A Year Ago

It was a quiet and steady ride on the levee this morning. When I arrived at the start I was surprised to find Lorenzo there. I hadn't seen him in well over a year. He's a kind of odd sort of fellow from the Dominican Republic who has been racing off-and-on for a long time and sells art in the French Quarter. Turns out that he recently got married (!!) and his wife works at Ochsner. It has indeed been a strange year.

Anyway, it was 26 miles at a steady 20 mph this morning with Joe and Lorenzo sitting on. I am starting to feel pretty sluggish for some reason. Perhaps it's just the heat and humidity, or perhaps it's the heat and stupidity, around here. Regardless, my legs still feel stiff from last weekend's thrashing at the Giro rides.

A year ago today I was en route to Dallas, evacuating from New Orleans ahead of Katrina, worrying mostly about what kind of wind damage I would have when I returned later in the week. Late the night before I had written "Looks like the big one . . ." Little did I know at the time that it would be nearly a month before I could return and two before I could move back home. It seems like yesterday.

The state of the city defies description. The differences between the various areas of town are still so enormous that it is meaningless to give any sort of "overall" or "average" description. Uptown from my house all the way to the river, and all along the river to downtown, you would hardly know that there had ever been such a disaster. Ten blocks toward the lake there is a fair amount of rebuilding and a small percentage of people back in their houses. Farther into Mid-City many areas look essentially just like they did a month after the hurricane. Likewise much of the East and Lower Nine. Tulane's Fall enrollment is depressingly low, largely due to the understandable tendency of folks in other areas to make broad assumptions based on narrow news reports that naturally tend to focus on the negative. Tulane draws most of its students from outside Louisiana where people are entirely dependent on the national news for information about the city, so you can imagine how hard a sell it is to the prospective parents, particularly the ones who are paying full, or even partial, tuition out of their own pockets. On the other hand, I think that this year's freshman class will turn out to be a very special one. In fact, it already is -- just by definition.