Travel to New Orleans

I have just arrived to the hotel in New Orleans. I have a bit unreal feeling that comes from travelling by plane for a long time. I left home at 11 AM on Friday. The builders were going to finish taking the roof tiles out and start building the second gable. Tapio was taking the sauna apart at the basement.

Minna took me to airport with India. Matias stayed to man the fort. Poor India is still ill from the flu and was most of the time just exhausted.

We had time to stop at work to pick up Minna's new laptop before she took me to the terminal. I left her university access card and my cell phone in my pocket, and forgot to pick up the laptop charger from work. The cell had Judith's number on it, so I could phone her. She was at the airport in 15 minutes with the charger. Bless her!

Minna and I noticed several emergency vehicles on the road near work but could not see any reason for their swarming. My neighbour in the plane talked about Kalula (SA cheap airline) flight that took off earlier but returned and was standing apart from other planes. She thought it is probably a highjack attempt. At Jburg airport no-one knew anything. Here is the explanation.

The first flight was to Jburg. When I got there, I felt fever rising. I took two paracetamols and it went down again. I had similar feeling the night before. If I am catching India's flu this is going to be an interesting trip.

To distract my thoughts I had brought a book at the airport: Eric Hansen's The Bird man and the Lap Dancer. Close Encouters with Strangers. The kind of a travel book I like: insightful musings about people and cultures.

My back starting aching badly soon after the take off. Worse than ever before. Luckily I was seated at the aisle of the central row of four seats and the two seats next to me were unoccupied. I took care not to occupy them when my far end neighbour was awake but I was able to stretch out and sleep on my back in quite a comfortable position. Every time I had to sit up for a long period, my lower back started hurting. Every time I breathed out the back the pain shot from my spine down to left the left thigh to the leg. I am getting really worried about that. Clearly, it is not going away on its own. I have to seek help.

The movie selection on the plain was really bad. I did not found anything worth watching until early in the morning: The Great New Wonderful. It is an indie film about New Yorkers trying to cope with their lives one year after September 11. Not too good but convincing and raw in a rough kind way.

Middle of the night the plane stopped at Dakar for refuelling. 15 people went out, 11 came in. Uneventful.

At the Washington Dulles airport the passport control was back to pre Sep 11 level of slowness. Not too bad, in other words. New was the electronic fingerprinting machine and webcam they used. While queuing, I checked my passport. I had not been in US since 2002.

There was Borders Bookstore at the airport. Time had a reasonable article on Human-Chimp genetic differences. I saw and bought Alexander McCall Smith's latest in the Isabel Dalhousie series of Edinburg books: The Right Attitude to Rain. As always when reading him, I got into a meditative mood. Would not it be interesting to write down ethical and moral questions one encouters in everyday life? He has a special knack on it.

The early Autumn weather in Washington DC with cold rain pelting down was soon behind. Southern Appalachian Mountains came out of the clouds to as we flew into bright sunlight. When we approached New Orleans, it became quite evident that this city has no future on this world with global warming and rising sea levels. Marshy lowland areas spread out for miles on all directions around the city. The only dry parts were highways and railway lines that rise little bit our of the water.

I was reminded of new discoveries of great cities under the sea in front of Gujarat in India. Those cities were drowned by rising sea levels at the end of the last ice age. The people were forced to move on higher ground and start building new ones. The remains of their new cities have puzzled archaeologists for years because the Indus river culture seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, fully formed.

New Orleans will have to abandoned, eventually. Where can it go? Can a city be transported to an other place and survive. New Orleans is supposed to have a specilal vibe of its own. Or is it just a myth to keep luring tourists in, the real local culture having vanished long ago?

The first surprise was pleasent: The airport had signs up in three languages: English, Spanish and French. That was a good sign. I have always been a sucker for multicultural places.

The shuttle buss driver was a real entertainer. He used to drive tour buses for years. He rattled out commentary all the way to Downtown. He had left the city six days before the hurricate Katrina hit it, spent six months in North Carolina and is now trying to renovate his house. He would not just leave it and go, but hoped to find a buyer at some point.

The highway had massive flood control tubes running next to it. They were meant to be used to pump the flood water out of the city but when Katrina hit, there was no-one to operate them. The yellow mark left by the flood water was over two meters above the highway.