Photos of Louisiana - Saturday

Until now, my posts have been filled with exclamation points - we did this! We saw this! We ate this! Today was a great day, but not filled with quite so many exclamation points...
Stuart's class wasn't listed on the schedule as having any runs today, so we slept in late and lazed around - a really nice change, and it made it feel more like a vacation to me. We got downstairs too late to eat breakfast here in the hotel, so we drove to a small nearby town to McDonald's for breakfast, and then to see a couple of plantations in that town. We went to Houmas House plantation, which was ENORMOUS, with the most beautiful gardens and old sculptures. Then we drove down the road a bit to another plantation whose name I can't remember - it was closed to tours, but we drove beside it. It's amazing how treasured these old plantations are here - I know that's undoubtedly due to the money tourists bring in, but they are so beautifully restored, in such detail.
The plantations that we saw (and there were 2 more in the same area) are all along the levee - the Mississippi River is 100 feet from them. And we can see the unloading docks/equipment rising above the levee, for unloading barges, all right across from the plantations. I'm so interested in the details about how different life is here.
We headed for the track then. Everywhere we drive, we are surrounded by two things: sugarcane fields and refineries. There are refineries here that are larger than Buhler. And not just a few - they are EVERYWHERE and they are HUGE. It's like being in a different country. The farmers have planted sugarcane in every single tiny available bit of land - little snippets beside ditches, little corners of fields, every single bit. And they have a whole different tractor for harvesting - something I've never seen before and can't figure out how it works - I'm going to have to look for a video of it on youtube.
We spent the afternoon & evening at the track, so that Stuart could watch the other racers. The people in his section who won their class competitions yesterday had a special race against each other today. The only way to win it is by going all out and giving it everything you've got, so it's good to watch if you are going to be racing against any of them, since you'll know what their cars can really do. It's very typical for racers to "sandbag it" - not ever run their car as fast as it can actually go until the last day of racing, so that no one knows what they can really do. The whole drag racing thing is way more complicated than it seems. Anyhow, we went to the track - L and I read books and sewed and played with toys, etc for the afternoon, in our shorts and sunglasses and hats, because it is really warm here. In the 80s in the afternoon - which I'm loving. A little glimpse of summer!
This evening, there was a jet car race. We wanted to stay to watch that, so we ate dinner at the track. This was my food adventure #2 - jambalaya. And it was delicious!

Pork, cajun sausage, noodles, onions - it was so spicy it made my lips zing, but it was great! And after that, L and I got a snowball - like a snowcone in a cup, only with sophisticated flavors, and they are amazing. Yesterday, L had a peach flavored one, and today she got strawberry wedding cake. It was so good that I ate almost half of hers - I'm getting my own tomorrow! :)
Then the jet car, which L has never seen before. That's such a cool experience because it's so loud you can feel it inside of you - it actually rattles you. They spray water behind it, so it makes enormous clouds of steam, and it roars, and blows jets of fire. It's one of my favorite things at the track - I've only seen them one other time; they are kind of rare.
Tomorrow is eliminations day, so I'm going to head to bed - we'll have an early day. Stuart's category races 2nd, and he's been slotted to be one of the first 3 racers, so we'll be there super early to get ready!
Carla

All Bug-Sprayed Up, and No Where to Go (aka Friday evening)

