Sunday

There was no rest for the tired, even on Sunday. We were up at seven, on less than six hours sleep, breakfasting and chatting and getting ready for three back-to-back New Orleans Mardi Gras parades.

The day was cold with biting winds gusting down the streets. Chelsea and I weren’t used to the bitter cold; we’d just spent months in pleasant eighty-degree days with the temperatures hovering around seventy at night. We weren’t dressed quite warmly enough for a chilly Louisiana February day.

But the cold and wind be damned. We were in New Orleans at long last and we were watching Mardi Gras parades!

We spent very little time sitting, though we’d faithfully carried loaner chairs to the parade route. Instead we were up and about, photographing not only the amazing floats but catching some great audience photos too.

With my faithful assistance in handing her lenses as she needed to change them, Chelsea racked up an impressive number of photos for the day, over six hundred. Hopefully I will have culled them into a decent album by the time this goes to press, but it’s a job I’ve been avoiding.

The parades were spectacular as always. Many of the floats in the first parade commemorated local businesses that were lost in Katrina and never came back, which gave a certain poignancy to that parade.

After hours of standing and walking in the cold wind, we headed home to Huey’s for more red beans and rice, then Kenneth aimed his truck southwest for the three hour drive to Gueydan.

Sunset melted the horizon into rich reds and golds as we crossed through Morgan City over the bridge, halfway to our new home.

In Gueydan the travel trailer was cold and dispiriting, so we dropped our gear into the trailer and fell into a soft cozy bed in the main house, more exhausted than we could say.

Monday

Two back-to-back parades were on the schedule Monday night in Lafayette. We’d drive up with Kenneth and Krisy, but we’d meet up with Heuetta at her son’s home and spend the night with her and her cousin Peggy, whom we love.

Though we were bravely up the next morning for showers, getting ready to drive to Lafayette, I had to tell Chelsea I didn’t think I could go. I was so exhausted I was ill. Not wanting to miss anything, I did lie down for an hour, with the room spinning around me.

The hour of deep relaxation did help. I was up, showered, and in the truck when time came to leave.

The parade that night was a bit of a blur. Peggy and Heuetta bought us a snack and beer at the parade, I do remember, and I remember meeting Heuetta’s boyfriend Tim. I remember the fun of the floats, but most everything else is a bit fuzzy for both of us.

Early in the evening I got hit so hard in the head by a set of beads that I had a hairline bruise, but Heuetta had me beat a few minutes later on that one. She was hit so hard by a set of beads with a medallion attached that her eyebrow bled. We teased her all night about having “Krewe de Gabriel” imprinted on her forehead.

Peggy has a beautiful, peaceful, restful home. We’d stayed there before and we were delighted to be there again, catching up on everything that had occurred for each of us in the last three years. We’d each had powerful, eventful and life-changing years.

Though it seemed like a suicide wish, we stayed up till midnight talking.

Tuesday

True to form, we were up before seven on Tuesday at Peggy’s for juice, coffee, and fresh hot biscuits with sliced cheese or jelly, accompanied by more conversation.

By nine-thirty we were on our way to downtown Lafayette for three more Mardi Gras parades.

Even as early as we had arrived, chairs of all sizes and descriptions already lined the parade route while smoke from barbeques drifted slowly through the air. Kids and families of all ages and colors relaxed or played in the warm lazy sunshine. Police in bright yellow hi-viz vests clustered in small groups, watching the crowds and chatting.

Everyone had gotten into the spirit of the day with clothing, hats and scarves in the familiar Mardi Gras colors of purple, green and gold, and most folks were bedecked early in the day with impressive collections of beads.

After a snack at the restaurant Agave to kick off the day, we wandered the parade route all day, stopping to catch beads at each parade. Live bands were spread out along the parade route this year, some of them really, really good, which made the walking even more fun.

By lunch we were more than ready to take a sit-down break in air-conditioning. A fresh salad in a restaurant along the route filled the bill perfectly.

Though two days earlier we’d been in cold biting winds in New Orleans, Mardi Gras in Lafayette was more like a relaxed summer day with spectacular weather.

By mid afternoon we heard that a car had hit a train along the parade route, which explained the long gap without any floats, but Peggy kept us up to date with the parade tracker app on her phone. How cool is that? Gotta love apps!

By the time the floats began rolling again, the crowd had thinned considerably, giving us a chance to catch some great beads.

Meanwhile Heuetta had forgotten her sunglasses and Chelsea and I needed hats so we flagged down one of the vendors and splurged. Heuetta’s sunglasses were a very bold, retro-sixties look with bright yellow frames. We loved them.

Our hats were baseball style, covered with sequins in the green and gold and purple Mardi Gras colors. We’d seen them in 2009 and had wanted some ever since then, so we were thrilled, never mind how much nicer it was to have the sun out of our eyes.

You may remember my comments on bead-catching styles and attitudes from our Mardi Gras adventures of 2009. Talk about brutal! There’s terrific competition for beads, especially the specialty beads.

If you’re trying to catch beads next to children or handicapped persons or older seniors, you may as well get a fresh cold beer out of the cooler and enjoy the show, as you won’t be getting any beads. If you’re fiercely competitive and want those beads, move somewhere else, or bring children, a handicapped person, or a senior with you.

On the other hand, if you are a child, the younger the better, or are handicapped, or are an older senior, you’ll do really well! You’ll be sharing your beads with family and friends.

We discovered inadvertently that our sparkly, brightly colored, new Mardi Gras hats greatly improved our bead catching ratio. I was shocked at how much we increased our catch and at how much nicer our beads were after we got the hats.

Twice I had someone on a float lean way out to give me a particularly gorgeous set of beads that would have broken had it been thrown. Then another time I had someone lean over and literally pour strands of beads on my outstretched arms. I totally loved it!

One of my favorite memories, though, was watching Chelsea jumping over the crowd barrier in front of a policeman to get a green mask that had fallen in the roadway. She really wanted that mask, so much so that she was willing to behave totally out of character and “defy” authority. Go, Chelsea!

By five that afternoon, as the sun was heading down for the night, we’d been walking and standing for over seven hours, having walked seven or more miles altogether. We parted ways with Heuetta and Peggy and headed back to meet Kenneth and Krisy.

As Chelsea scrubbed the sweaty dye from her green mask off her face, Kenneth and Krisy loaded us up with plates of food from the potluck dinner they’d been part of, making sure we had the requisite cold beers. We drove back to Gueydan that night without much conversation. We were talked out and partied out.

Between New Orleans and Lafayette we’d managed to see eight Mardi Gras parades in three days.