Jesse enjoyed the show also, although he wasn't quite as energetic as myself. In fact, I was so energetic that my legs were stiff and a little sore by the time we got to Fusion. But there were lots of wonderful people there to talk to while I sat...

3 Oct

Dinner at Spaghetti Factory for Eric's birthday (Eric, Jesse, Dave, me)

4 Oct

Fly to New Orleans for Coke meetings.

Go out on the town with Joel and Warwick

5 Oct

Dacquiri's with Joel and Jeff; Dinner with CCE; Quarter with Joel, Jeff, Joe

6 Oct

Return from New Orleans

8 Oct

ADSL installed to my apartment. Now that's the sort of download speed I'm interested in.

13 Oct

Sisters of Mercy at the Tabernacle

16 Oct

Package from the homeland...

Nicole - I will love you forever - BUZZ BARS!!!!!

I took some up to the Local for Daniel, Daphne and Shannon, and they all thoroughly enjoyed them. I wonder how long they're going to last...

23 Oct

Pet Shop Boys at the Tabernacle with John and Kristy. Never have I been surrounded by so many gay men. This was a very fun concert. After the concert we went to a party at a friend of John's (Sarah).

24 Oct

VNV Nation in Orlando - we drive down, eat food, drink margaritas, watch the show and drive back. Awesomeness.

That's the short version. Here's the more in depth version...

I fall out of bed at about 8:30am on Sunday morning. Just on 9am, the phone rings and Jesse was at the gate. I let him in and grab my bag. From here we go to Jen's apartment to meet up with the others.

The "others" turn out to be fellow Mardi Gras tripsters Jen (obviously) and Brad, and new adventure seekers Christian, Amanda and Johnny. I start the journey with Brad and Jesse, and the others jump into Christian's car. It has just gone 9:30am and we head for the I-75.

Southward we go, but just outside the perimeter we have to stop, as Jen is not feeling well. We knew from our previous road trip that Jen does not travel well, so I swapped places with her so she could sit in the more upright front seat of the Jeep. For the remainder of the trip I am travelling with Christian, Amanda and Johnny.

We stop for lunch at a Dairy Queen somewhere in rural Georgia. It's at this point that I buy a disposable camera to record the events of the journey.

We get to Orlando around 5:30pm. After driving around for a bit, we locate the venue and manage to get parking across the road from it. Then we go hunting on foot for a place to eat. Unfortunately, being 6pm on a Sunday, there's not much open in downtown Orlando. We settle in the end for Wall Street Cantina: Margueritas and TexMex food. Definitely not worthy of complaining about.

We ate heartily, and I sampled three or four different marguerita's. Eventually we paid up and wandered over to the club. The sign on the door said that the club would be opening at 9pm, and it was still only 8pm. There was noise coming from around the back, so we wandered around the corner and the back of the club was open enough for us to catch one of the bands doing a warm-up/sound check. We listened for a while and then crossed over to the Irish pub for a pint of Guinness (or in my case a pint of Newcastle).

Johnny took this opportunity to ask about Scotch and Irish Whiskys. I introduced him to the pleasures of Bushmills. Unfortunately the barman was unable to locate a bottle of the Black Bush, so we stuck with the white-label. Johnny was suitably impressed nonetheless.

After our drinks we wandered back across the road and started queuing to get in. The doors were late in opening (typical) but we eventually got in and got another drink (yay Absolut Citron). The club was quite nice and the DJ played a good mix.

Eventually the support band came on. They were okay, but I have no recollection of who they were.

Finally VNV Nation came on and played an awesome set. At one point in time the stage was full of people, and it was obvious that the VNV guys were having a pretty good time; they hadn't really expected the level of enthusiasm that they received. They played three encores and everyone agreed that the show was intense. Christian danced more than I have ever seen him do previously.

After the show we decided to drive home rather than look for somewhere to stay the night. Jen and Amanda had classes on Monday, which clinched the issue. So we began the long haul back to Atlanta.

I must admit that I slept most of the way, having consumed a significant amount of alcohol and basically having had a long day. We arrived back at Jen's apartment at about 9:30, roughly twenty four hours since we left. Now that was a good adventure.

The photographic evidence...