As I have mentioned a time or two, I adore traveling. If I had unlimited money, I'd spend vast amounts of it on extravagant, frivolous traveling. So today was my cup of tea.
We got up early, which is pretty much the only thing I don't like about traveling. At least, on trips to the track, when getting up early is part of the plan. I stayed up too late last night, determined to get a run in - we didn't get back here until 9:30, and so I didn't finish running until almost 11, and so morning felt just too darn early to me. At any rate, we got up and at 'em and headed to the track. It was overcast and foggy and so humid, and really looked like it might be a miserable sort of day. I'm learning that maybe it's just like that here in Louisiana, because it turned into the absolutely most gorgeous day. One of those days that makes you celebrate sunshine - not too hot, just perfectly sunny, blue skies, puffy white clouds - just a "happy to be alive and outside" day. I was so glad that I had a reason to be out in it!
We spent the morning running qualifying rounds, and then running for class around lunchtime. We got lunch at the concession stand at the track, and I had a crawfish sandwich - that's practically mandatory in Louisiana, right? Eating a little adventurously was one of my goals for vacation, and so I'm giving it a go. L and I both want to try alligator, and I want to have gumbo and jambalaya, too. Anyhow, we ran class after lunch and Stuart didn't win. However, he ran a good time and nothing is broken on the car, so that's always a good run. And he has some ideas about something new to try that might improve his time, so there's something to occupy his time between getting-to-race times.
After Stuart was done racing for the day, L and I did some exploring around the track. We took the golf cart down to the drainage ditch area where we saw the alligator yesterday and HE WAS THERE AGAIN! Again, someone saw us there and asked what we were taking photos of, and saw it, too, so we have proof that we didn't make it up. Which I felt like I needed, since Stuart pulled up on the mo-ped a moment later, and it was gone. Again. Although it did scare the bejeebers out of me this time, since it thrashed in the water - I think I shrieked like a little girl and jumped about three feet into the air.
After that, L and I went further down to the end of the track, since I'd seen on Google Earth that there was a bigger lake down at the end. We had to drive the poor golf cart through a field to get to it, but there was a pretty little mowed path that ran along beside it, and it was so tranquil - frogs chirping, birds, enormous dragonflies everywhere. If it wasn't for my tense phobia that an alligator was going to fling itself out of the water at us, it would have been very lovely, I think. I stopped about every 2 feet to check out the water's edge.
We spent about 45 minutes or so exploring down there, and then headed back to our pit area. On the way, since we were going past the alligator's area anyhow, we decided to stop and peek, just in case. And yup, sure enough, he was out again. And so was a nutria, which I had never seen before. Essentially a beaver-sized rat with the most disgusting teeth I've ever seen. Day-glow yellowy-red. The stuff of nightmares. I have awesome pictures, which I'll add if I ever find my downloading cord. It's packed somewhere practical, I'm sure.
After all of that excitement, we headed back to the pits, and spent the rest of the afternoon eating Chex Mix and scotcharoos, playing card games, and sewing. (Well, okay, that's what L and I did. Stuart watched other men race.) :)
This evening, we had signed up for a swamp tour, and I was SO EXCITED. A pontoon, in the real swamp - alligators and Creoles and crawdad catching and swamp people, etc, etc - I was really ready to go. So we joined some other racers who had also signed up, a nice group, and headed to the meeting place, along with the woman from the track who had arranged the tour. And the tour guide never showed up. We waited about 45 minutes; L and the woman's son ran around and petted stray dogs and tried to catch lizards, etc. Such a disappointment. I'm hoping that maybe somehow it will get rescheduled for tomorrow night - I'm taking along jeans, sneakers, sweatshirts,bug spray etc, just in case (that's all the stuff they told us to wear tonight for the boat ride).
So we decided to, instead, go see the Mississippi during daylight. There is the scariest bridge EVER at the edge of this town, possibly called Sunshine Bridge, that spans the Mississippi. (I sure hope it's called something more dignified than that, but I suspect that I'm out of luck). I have an absolute phobia of bridges - irrational, but true, so I was nervous about this. We drove over it last night, in the dark, on the way to dinner. Today, however, being able to see the barges and everything made it so fascinating that I wasn't even too scared. And that's good, since we wound up driving over it about 6 times - thanks, GPS. We got a little mislead about how to get to our dinner destination.
We stopped on the far side of the Mississippi, parked beside one of the pylons, hiked through a grassy partition, and put our hands in the Mississippi. I don't know why that was so moving for me, but it made me kind of emotional. L and I collected shells - kinds that I've never seen before, and L found a fish stringer (which she, of course, kept).
All in all, quite a day.
I can't wait to see what we'll discover tomorrow!
Carla

Friday highlights - before I forget

*seeing the alligator again, TWICE, and a nutria
*exploring the pond at the track
*putting our hands in the Mississippi, and gathering shells
*almost going on a swamp tour
*going over a really big bridge multiple times
*having crawfish for lunch

I'm going to add photos and more details later, but I had to mentally unload some of my list, or I'm going to start forgetting things!

Friday morning - how drag racing works

So here’s the thing… I can’t understand a darn thing anyone in Louisiana says.I consider myself to be fairly good at interpreting accents and mumbling – I do teach elementary kids, after all. However, I feel like a foreigner here, which I suppose I am, in some regards. It makes me feel language handicapped – I have to concentrate so hard to understand anything, and I still only get about every 5th word. And I’m trying to figure out what the announcer is saying over the loudspeaker, which distorts words anyhow. The only thing I can get is “nice day” – “naaah-ss dayuh”. Lots of “we gun run dis class now…” To be a biased idiot, I kind of thought that only happened in books. And we are experiencing being a racial minority, which is also an unusual experience for us, and particularly for L. Everyone around us is either African-American or Cajun or Creole – wonderful to listen to, but a little atypical for those of us from small-town Kansas.

