No chicory root for you.

Sunday, September 24th 2017

Destin, FL, New Orleans, LA and Los Angeles, CA

It’s 8am Central Time and I am officially miserable. I don’t know what time we went to sleep last night, but it was definitely too late. I have a major hangover and somehow manage to quickly get myself together for the day. We have committed to visiting our Grandmother at 9am. Around 8:30am we are ready to leave. I call an Uber and we head back over to Destin to pick up my brother’s FJ Cruiser. Our Uber driver is swerving pretty badly and eventually almost runs off the road. “I fell asleep”, he says. I look at Mike and we both buckle our seat belts.

After holding my breath for another 20 minutes our driver flies passed the parking lot at AJs. When he offers to turn back we insist on exiting at the next parking lot. A short walk later we are at the car.

From here I insist on Starbucks again. It will make us late, but I am basically nonfunctional at this point. My brother is driving very slowly. He must feel like I do. I run into Starbucks to grab my grande coffee and I am all of the sudden overwhelmed with nausea. Uh oh. I throw up in the bathroom.

15 minutes later we are walking up to Grandmother’s room. We are a full 30 minutes late. My brother ducks into the restroom on the way up. I know how he feels. We spend about an hour with our Dad and Grandmother. The doctor comes in and says that she is looking really good (yay!). Around 10:30am Mike and I say our goodbyes and vow to do a better a job of calling.

As we get to the car my brother asks if I can drive. I don’t want to, but I agree. We are off! The plan is to drop me off at the New Orleans airport on the way back to Austin. I am hoping to hit town a little bit early so that we can stop for some Cajun food.

After about 15 minutes on the road I am still feeling terrible. I pull into a McDonalds for something salty. A piece of sausage and 4 chicken nuggets later I am feeling much better. For the next 3 hours I drive and my brother naps. Somewhere outside of New Orleans I pull over for gas and Mike takes over driving. As we get close to the airport he asks me to find him a hotel. I find one a few miles from the airport and he asks if I can take a cab from there. I am bummed there will be no beignets and coffee with chicory root, but he looks very sick, so I agree.  

After making sure that Mike gets checked in I call another Uber. The driver is pretty curious about what I’m doing at the Super 8 by myself with no bags. I want to remain mysterious but the driver is really friendly so I explain my day to him. He advises that I eat a late lunch at Dooky Chase’s before going through security and drops me off right in front of it.

Lunch is friend chicken and collards and it is delicious. I heavily consider a beignet but change my mind when I realize they are only sold in sets of three. From here I make my way to my gate and buy something called gooey cake and a cup of coffee. This combination of bitter and sweet is truly mid blowing.

Once I board, I settle in with a few bad movies from the Delta onboard entertainment system. Eventually I land back at LAX and take the shuttle over to my car in Lot C.  That was an eventful trip and I am looking forward to doing it again next year!