Visit to New Orleans

I was in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago for SCA and SIGGRAPH. It was a fairly interesting trip down. It was my first time flying from Dulles and from DC in general. This wasn't really a big deal, just new. I couldn't get a direct flight, so I was scheduled to go through Atlanta. I should have known better. We took off basically on-time, but when we got to Atlanta we circled and circled and circled. There were storms in the area and they weren't letting anyone land. We ended up running out of fuel and being diverted to Greensville. We just refueled there and took off for Atlanta again. This time we were allowed to land, but by then the airport and flights schedule was a mess. I didn't miss my connection. In fact it was delayed by hours. I made it to New Orleans just fine, just pretty late as shown on the clock radio in my hotel room. I'm more of a morning person.

The lobby of my hotel had some beautiful glass work. Very festive...The conferences took up a lot of time, of course, but we did get to look around the area a bit. Big, sweaty humidity. We saw the Mississippi River including a river boat and a barge or two.


Also, some trollies...
And Jackson square...Including Jackson...

A lot of people were asking about damage from the hurricane. We really weren't sure what was hurricane damage and what was urban decay...

What was surprising was the juxtipositions. There were abandoned buildings right next to luxury hotels...A number of buildings had ornate decoration...

The Geek bar at SIGGRAPH had some interesting New Orleans characters...
A week of conferences is both exhilerating and exhausting, fun and informative, etc. It was good to see everyone again and start to think about new research directions and possibilities.