Day Five!

Last day of rally. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana
We arrived back at the bar parking lot early enough to stand around and hear more stories about the horrible hotel most everyone had stayed at. One group of guys actually moved the furniture in their room in front of the door! Hilarious! Another one of the guys had overheard that Corey and I had reservations somewhere else, pulled into the parking lot that the rally had reserved, talked to the cops, pulled right back out, and went looking (successfully) for our hotel. Ha ha. Glad I checked those reviews last month!
After a quick announcement and the regular car horn choir we were off.
Challenge: We have a long highway drive in front of us so the challenge is quite simple. Take pictures of five cracked windshields (or as the brits called them: windscreens). More points for the more severe of a crack. Must be an intact windshield, and the car can not have been wrecked. Not intended to be gruesome, just looking for neglected windshields. Get to New Orleans and have points turned in by 7:30 p.m.
Bonus points:
Find the Smart car. Find the Street Safari (that’s the organization that put this whole thing on) member in the yellow smart car with Street Safari logos in the French quarter. She will be moving from time to time but will leave the French quarter by 5:30p.m. with no more chances to find her after that time. If you find her you will receive a token to be turned in with your points for your bonus.
Our car is doing so well! The only real trouble we’ve had is with a little sputter on take off. Corey found a little fuel leak, replaced the O ring?, and now it runs better than it ever has! We did start to overheat a couple times. It seems the fan has decided to not work for some reason. So now Corey has it hot wired to just run constantly and we disconnect it when we are stopping for a while. Ha ha.
We did well on the challenge! It turns out to be quite easy to find cracked windshields in the south. They’re everywhere. We got one 5 pointer, a 4, a 3, and two 2’s on a five point scale. The five pointer was a crazy one Corey spotted on the side of the highway, pulled over, and ran back down the shoulder to grab the photo. Madness. We made it to New Orleans by 4:30 and decided to do a crisscross pattern through the French quarter starting from the end. My back was a worry at this point and we didn’t know if I could run through the streets (though I was ready to try!) so we thought we try the car route first. We pulled onto a little side street toward the end, made it two blocks down the street and BAM! Yellow smart car!!! YAY! We were pumped. I got out and received mardi gras beads with a babe medallion at the end. As I got back in the car the ‘Oh, Crap’ team wearily turned the corner and informed us they had walked like 20 blocks to find her. We were very lucky!
Now we had a little time to get to the hotel. We weren’t able to book the hotel that a lot of the rally were at, but we got a sweet deal on a little bed and breakfast looking place in the garden district not too far away. The place was wonderful! It was just an old house that had been divided up for slave quarters. They had completely remodeled it and turned it into little hotel rooms. There was a 4 post queen bed, high ceilings, wooden floors, and a little flat screen over the mantle that had once encased a fire place. The bathroom was black and white tile, granite counters, and a mantle on one wall as well. A little small, but full of New Orleans charm and uniqueness. We loved it! Anyway. We freshened up and headed to the rally end point at the hotel over in the business district. Made it and turned in our points by 7. Then grabbed our cooler of beer and headed to the sidewalk to hang out with everyone and tell our stories since there wasn’t our regular parking lot to conduct such business.
After a lot of hilarious tales, we went in the lobby for a bit, sang a song for a video one of the members is making, got kicked out of the lobby, and continued to hang out on the sidewalk until the closing ceremony. We ended up being moved from the lobby, to a car lot down the block, moved the other way to an empty lot a block down, and moved one last time to across the street to an abandoned parking lot up against an old white brick building. Karen (one of the main organizers) was pretty upset about not getting her promised lobby for the closing ceremony, but I thought it was the most fitting ending to a banger rally ever. I heard other people telling her that as well, so I think it was more of a principle thing than anything. The award went out to Manwall which wasn’t much of a surprise at all and they gave a cool speech about all the help they had gotten along the way and how amazing the rally had been. More awards were given out for the people who had been to all the rally’s to date, the crappiest car, etc... Finally it ended in cheers and we all walked over to the French Quarter.
Wow. I can not imagine being there on Mardi Gras. The place is so narrow and insane as is! At least on Bourbon, anyway. People were everywhere and beads were dropping from the balconies to whistles and catcalls. Everyone has a drink in hand and the cops patrol through the packed streets on horseback. We bar hopped with the Canadians (they do actually have names), the ‘Oh Crap’ team, and the skull car guys. It was really funny and pretty ridiculous really. A fitting end to an amazing adventure. It was kind of strange that we wouldn’t see each other the next morning and start annoying each other with our cars. There was no plan for the next day and it was kinda sad!! Ha ha. I kinda always thought that I’d be sooo ready for the trip to be done after 9 days of traveling, but it seemed much too short! We were all just really getting to know each other and there is so much more road to see! Ah well. I do miss my dogs terribly and all things must end! The adventure was amazing and Babers are a great group of people. It almost doesn't even seem real. I couldn't be happier about doing this even though it was a huge time investment and pretty grueling at times. The adventure and the people more than made up for the difficulties along the way. I'm just so excited to have participated in this event. I wouldn’t change a thing.