Anyhow, it’s Friday. We are at the track, Stuart has had two qualifying runs. That means that they use the racers’ times from those runs to rank the racers. Those rankings are used to pair the racers up for the actual racing tomorrow. Every car has an “index” – the time that the car SHOULD run, based on it’s make/model/engine size. And then racers work on their cars to try to make them go faster than the index.The racers are ranked by how much faster than their index their car goes.There were 85 racers here in Stuart’s category this morning, but more are arriving all day, so I’m not sure what to expect for actual racing (called eliminations) tomorrow. This afternoon they are running class, which is optional. It means that they line you up in your categories (classes), and you race anyone else who is in your category, to set the fastest speed for your class. Stuart is a stock car racer (as opposed to super stock or super gas or super comp). In the stock category, the racers are placed into classes based on their indexes. A is the fastest class, Z is the slowest. Stuart is in D class, so he’ll race all of the other D racers to try to set the class record. He also would have the option to try to set the national record here this weekend. There are only certain races where that is an option – the track has to provide officials to tear apart the car if you do set a record, to make sure that you aren’t cheating in any way. Stuart set the record in 2008 and 2009, but I don’t think that he’s going to try to set it again here (although I could be wrong). It’s too humid and warm, neither of which are good conditions for speed.

This morning, it was overcast and foggy – I was worried about how the day was going to turn out, weather-wise. But I’m guessing that might be a local normal weather thing, so close to the ocean . . .it all burned off after a bit, and now it is absolutely amazingly gorgeous outside. We stopped and bought sunscreen this morning, since I’d brought bug spray, but not sunscreen. And we’re stopping tonight to buy some shorts - I packed for Kansas weather, not LA weather. The announcer said it is 15 degrees warmer than normal here right now.

Tourists in the South

I am completely smitten with traveling to new places.  I know that I've said that before, but days like yesterday (Thursday) just solidify it for me.  We got up early in our yucky hotel, where we didn't set anything on the floor and worried about bedbugs all night long.  We headed southeast from Shreveport, going through Lafayette, and then on to the outskirts of Baton Rouge.  From there, we headed southwest a bit to Belle Rose, a tiny little town that has the track on its outskirts.  So, while that is interesting, here are the real highlights:
*We saw a camel farm.  A big field, filled with big camels, baby camels, middle-sized camels... I'd never even thought about one of those existing.
*We saw swamps, marshes, bayous - you know, just like what I keep in my mental image of the south - cypress trees, white cranes, moss hanging from the trees, etc.  We drove over the most enormous swamp on an interesting raised road.  I have a couple of pictures, but I left my camera's cord in the truck, so I'll have to attach photos tonight.
*We saw people crawdad fishing in ponds created for that purpose with orange markers creating a grid, each attached to a basket.
*We saw a boat, which I'm sure has a specific name, but I don't know it - the one with the big fan on the back that you see in movies used to navigate swamps - we saw people...well, navigating through a swamp, on it.
*And most importantly to L, at the track, we saw an ALLIGATOR!   In a totally fluky-weird twist of events...L and I walked down to the eastern edge of the track in the late afternoon, because I was bored.  And I'd seen on Google Earth that there are little swamp marsh areas at each end of the track property.  So we walked down that way, but I couldn't see it.  It's not very big, and one end of it has a barrier wall made of stacked tires, about waist high.  So we walked through the field toward it, and I figured that it was going to be nothing.  But as we got close, L said, "MOM!  That's an alligator!"  And right in the end of the swampy part, near the wall, was an alligator.  I thought it was fake, since it wasn't moving (in retrospect, I'm so glad it wasn't moving).  I thought the track owner had put it there for fun.  So another man who was pitted nearby came over and asked if we saw anything in there (since I was taking pictures of it) - he freaked out when he saw it, and said it was about 6 feet - its head and most of its tail were out.  So L and I ran back to get Stuart.  He was in the middle of a chore, but it only took us about 10 minutes total, and when we got back - it was gone!  I'm so glad I have photos to prove it!  :)
We have to leave for the track now - Stuart gets two runs this morning, and then has the opportunity to try to set the class record after lunch.  It's beautiful here - sunny, about 80-something yesterday.  My face and arms and sunburned!
Carla

Merrily We Go Along...

