Greetings Family, Friends and Followers,
Our Mustang celebration event complete, we left Birmingham, Alabama, this morning after a leisurely breakfast with Larissa's parents at our hotel, the Doubletree. Breakfast was at 06:00 AM and we were on the road at 07:30 and this was leisurely considering the schedule we had to keep on the way east to the Mustang celebration.
All the restaurant staff at the Doubletree mentioned many times that the Mustang group was by far the best group of people they have ever had stay at the hotel and they hope we will be back in 5 years for the 50th celebration. Even the crazy Aussies and Kiwis were wished back soon as they brought energy to any place they showed up at. They were everywhere and from the two gentlemen who helped me clean up our pony for show in exchange for a lift to the racetrack - buying up car parts to take home at a fraction of the cost of buying them in Australia, to the two blokes who bought a car here to ship home.
Speaking of those two - we caught up to them in the honor's circle of original owners of 64 1/2 Mustangs of which I would have bought the red one I pictured last night if I had a spare $23k lying around. Anyway, we saw these two men travelling with us in the Mustangs Across America group starting in Las Vegas all the way to Birmingham in a '67 convertible. Usually we were blowing right by them at least once each day. It turns out that they flew in to Los Angeles, test drove the car around a block or so, bought it right then, drove it to the celebration, intend to drive it back to Los Angeles and finally ship it home to Australia!
I told you these blokes were crazy but it gets even better. Each time we blew past them, it looked like they were having a grand time just driving at their own pace. It actually reminded me of the two British chaps rambling along in an Austin Healy or MG or whatever it was in the movie The Gumball Rally. Look it up to fully appreciate the image - the movie came out in 1976 or so by Warner Bros. and it was a spin off of the Cannonball Baker Sea To Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash of the early 1970's. Not the lousy movie with Burt Reynolds - The Cannonball Run. That movie sucked by comparison. Trust me, find the film, watch it to understand my twisted sense of humor.
So anyway, I commented to these two Aussies that they must have been having a grand time on the run to Birmingham in their new Mustang. "Oh you think so, mate?" What I thought was them chatting was often their teeth chattering as their new Mustang had a non working heater core, missing grommet around the throttle linkage at the firewall and when we went through that snowstorm in Arizona with our car nice and toasty and sealed, they had snow / hail / rain coming in through the gap between the top of the window and the convertible top. Apparently early Mustangs were not known for having a tight sealing top like we had in our former '02 convertible. When we stopped at rest stops, washed up and dried our hands on those hot air blowers, they used those hot air blowers to thaw out their toes. Not to worry, though as they quickly bought warmer clothes than the shorts, tee shirts and Aussie ball caps they brought over and were wearing aroung Birmingham. Like me, they had a hard time comprehending the idea of snow in Arizona in April.
So, we are travelling home in a more or less straight line back home from Birmingham, AL to Suisun City, CA. Slight detours include New Orleans, San Antonio, Grand Canyon and Las Vegas...
We spent a total of about 20 minutes in New Orleans, most of it trying to figure out how to get back out. We used Google Maps to get us to city center thinking it would take us close to the French Quarter. When we got hopelessly lost in not so great areas of the city, we switched to our GPS unit, plugging in a restaurant search for a restaurant nearby. Well, that got us into an even worse area where a shiny bright red Mustang REALLY stuck out and drew lots of eyeballs, including the chickens who were literally crossing the street in front of us and getting to the other side. Finally, we got to the French Quarter, or so we thought. Note to all who have Mustangs: stay away from this area as the car is too big for the narrow streets, the street urchins, police, construction, delivery trucks and car eating potholes all combined. Do not even think of parking in a parking garage as it is valet only and we were definitely not going to let some wierd person park our car, with all our travelling possessions in it in a garage where the restaurant dumpsters were inside the garage, next to the parking spots and should have been emptied sometime last week. Nope. We could not get out of there fast enough.
You know what - just forget New Orleans all together. It is not ready yet. The outskirts of the city have neighborhoods that are still decimated from Katrina - caved in apartment complex buildings, boarded up houses, collapsed, burned out, abandoned. Depressing to see. Before New Orleans, while still in Mississippi, we past a half mile stretch of old FEMA trailers, stacked up like cord wood. Who knows what will happen with them.
So, tonight we are in Winnie, Texas. It is 20 miles west of Beaumont. We are here because we could not 1) get a room in the hotels we tried in Beaumont and 2) we could not get back to the hotels along the side of the freeway because the frontage road you needed was one way and by the time you saw the hotel it was too late. You just could not get there from here. So, we are in a very nice brand new Holiday Inn Express.
Tuesday morning we head off for the Riverwalk in San Antonio and the Alamo. Remember the Alamo and don't mess with Texas. After that, it is as far as we can make it towards New Mexico before sundown. Lots of driving but the Pony is doing just fine cruising at 70 or so - there are highway patrol everywhere looking to fill their coffers and I would prefer not to help them in that objective.
No new pictures today - trust me, the stripped and dead trees outside of New Orleans and the city itself were not worth the effort. So, instead, more Mustangs! Enjoy.
Jeff
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