

Bringing back the Saki Bomb. And eating good sushi – I had been craving it

Taking Memphis in for all it had to offer. Definitely not the safest place we have been yet.

NOT SO GLORIOUS HIGHLIGHTS:::

The drive through Texas. What a strange place..

Missing my 9am oil change appointment, but they had one for the next day so all was good

Splurging on everything from hotels, valet parking, food and drink. But hey, we’ve been running on a pretty tight budget thus far so we deemed it totally worth it.

Breaking down on the site of I-55 south of Memphis…womp womp