So this morning at the crack of dawn (or 7:45, which FELT like the crack of dawn to me today) we piled into the truck along with approximately 1/4th of our worldly possessions and started driving.  Eleven and a half hours later, we plonked ourselves down in a hotel room in Shreveport, Louisiana. Tomorrow morning we are heading to Belle Rose, which is about 30-ish minutes further than Baton Rouge, to the race track. 
I love to travel - adore it, absolutely one of my very favorite things.  And in particular, I love to go to NEW places, to explore new things with my family.  So this is just about as good as life gets for me.  However, I have a fairly strong type-A streak, and I usually have a packing list and a food list and a plan of what we are going to do on what day, and what it costs, and what it's hours are, etc, etc. (And, yes, I drive my family a little nuts). But things have been super-crazy at work and in pretty much every other area of my life, so all of that organization stuff that makes me feel comfortable got tossed out the window.  I finished packing at 1:30 this morning.  You know how sometimes you do things that you suspect might be completely irrational, but you just feel compelled to do it?  (Or at least, I hope you can commiserate with that...)  I made Chex mix in the middle of my packing frenzy last night.  I just really felt like I couldn't go on this trip without homemade Chex mix.  This morning, I realized that my sleep-deprived brain was making irrational decisions...
So we've had a lovely-ish day in the truck - in a "I love to be with you and I love our enforced proximity to each other and our conversations, but I'm kind of wishing that it wasn't all taking place in a moving vehicle without many movement options in rush-hour traffic in downtown Dallas" sort of way. I'm so excited to continue traveling tomorrow and get to the track - I've heard it's in the heart of swamp country and that there are alligators in the pond/swamp at the end of the track.  L is desperately hoping that the alligator business is NOT just a rumor - her goal is to eat alligator on this trip.  :)
I typically indulge my teacher tendencies and research the area to which we are traveling, and then force  my family to learn about the history, native tribes, agricultural products, etc, etc.  I didn't get to that this time, so I don't feel like I know what I'm getting into - I'm not so great at "winging it".  However, hanging out with  my family is just what I need right now, so I can't wait to get started.
Carla

Quirky

My kiddo is currently in the throes of a bedtime quirk.  She sometimes does this; she has a tendency to overthink and then cause herself hours of distress and inability to sleep.  So she's lying in bed, as I type, unable to sleep because she's worried that she MIGHT end up being the last person awake, and she doesn't like to be the last person awake.  But her concern about being the last person awake is making her unable to sleep, which is making me CRAZY.  Because I love sleep, and I've had a really long day, and all I want to do is go to bed.  But, of course, I don't feel like I can. Because then L would be the last person awake.  She told me that it's  easier for her to fall asleep when she can either see the flickering lights from Stuart watching TV in the living room or hear me typing.  Stuart has fallen asleep on the couch in the living room - but the TV is still on - and I'm typing, so she should be golden.
Yesterday L and I drove to Maize to do a little shopping, and planned to meet up somewhere with my sister and her gorgeous little monkeys so that I could get in some sister time and we could give the kids their Valentines Day presents.  L and I made them each a scarf and a stuffed animal owl, so I really wanted to see their faces when they opened their packages.  Her older kiddos were in school and the little one was napping, so L and I did some shopping while we waited.  We decided to grab some lunch after shopping at Old Navy, and went to the car to find somewhere nearby.  But the darn thing wouldn't start. Not even try.  And it was 18 degrees, with a wind chill of 4 degrees.  And I hadn't brought a coat, because, you know, what are the chances that I'll really NEED it??
Thank goodness for hero husbands, the kind who drop everything and attach a trailer to the back of their pick-ups and drive almost an hour to pick you up from the mall parking lot, without even grumbling in front of you.  The kind who insist that you sit in the warm truck while they hook your car up onto the trailer in the freezing cold.  The kind who, after all that, STILL refuse your offer of half of the cinnamon scone you got at Panera for  lunch.  Now THAT'S a good husband.
(And he spent all day today fixing it, even though he really wanted to be working on his race car.  I'm married to such a great guy!)
So L and I spent the day today in Hutch with my mom.  She said that she was going in to Hutch go buy groceries and that we could come along and get our groceries for the week, too, if we wanted.  We got home 7 hours later.  I kid you not.  I love my mother, and I love spending time with her, but it was a really long day. I am sure that she feels the same way.  Never underestimate the privilege of completing your own errands, and ONLY your OWN errands.
L made a felt stuffed cheetah today.  Yesterday she dreamed it up, chose the fabric, sketched a pattern, and cut it out.  Today she and I stitched it (she had a rather horrible needle/finger poking incident, so I did some of the stitching) and stuffed it.  Her, I guess, not "it" - L named her Chichi.  Which, she informed me, is kind of like a pun - "you know, since chi-chi means kind of rich and snotty and it is also a nickname for cheetah".  :)
I love that kid.