The Mission: A Go.

For crying out loud, I can’t even get an Easter break. I am complaining like I lost the TUNA. So what? I’m a seasoned traveling cat, but this trip has been one challenge after another.

Let me recap. I wandered aimlessly around Indiana avoiding tornadoes. Or so I thought until I discovered I had been in Illinois. (I’ll never forgive that DC bag lady who stole my GPS.) Come to think, maybe it was Indiana after all. I wanted to be in Kentucky. The lesson learned here is that following rivers can get you into trouble as they snake every which way. And bridges? Some should be burned. You never know what lies, sleeps or lives below. I wish I was talking about trolls.

I found myself eating my way across the Ohio/Mississippi River Valley. Surviving on bacon and barbeque. TUNA withdrawal can be a bitch. Once I hit Memphis I got a bright idea. A Steamboat River Cruise to the Big Easy. Except the tourist season hadn’t started. Getting a ride down river was about as hard as drifting along with Huck Finn. And I was dreaming of sitting on fat ladies’ laps and nomming finger sandwiches. Instead, I hitched a cruise on an out of service tug with a couple of old gristles. Got off in Natchez when they started that “here, kitty, kitty” nonsense. Nothing good ever came of that.

In Natchez there are 53 things to do. You can tell me what they are. I never stuck around, but if you can only do one it is the Southern Carriage Tour. Say hello to Ben, a great old dapple of a horse.

But Ben wasn’t headed to NOLA. Hopped on board a train (my favorite mode of transport) and thoughts of City of New Orleans filled my cathead.

Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin' trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

If you are lucky to be alive when you arrive in NOLA you’ll be above ground, just like the dead. Thank God for concrete.

Let’s see what happened in Louisiana? Oh yeah. Primaries and Basketball. That is what March is all about. The Madness!

Something made me go mad. I hate to fly, but I took a helicopter ride to what I thought would be Mexico. I didn’t hear anything about the Gulf of Mexico. Ended up on an oil rig in the middle of the Gulf. Surrounded by water and not a TUNA in sight. Stuck on the wreckage until the crew rotated. And these guys, the roughnecks, are serious boys. If they ain’t working they are eating or sleeping. A cat on the rig is no distraction. I tried to get them to haul a fish or two out of the water, but they stuck to business as the price of oil went over $100 a barrel. Can you remember when it was $40? About the time O’man got elected.

Enough with the water. I’ve crossed the Pacific on a cargo container with a Croatian crew. I’ve crossed the Atlantic, twice. Once on the Queen Mary II. Now I was marooned in the Gulf. So when the next chopper pilot told me he was doing a little R and R on the beaches of Mexico, I was off the island with a whomp, whomp, whomp of the rotors.

So here I am. I can see the Mayan ruins. I have not ventured into the jungles. Do we really want to know what lies within? Nah. I’ve tried to solicit a US Postal ride back to USA in an Easter chick crate, but the agricultural guys aren’t buying it. Damn it.