buy provigil reddit We got out of the Smokies after noon, and now we were pressed for time. It was mid-day on Holy Saturday, and by Monday morning we would have to drive down to the southernmost point in Louisiana – almost two hours south of New Orleans – and then Catherine would leave me, driving the truck back to Kentucky. She would end up driving all through Easter night, showering, and then immediately going to work Monday morning.
The clutch of the truck was fine – a bit sticky, but fine – and I stuck it in fifth gear and we did not stop. Mile after mile of southland rolled out before us. We came down into north Georgia and saw the odd limestone ridges – again, looking like a tree-clad West – and followed alongside one into the pines of Alabama, saw red buckeye (Aesculus pavia) blooming in the roadside ditches but could not stop, then were forced to a halt by the Birmingham traffic and continued on its other side, blasting into Mississippi where massive Magnolia grandifloras lined the highway. We got out of the truck for gas and noted the warmth. But it just kept going and going – I could hardly believe I was going to try to bike up the entire north to south length of this country. It kept going, and it was empty – no people, no buildings, nothing.
We looked for a place to eat in downtown Meridian but there was nothing doing downtown. After much fruitless searching I consented to eat in a chain, provided I had never heard of it. So we ended up in a Huddle House, which seemed to be an even cheaper version of Waffle House. It was perfectly fine. I had hoped to dine in New Orleans but we were still hours away.
We came across the Rigolets (rig-oh-leez) and skirted along the edge of Lake Pontchartrain – huge black expanses of water, it was hard to believe this was the land side of New Orleans. That city was doomed. And indeed it was Lake Pontchartrain which had come up and broken the levees during Hurricane Katrina.
And then there it was, surprisingly large, the skyscrapers glowing in the night, New Orleans: it was the largest downtown I had seen all the way across the country – it looked beautiful. It looked doomed and beautiful. We got off at the French Quarter, tried a hotel I knew and approved of, found it was full, then found another place on Rampart Street which was a bit pricier than we wanted but just fine for a Saturday night at midnight.
We had told ourselves we’d head out for beignets at Cafe du Monde, but instead we just collapsed. We had been camping out in the rain in the Smokies that morning. Now we were in New Orleans.
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