The Longest Drive

It was about 4:45 am when we pulled away from the house with two bikes on the roof and the neighbor and her 2 year-old son (and two cats) behind us. The local officials had thrown us a curve ball, moving up the originally announced 6 a.m. start of "contraflow" to 4 a.m. In other words, we had missed our only opportunity to use I-10 east from Slidell to Florida. We sailed down a nearly deserted South Claiborne Avenue toward the interstate, hoping for the best. A mile later we were crawling along in bumper-to-bumper traffic at walking speed. By the time we got out to New Orleans East, we had learned from The Mom (who had left ahead of us with her friend) that Highway 90 was better, so we bailed out of the gridlock at Bullard Avenue and just flew down 90 onto the Giro Ride route, turning off onto Highway 11 and driving unimpeded over the old 5-mile bridge. Just to our right we could see the stalled traffic on the interstate, aka "the twin span." I felt like I had discovered a closely guarded secret. Along the way, we heard on the radio that there was a 25-mile backup on I-10 at the Mobile AL tunnel, so we went to Plan "C." We drove up old Highway 11, switched over briefly to I-59 to get across the Honey Island Swamp, and then when traffic on the interstate came to a standstill, we bailed out again to Highway 11. The old road was smooth sailing all the way to Hattiesburg where we finally got back onto the interstate and soon thereafter turned east for a long drive on two-lane highways through Alabama. It was fairly pleasant and scenic, but really, really long. By the time we finally pulled into The Dad's place in Fort Walton Beach, FL, we had logged over 400 miles and it was mid-afternoon. I think our average speed was around 43 mph.

Our other neighbors are staying in New Orleans with their nine dogs, cats and rabbits, and are taking care of our cat too. If there is any significant flooding, they will evacuate to our house where the main floor is about seven feet off the ground. When I checked with them via text message around 7 pm, they said it was pouring down rain already. We are all hoping that the storm intensity remains lower than anticipated, although the direction of the storm's approach to New Orleans is definitely bad for New Orleans because of the increased potential for storm surge flooding. All I can say is that we are hoping for the best. Kenny B. was planning on staying in town, and last I heard so were my sisters. I'll have to check with them to see if they are still there. Tulane has already postponed re-opening through next week. I wonder if there was a Giro Ride today.