Man.

I didn’t realize that, you know, I’ve driven a car with cruise control since I had a license.  Until I bought my last car.  I actually TURNED DOWN the option of cruise control, rationalizing that I don’t use it that much.

Well, hell, Sarah, you don’t use airbags that often either, but damn. 

Six and a half hours later, I’m in the Big Easy.  I’m on the sixteenth floor of my hotel, which makes me all sorts of giddy, because I’m not sure I’ve ever been this high EVER.  Yes, I’m traveling on business and yet so very childish.  I’m a dichotomy like that.

I would love to tell you that I’m all psyched up to hit the streets, and I probably will be tomorrow, but now I’m so exhausted and worn out that I’ve decided to hole up with my four gossip mags I brought, order some room service, and then pass out in my king sized bed with deluxe linens.  Tomorrow night, I will definitely enjoy the Quarter as it’s meant to be enjoyed, but..

So, in truth, driving in was depressing.  The city that I loved is no longer here.  Sure, the touristy spots have been shined up so that there is a chance to get the money flowing again, but the outskirts tell a different story.. a city forgotten, given-up on, abandoned.  It’s a ghost town, half disheveled, half condemned.. it is not my NOLA.

Tomorrow night, we’ll play tourists and go visit the “safe” areas.  We’ll drink hurricanes and wear beads and eat crawfish and sing kareoke, and it will be fun.  But it’s not my NOLA.  And it makes me sad.

So tonight, I’m staying in a hotel room, which is less New Orleans and more every hotel room everywhere.  It’s safer here, in my mind.  Less prone to the reality that looms sixteen stories down.