I have been to Mardi Gras something like eight times now. Obviously, to keep coming back, I have to enjoy it. Then again, any activity involving watching parades and drinking on a street before noon, all while enjoying much warmer weather than back in snowy Indiana, will likely be the sort of activity that I will enjoy immensely.
An activity that I don’t enjoy immensely? Missing the parades and drinking because someone broke into my car. Which is exactly what what happened to me yesterday.
If you have never been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans, it is basically several weeks with parades on various nights, which grow in number and intensity as Mardi Gras day approaches. My sister, Charlotte, and I are here for a few days of the weekend parades, and we had gone down to the Friday evening parades early. The weather was quite pleasant (which is not always the case), we had a cooler of beers, and were just planning to sit in our lawn chairs and enjoy our first night of Mardi Gras.
After having a beer, with parade-time getting closer, I grabbed some things to put back in the car, and walked the block to where I had parked it. I turned the corner to the car, and noted that there was a car with its door wide open. With its window smashed. Which really looked like my car, near where I had parked it.
Moment of realization: It looks like my car, near where I had parked it, with the door wide open and window smashed in, because it is my car.
Not ideal. Not ideal at all.
The moment of realization was immediately followed by a sinking feeling, as all of my camping stuff – the same camping stuff that I need to continue my trip – was in the car. Thankfully, as I got closer, I realized that nothing in the back appeared to have been touched. Even more thankfully, I had left Choppy at the hotel, so I wasn’t also dealing with an escaped dog to go with a broken into car.
And then, I realized that this would be a great story for the blog.
Or, at the very least, something far more exciting for the blog than watching Judge Judy at the laundromat.
Tomorrow, in the thrilling Part II Conclusion: Things get funnier (or at least, I think they get funnier), as I deal with three sets of police officers from the New Orleans Police Department and get to have mini-CSI enacted with regard to my car. It was my own little episode of COPS. Except I wasn’t getting arrested. And neither was anyone else (oops, spoiler alert). And there weren’t cameras around. Yeah, so really, nothing like COPS at all. Except that there were police officers present.
Travels with Choppy 