Christian and Amanda

The crowd invade the stage

Johnny, Jesse, me

Amanda, Brad

Amanda, Jen, Christian, Brad

29 Oct

Another road trip to New Orleans!

This time the travellers are myself, Russ, John, Steven and Erika.

I picked up John around 6am and we headed over to Russ' to meet the others. Russ had overslept, so we waited for him and were out the door around 7am. Erika and Steven took one car, and Russ, John and Frank (who were acting as transport for) rode with me. The adventure had begun...

Travelling down I-85 we got to laugh at all the poor commuters who were travelling to work in the opposite direction - I really could not deal with having to sit in stopped rush hour traffic every morning and every afternoon. It would just drive me nuts. Anyway, we made our first pitstop at Exit 1 - the last exit before hitting Alabama. We grabbed some munchies and drink and decided to stop for breakfast just before Montogomery. Then it was across the state line and backwards into Central Time.

We stopped for breakfast around 8:30 (9:30 Eastern Time) at (surprise surprise) Waffle House. Eggs and hash browns and toast and everyone was well sated for the rest of the journey. Which was, for the most part, uneventful except the madness that inevitably sets in on long road trips. I introduced my victims to Bad Jelly The Witch, and they all enjoyed it. Once again, the comment was made that they now understand me a little better - heh. Then again, we were to learn many truths about each other over the next few days; most shocking of all is John's drinking probelm - but more about that later.

In Montgomery we turned south onto I-65 and through the heart of Alabama. Not really much to say about this, and then in Mobile we turned west onto I-10 and the final leg of the journey.

We dropped Frank off at the French Quarter Suites, where he was staying with David and co, and then made our way over to our accomodations - The Gallier St Bed and Breakfast. Here we met our hosts, Kent and Stan, who had assumed that (since we had booked as four guys) our group was ambidextrous in our affections, if you know what I mean (quote: "There's a straight couple staying in the other room, but don't worry, they're okay").

Once we got in and settled, we got changed and walked into the French Quarter (about 30 minutes) to meet up with Blu and possibly Scott and Kalina. Unfortunately they didn't show up, but we ate (awesome sandwiches) and had coffee/wine. My boots were not fully broken in and I had acquired blisters on the walk, so we caught a taxi back to the B&B to get changed for the party at the Countess' residence.

Just before arriving in New Orleans, we had stopped so John and I could pick up a bottle of whiskey. This bottle was now breached, and the serious drinking of the weekend began. Thank you, Mr Jack Daniels, and John apologises for the spillage.

The party at Countess' was exceptionally fun also. Here we caught up with Blu, and met many other net.goths from around the US. There was food, there was cider, there was discussions on music, there was discussions on philosophy. I was completely in my element. I was having so much fun, I stayed on while the others went to the Crystal. I actually ended up staying the night, because all of a sudden, there was nobody else around!

The next day I got back to the B&B just in time for breakfast, which consisted of Creole omelets, hash browns, fresh fruit, biscuits w/ butter and jelly, juice. Everybody shared their stories of the evening - particularly drunken adventures (John giving a girl his business card - in New Orleans - d'oh, did he feel stupid or what!). It also appears that in between spilling drinks, John also tried to perform sugery on his own eyeball with a straw. But the story that took the prize is the one best retold in Russ' words:

Disclaimer: The events described may offend the sensibilities of some, but are reputed to have occurred in New Orleans from the colonial period until the Civil War, and perhaps beyond that time...when the world was much different than it is now...

This little piece of the New Orleans oral tradition was related to our group by our cabbie on the way back to our bed and breakfast during the wee hours of one morning this past weekend...

Our route took us past the old convent of the Ursuline Order of nuns in the French Quarter, at which time the cabbie launched into his tale... He pointed out the convent, and mentioned that it was one of the spookiest places in the Quarter. And this is why...

During the time when plantations dotted the areas surrounding the city, wealthy landowners, whose daughters had become pregnant out of wedlock, sent the girls to be cloistered and cared for by the nuns at the convent until they delivered. It was important to minimize the shame to the girls and the social embarassment to the families. And this was further exacerbated by the fact that many of these girls had been impregnated by slaves. A fact that contributed to the high mixed race population in New Orleans at the time.

But, times being what they were, the relatively high infant mortality rate thinned the ranks of the illegitimate births. And when a child was stillborn or miscarried, the little corpse was interred in the wall of the convent, as is common in many of the older New Orleans cemeteries...

