New Orleans is smokin'!

This city is so hot it is literally smoking. Actually it's a "marsh fire" that has been burning for a few days and has blanketed the city in smoke and a nice cigar-ish burning smell. Here's a news article, if you're interested, which I am not really: http://www.wwl.com/DEQ-issues-air-quality--precaution--over-smoke-fro/10772017

So last week Elbow and I went up North so I could get my Earthquake badge. It was awesome. We were in the airport and everything was shaking just like in the movies. I thought a plane had crashed into the building.

So when Elbow made fun of the people who started running frantically as the tremor started, I hated to tell him that I would have been one of those people had he not grabbed hold of my wrist. He knows me well enough to keep me anchored during something like this. My plan was to run down the next tarmac into the Southwest plane headed to Albuquerque.

Which brings me to my next big scare of the week. I don't really like flying. Unless I've had like four glasses of wine and then it's "exciting!" After the earthquake, BWI made everyone exit the airport, stop halfway, back up, move toward the doors, stop again, yell at each other, and then finally line up to get RE-SCREENED. Everyone in the entire airport had to go back through security. Which I'm sure took about eight hours. But I don't really know since we left and spent the day on the Harbor listening to passerby's "Where were you?" stories.

The next day we were back on the same flight, sans tremors. But Irene was moving in and creating strong winds so, after one of the bumpiest flights in recent memory, we were finally about to land. We were eye level with the trees. And just as the wheels were about to touch the ground, Whoooosh we took back off again!

I'm sure this was incredibly exciting to some of the preteen boys on the plane. But I pretty much passed out with fear. I figured the landing gear wouldn't come down and we were going to have to do a water landing in Lake Pontchartrain.

An oft-repeated phrase in public relations is "tell it first, tell it fast and tell it straight." Southwest modified this to "tell them nothing for a good 10 minutes." It's really scary when something like that happens and the pilots aren't on the mic jibberjabbering as usual, so they must be concentrating.

This story is getting long. Finally the pilot came on and said the tailwinds were over 100 mph and therefore too strong to land, so we had to turn around and come in from the other side. And Elbow was like "That's what I figured." Um hmm. I bet.

Anyhoo, we're back save and sound in the burning bayou.