What Else There Is to Tell
Another December posting meme question:
ride_4ever asked, "What's the story behind your userpic of you in New Orleans?"
The photo is from my second visit to New Orleans. My first visit, in 1999, I’d planned on the fly because I had deadlines and a limited amount of money. I ended up spending more time on an Amtrak train getting to and from the city than I did in New Orleans itself, which wouldn’t have been quite so bad if Amtrak hadn’t lied about the scenic nature of the areas around its railroad tracks. I mostly saw a lot of old, rotting, abandoned factories through the train windows. Since I was traveling alone and the train rocking sometimes gave me too much eyestrain when I tried to read, I spent a lot of time bored. At least the crew did some social engineering on the train back so the riders were conversing.
I saw a lot in the very limited time I had in the city--write-up of the train travel and New Orleans experiences here--but I promised to return someday to do it right.
(Though at least my train experience led to me writing my dS fic "Journey Plus Destination: Strangers on a Train.")
“Someday” came in 2001. This time I would take a plane and spend about a week in New Orleans, and in the company of a due South fandom friend, LaT. It would be epic. (With LaT, the shopping alone would’ve been epic.) Unfortunately, she had to drop out of the trip two weeks before the departure day. But I’d been looking forward to this trip too long and decided to go alone again. See and do all the things! Touring and kayaking and shopping and eating! (Write-up here.) Some highlights include getting a fairly up-close visit from a baby aligator while kayaking--
Other tourist kayaker: ~paddles hard in the opposite direction~
Tour guide and me: “Awwwww!”
Me: ~readies camera~
Gator: ~hissing like a tea kettle~ “Hi hi!” ~grabs one end of my kayak between his jaws and tries to pull it up onto the bank, perhaps for easier access to the kayak’s chewy, meaty center~
--and a very disappointing visit to a strip club. My write-up of the strip club online led to one person who claimed to be an New Orleans stripper lambasting and threatening me in an e-mail.
The photo from the icon comes from my time on the steamboat, which was sadly disappointing. It was a two-hour tour, the boat was so slooooooooow, the strong winds coming up off the Mississippi River were frigid enough to have me shivering, the sights mostly involved dirty old factories and oil refineries, and I was very bored. I started a conversation with a very nice elderly couple though. Rosemary was surprised and impressed that I’d come to New Orleans alone. She thought that meant that I probably didn’t have any photos of me in New Orleans--this is about a decade before selfies--so she took some shots of me with my camera. When I returned home and showed those photos to a different fan friend, she asked me who took them because “these look like your lover shot them!” No, just an elderly schoolteacher I’d just randomly met.
(The photos of me from the 2001 trip are here.)
I ended up making an icon of this particular photo because I wanted one for posts about me and my life, and this one was mysterious and dramatic and I remember the trip fondly.
ride_4ever asked, "What's the story behind your userpic of you in New Orleans?"
The photo is from my second visit to New Orleans. My first visit, in 1999, I’d planned on the fly because I had deadlines and a limited amount of money. I ended up spending more time on an Amtrak train getting to and from the city than I did in New Orleans itself, which wouldn’t have been quite so bad if Amtrak hadn’t lied about the scenic nature of the areas around its railroad tracks. I mostly saw a lot of old, rotting, abandoned factories through the train windows. Since I was traveling alone and the train rocking sometimes gave me too much eyestrain when I tried to read, I spent a lot of time bored. At least the crew did some social engineering on the train back so the riders were conversing.
I saw a lot in the very limited time I had in the city--write-up of the train travel and New Orleans experiences here--but I promised to return someday to do it right.
(Though at least my train experience led to me writing my dS fic "Journey Plus Destination: Strangers on a Train.")
“Someday” came in 2001. This time I would take a plane and spend about a week in New Orleans, and in the company of a due South fandom friend, LaT. It would be epic. (With LaT, the shopping alone would’ve been epic.) Unfortunately, she had to drop out of the trip two weeks before the departure day. But I’d been looking forward to this trip too long and decided to go alone again. See and do all the things! Touring and kayaking and shopping and eating! (Write-up here.) Some highlights include getting a fairly up-close visit from a baby aligator while kayaking--
Other tourist kayaker: ~paddles hard in the opposite direction~
Tour guide and me: “Awwwww!”
Me: ~readies camera~
Gator: ~hissing like a tea kettle~ “Hi hi!” ~grabs one end of my kayak between his jaws and tries to pull it up onto the bank, perhaps for easier access to the kayak’s chewy, meaty center~
--and a very disappointing visit to a strip club. My write-up of the strip club online led to one person who claimed to be an New Orleans stripper lambasting and threatening me in an e-mail.
The photo from the icon comes from my time on the steamboat, which was sadly disappointing. It was a two-hour tour, the boat was so slooooooooow, the strong winds coming up off the Mississippi River were frigid enough to have me shivering, the sights mostly involved dirty old factories and oil refineries, and I was very bored. I started a conversation with a very nice elderly couple though. Rosemary was surprised and impressed that I’d come to New Orleans alone. She thought that meant that I probably didn’t have any photos of me in New Orleans--this is about a decade before selfies--so she took some shots of me with my camera. When I returned home and showed those photos to a different fan friend, she asked me who took them because “these look like your lover shot them!” No, just an elderly schoolteacher I’d just randomly met.
(The photos of me from the 2001 trip are here.)
I ended up making an icon of this particular photo because I wanted one for posts about me and my life, and this one was mysterious and dramatic and I remember the trip fondly.