The Voyage Home Part 3

Read part 1 here and part 2 here.

So, now I’m back on the road and making a mad dash through what I start to recognize as Coastal Mississippi. I recognized the area because of the signs on the Interstate. Towns like Waveland, Kiln and Petal were all on signs that I saw, all of them being places where some of my extended family on my mother’s side lives. Also, I had managed to find a Rock station that was coming in loud and clear on 95.7 FM. It wasn’t until the station identification before the commercials that I realized that it was Bayou 95.7. That’s the classic Rock station in New Orleans. I was within 100 miles of my destination. It would only be another hour or two before reaching home! No time to be sight-seeing now. Time to go into Warp!

Sometime around 0300 local time, April 30th, I reach the border and cross into Louisiana. Seeing that sign saying ‘Welcome to Louisiana!’ was quite gratifying, especially since Bayou 95.7 started playing the perfect song at that moment. They bucked the trend of most classic Rock stations and played a song from my favorite band, ‘Calling Dr. Love’ by KISS. It was as if the Universe was saying ‘Welcome Home, Publius.’ That certainly gave me an adrenaline boost.

I stopped after the song was over at a rest stop that was strangely closed at night. I just sent another text message out to those who needed to know my whereabouts and kept on trekkin’ towards my destination. From this point, everything was getting quite familiar. I was almost at the point where I didn’t even need the Garmin anymore. After all, I’m back on home soil! Thank God!!!

I start zooming down the I-10 heading west at VERY unsafe velocities, and not giving a shit about speed limits. I was too close to the goal (and way too wired with adrenaline) to stop now. There was also no traffic AT ALL. I was free to pretend that my S-10 was a Corvette… and I did just that while noticing some very familiar names on the signs along the road. Names like Nine Mile Point Road, Old Spanish Trail… I was in Slidell! That’s on the Northshore of Lake Ponchartrain in St. Tammany Parish. I was so close to the Greater New Orleans area by this time that I could kiss it passionately like a man that hasn’t seen his wife in a year. (Or, in my case, seeing her for a week or two at a time per year at most for the past 5 years.)

I started to come to a bridge crossing the Lake. At first, I wondered if it was the Causeway Bridge, which at 24 miles in length, is the longest man-made bridge in the whole world. It turned out that it was actually a smaller bridge cutting across the eastern side of the lake. That was actually a good thing since there wouldn’t be any tolls on this bridge. Traffic was starting to come into existence so, I had to slow down. Damn!

Anyway, the moment I crossed that bridge, I was back on the Southshore of the Lake in New Orleans East. I could tell because of the street names: Read Blvd., Bullard Rd. and so forth. There wasn’t much traffic so; I started speeding again through this particular area. That part of town is not safe at night, especially if you are of the Caucasian persuasion.

TO BE CONTINUED... MAYBE CONCLUDED...