Tank Trek: 2006

If you're living on or near the gulf coast your chances of having evacuated are pretty good as we've had some "above average" seasons. Evacuating large amounts of people is never easy and even with preparation, contraflow, and phased evacuation plans there's still going to be traffic.

The folks at the Morning Train Wreck, KKND's morning show, are doing their part to raise Hurricane evacuation awareness. Tank, the morning show producer, will walk 11.8 miles from their studio on St. Charles Ave. to the Armstrong International Airport, a trip according to Google Maps should only take 28 minutes. The walk will start at 6:30 and Tank will periodically call the station from a cell phone to provide updates.

Evacuating for Ivan was a chore, it took me and Jessica 5 hours to get to Franklinton but we left early. Same thing before Katrina, we left first thing Saturday morning after I drug my hungover butt out of bed and saw that red line right on top of the city. The trip to Franklinton was alright but that stretch between McComb to Shreveport was 12 hours thanks to what I consider a bad decision by the Natchez police to enforce traffic lights rather than keep the traffic moving.

Vydra, the station music director and morning show co-host had a similar experience. "It took me seven hours to make it to the airport," she said in a press release on their website.

The weather tomorrow shouldn't be too bad for Tank. According to Accuweather it'll be partly clody and the temperature should be around 89°F, but after humidity it'll feel like 100°F. If you see him out, be sure to give him subblock, and some water. At least he won't be out there too long . If he can keep up a 16 minute mile, he should be done in about 3.5 hours.

You can view Tank's planned route here.
More information can be found at the station website.

Bourbon Street... a place for families to bond?

There’s something about turning 21 and spending your birthday partying in the French Quarter. Although I don’t think I’d ever get in a drinking contest with my mother and aunt on Bourbon Street, this scenario was the case a couple of weeks ago when the contest pit the ages against each other in a battle to see who would last longer.

I decided it would be better not to get involved when they started talking about trading tequila and Jägermeister shots.

And what have you been drinking young lady?

Monopoly

Someone posted about a new edition of Monopoly in the Mardi Gras forum at nola.com. The developers have selected cities from around the country and opened up voting to select the sites for the properties. Each city gets three spots and from what I can tell the more votes a location receives the higher the property vales.

The Mardi Gras Post Part 1

It's been a long time coming but I've been able to make some time to share a few pictures and experiences from Carnival. Overall, I think "Mardi Gras Lite," as Jon likes to call it, fits the description of this year's celebration, especially when factoring in the shortened parade schedule and smaller crowds.

Krewe du Vieux, a local favorite, kicked off the parade season. Jessica and I met Ray one of the Nola.com producers anlong with my old manager, Mike, and his wife from the day job. This was Mike's first taste of Carnival, and for those that have been to or in KDV would know they don't pull any punches in their satire. I have a very small, quick, and dirty gallery posted. I'll try and put a better one up later.

Our first BourboCam show of Carnival went off without many problems. Everyone was working longer shifts this year and sometimes we had shifts with only two people instead of three to cover everything. The individual shows have blurred together in these two months since Mardi Gras day but I'll try and hit the high points.

First off, I have to get this out, maybe a little preachy, maybe a little bitchy, bear with me. When we use "live and uncensored" to describe the webcast it's implies unedited and unprompted. If you watch expecting a boob-fest you'll be disappointed. There's also more men flashing as more would be women flashers are turning the tables on the guys. You may watch expecting the breasts of Bo Derek and end up with Bo Diddley. If you want tits that bad I'd recommend that you come down here with a camera or camcorder or just google them (NSFW).

Ok I'm done ranting.

First off, I had the pleasure of meeting Zach who had recently launched his website I Love Bourbon Street. He's been documenting his misadventures in New Orleans for a couple of years now and made it a point to drop by the show throughout the weekend.

The Saturday leading up to Fat Tuesday traditionally is a pretty wild time. With the depressed numbers of visitors in attendance and the threat of heavy rain in the greater New Orleans area the day shift made for a wet and sometimes lonely show. The rain we did see drove a fair amount of people off the street and into the clubs and bars. It was also one of the few times all the street preachers took cover. At one point the corner was deserted except me, Jon, and one preacher from the XXXchurch.

We had to give him props for braving the weather when everyone else scattered in the rain.

As the afternoon became evening more people would come out. and people were letting their hair down. Before you knew it Willard and Danika were there to take over and Saturday was over for me.

Sunday was my first time working with Danika in a while, since before the storm. We had seen each other last night but it's not quite the same actually working together. We were both scheduled to host without a production assistant so we spent the night trading off each hour sto make sure we could print email and monitor the stream. With the exception of the normal volume issues we were having a pretty good show.

Sunday was also the night things started to gel for me. I don't know if it was not really being able to ramp up and get into that rythm before Carnival season or the attitude of some of the email, but there was a different air out in the night. People seemed to have more fun and I was feeling it.

Monday I made it out early to get some pictures from around the quarter.

We met a pirate kitty:


Debbie the Bead Whore and I swapped jobs:

I learned I had a fan club:

And was even visited by my friend and dentist with his wife:
Finally for the ladies there was some beef:

We finished up early Tuesday morning and I had to high-tail it to my day job where I would experience sleep deprivation like never before.