>SNIP
>
>>Especially if you're a Cavs fan ;-) I checked the scores a few minutes ago and saw the Cavs had jumped out by 13. Normally in a hotel room I would be watching it but the TVs here are atrocious. They have cable, including HBO, but the television itself is an old 19 inch and the reception is the worst I have ever seen on cable. I didn't even know a cable picture this bad was possible.
>
>I guess it hasn't changed much over the years. Back in the early 80s I was at Fort Polk and every place I stayed in that state was the same. Of course the cables are typically resting underground in water :o) I can't tell you the number of times I stepped onto what looked like just wet ground and sank up to my knees in the earth! When it floods there, it really floods.

You did sound like you have been in these parts ;-)

The strongest first impression on Sunday was of how much water there is. We flew in on a southwesterly course, meaning the plane went over Lake Pontchartrain and then the Mississippi River, downtown New Orleans and the Superdome to the right. The lake and the river both look massive, even bigger than maps suggest. And the water didn't quit there. On the drive west on I-10 from Louis Armstrong Airport (I love it) to Baton Rouge there was another huge waterway and uncountable stretches where the interstate is at most a few feet over teeming water. Millions of a type of tree I hadn't seen before -- cypresses maybe? The first word that occurred to me, regarding the climate as well, was swampy. It's more urban here in Baton Rouge, of course. The sense of entering an entirely different world was and is palpable. I like it. And I haven't even seen the bayous proper or the Atchafalaya Basin yet.