"I want to know what love is…"

The past 48 hours have been a whirlwind, and I still can't quite believe that I'm writting this from a New Orleans hotel room.

I always forget something when I go traveling, and this time it was a comb and the cord for my digital camera, hence the next couple "on location"—

Update, April 11: And that concludes the sum of my attempt to post "on location" from New Orleans, kind of like the Quebec special I wrote last summer. Between late nights and general exhaustion, I haven't really had the motivation to finish this entry until now. Incidentally, for those of you who may not remember the context, we were on our way to New Orleans to participate in the 2005 NAQT Intercollegiate Championship Tournament, after "accidentally" qualifying for the tournament at the West Regional Tournament back in February.

Transit

Thursday evening was crazy. My mom and I dropped off some stuff at the dump, and then I hurried to Kabul, the new Afghani place downtown, for a mini-high school reunion with Maichi (and her boyfriend Raymond), Yen, and Iman. I got there around 7, knowing that I'd need to leave for the airport around 10ish. Kabul had a waiting line, and already has a reputation for slow service, so we went to Thai2K instead—which also turned out to be packed. I suggested Cafe Mediterranée, and so we finally got to eat around 8pm. It was fun catching up with old friends, and a little weird since this was the first time we'd met as college graduates. All of a sudden we were talking about grad school and jobs and the suddenly more tangible concept of Real Life. The night ended with coffee before I rushed home to finish packing and get to the airport.

We met at the gate at Sacramento International about an hour and a half early. Our flight was due to depart a bit past midnight, so we passed the time cramming for the tournament—Ruwan brushed up on O-Chem, John started writing out the history of the English monarchy, I tried memorizing Latin American authors, and Rishi browsed through Sin City. The 3.5-hour flight out of Sacramento was to Continental's hub in Houston, and I spent most of it asleep. From Houston, we took a 50-minute flight to Louis Armstrong International in New Orleans, arriving around 9am local time.

To boldly go…

The South, I'd forgotten, is humid. The weather in New Orleans was actually nice, in the low seventies, but the mugginess took a little getting used to. After inquiring at an information desk at the airport, we took a convoluted trip to our hotel—first taking the bus to Canal Street in downtown New Orleans, switching to a streetcar on Canal, taking that for about a half hour, getting off near the Warehouse District, and then walking fifteen minutes to the hotel. The Warehouse District sounds nifty—many of the old warehouses near the Mississippi are being converted into art galleries, restaurants, and hotels—but a look around tells you that there's still a ways to go before the reinvention really takes off.

The hotel room was great, which is nice since four guys were going to be staying there over the next couple days. We relaxed for a bit, then went down to Riverwalk, a mall overlooking the Mississippi, for lunch. Eager to get some Cajun cuisine, I ordered a tasty Jambalaya PoBoy. Mmmmmmm.

After lunch, we went back to the hotel to watch a little TV and get some sleep in before that night's games. Deep Space Nine was on, much to our delight. Scratch that, three of us were delighted. While Ruwan, John, and I talked about which Star Trek series was better, Rishi called the rest of us dorks and went to take a shower. For the record, Deep Space Nine is way better than Next Generation. John agrees, Ruwan dissents, Rishi, I'm assuming, doesn't particularly care.

DS9 was followed by an episode of Next Generation, which started with the Enterprise encountering—surprise, surprise—an unusual anomaly. It was actually kind of an interesting episode, but I fell asleep.

Nationals

After resting up, we walked to Robert E. Lee Circle (which has a towering statue of the Confederate general) to catch the St. Charles streetcar to Tulane University. Tulane is located in New Orleans' scenic Garden District, surrounded by all these big 19^th-century houses. We checked in at the imposing McAlister Auditorium, which evidently sports the world's largest self-suspended concrete dome. It felt big and national and I just stood there in wonder: wow, we were really here. Quiz Bowl nationals. The biggest nerds in North America.

Ok, I'm getting tired, so I'll continue this tomorrow.