Imagine the macabre surprise almost a century later, when, during a construction excavation, the old, seemingly-forgotten wall of the convent was punctured, spilling forth it's contents...hundreds of tiny skeletons of the unfortunate infants of the Ursuline Convent.

Well...let me tell you...it was a quiet cabride from that point on...not to mention, everyone was out of the cab and safely in bed in record time...hehe...

Because of our arrangements with the Kent and Stan, only us four boys (Steven, Russ, John and I) were able to appear for breakfast. So to prevent Erika from starving we smuggled the leftover biscuits back to the room. After breakfast, some slept, some read, some went back in to New Orleans to shop. While trying on boots in Gargoyles, Erika became a porn star in her own right - photographed for Leg Sex magazine.

While Russ, Erica and Steven were in town, John and I caught up on some sleep and did a bit of reading before starting in on the whiskey. John decided at one point that the patio on which we were sitting also wanted a drink. John has a habit of plying the immediate ground with alcohol. I wonder about this...

Our shoppers returned and we all relaxed for the next few hours. Steven and Erica crashed out on the bed, which led us to an impromptu photoshoot, the photos of which will be made public as soon as they are available... Later we all got dressed up to go to the Fetish Ball. John was by far and away the most costumised of our wee group, in bright red shirt and face paint, he was...the Heat Meisser (or something like that).

The Fetish Ball turned out to be pretty crap. The venue was nice - a masonic lodge hall - but the show was pretty bad, and there were two many women wearing clothes that really should only be worn by girls two sizes smaller. Not that I have anything against voluptuous women (perish the day), it's just that there are certain things that they should not wear. We did manage to catch up with Scott and Kalina here, which was cool.

Anyways, John and I managed to get rather splatted again and so we wandered back to the B&B a little before everyone else.

On Sunday, we rested the day after another great breakfast (Scrambled eggs and ham, fresh fruit, biscuits, juice), and then went by cab and then trolley-car to the Garden District and a walk around Lafayette Cemetary. This was really cool, in spite of the rain. Or maybe the rain added a little flavour to the scenery. In any case, this was quite fun. Hopefully the photos I took will come out, in which case I will add them to the page.

After wandering aronud the District, checking out the beautiful 18th and 19th century houses, we headed back to the French Quarter to get some dinner. We stopped to eat a Coop's, where we had alligator bits (deep-fried chunks of alligator meat - not bad, sort of like tough chicken) and a meal. I had Cajun chicken with rabbit and sausage jamabalya. The jamabalaya was fantastic! After dinner we returned to the B&B to get changed, finish the second bottle of Jack, and then go back in to the Crystal.

The Crystal rocked. We drank - we danced - we talked - we laughed at people. Russ was getting hit on by a drunk, twenty-year-old, self-confessed virgin from Minneapolis named Karen. And she made it very clear that she was all three. That was rather amusing, although Russ was obviously a little uncomfortable about that third fact. I must add though, that Russ claims that "far from being put off, I laugh in the face of self-professed virginity." As far as we are aware, she returned to Minneapolis as chaste as when she left.

At four o'clock we were kicked out and so we headed next door to Cafe Angelli. We had eaten here on Saturday night on our way to the Fetish Ball, and had decided that the food was great, so why not. This time, we sat a table with a palm-reader from the Square, made up to be the Devil. He was an interesting and entertaining fellow. Later we were joined by a fifteen year old gutterpunk, who, while quite cute, was obviously drunkand lacking in sleep. We got her some tea and chatted with her until some of her friends turned up. Then we realised that the sun had come up and we were due to leave New Orleans in a matter of hours, so we wandered off in search of a cab, a bed, and most of all - sleep.

The phone rang, and breakfast was served - Grillades and grits (thinly sliced veal in Creole gravy), fresh fruit, bicuits, juice. This was good, although the look on Steven and John's faces when the menu was announced was priceless. We packed ourselves up, thanked our friendly hosts, and made our way back across southern USA to Atlanta.

All in all, a wonderful adventure.

That was the second draft. This is likely to be updated soon with more stories, details, etc

And here are the pictures...

Lafayette Cemetary

Madonna and Child

Angel Tomb Decoration