{"id":8269,"date":"2025-10-28T01:54:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T01:54:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/?p=8269"},"modified":"2025-10-28T02:13:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T02:13:49","slug":"a-slight-after-action-report-from-nawlins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/28\/a-slight-after-action-report-from-nawlins\/","title":{"rendered":"A Slight After Action Report From N’awlins!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Greetings and Beat-to-Death Salutations!
Holeeeeeee Toleeeedo!!! as Professor Hikita in “Buckaroo Banzai” said…. (I think) I know it was a late 80’s early 90’s movie but the brain is smoked like a cheap cigar tonight…

I made it home…
THIS is a big deal<\/strong> as the beginning of this trip almost ended at the start (along with ME!!!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I’m blasting down I-75 with the music on, 0730, everything good… me chatting up some various frens and fam, letting them know I’m gonna be off the reservation…

So I’m at about 85mph which for The Boat is hardly pushing it, when I ran over -something-… a minor bump is all I felt and heard…

Next thing you know, the steering starts going ‘whonky’…
Uhhhhhh….
THEN the noises started…
Fuck! Fuck! FUUUUCK!
TBH, it no shit-for-real sounded like a Blackhawk was flying by… same rotor beat cadence, same ‘whop-whop-whop’ noise…

And then I realized
The truck luuuuurched like a motherfucker hard right<\/strong>
SHIIIIIIIIT!<\/strong>
I made it to the breakdown lane thank “Insert Deity of Choice”
That being b\/c it was full on rush-hour Tampa Style and I’m fucking lucky I didn’t broadside a motherfucker, or even worse, flip the fuck over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So….
I called AAA.
Man, thankfully I ‘landed’ so to speak right near a mile marker as the AAA App sucks donkey cock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It kept trying to say I was at the fucking Mall…
And the tire?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Seems the tire was dry-rotted like a motherfucker
I had no idea<\/strong>
(J3, I blame you LMAO!!!)

No seriously, I had them checked when I first got The Boat and there was according to the local dood\/Pep Boys guy, there was no problems…
Too bad I didn’t get it in writing Aye?

So yeah, AAA showed up with a MEGA-QUICKNESS (like less than 30 minutes) and HE was thrilled that I had already dropped the spare off of it’s winch\/cradle. My back won’t let me bend down to swap out the spare and I apparently don’t have a lug-wrench (now I do of course), but hey… prepping the battle-space helps amiright?

Now, a couple of observations:
During my 25-30 minute wait, about maybe<\/em> ten minutes into it, I stayed (after dismounting the spare) I got back in The Boat, and waited there, listening to the radio…

Until

Now I can’t prove it, but earlier examples abound.
One minute I’m sitting there, all chill, and the next second:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

WHOOOOOOOOOSH!!!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The semi passed –so close<\/strong>– that the driver’s side mirror, on the gimbal moved FORWARD!<\/strong> I saw it happen… like missed the side of The Boat by mere inches…<\/em> and The Boat itself rocked like it was in a fucking hurricane… Scared me TBH…

I dismounted like a minute or two after…
I took my battle bag with the Glock 21, went to the far rear right of the vehicle, on the grass (about 4 feet away) and -waited-<\/strong>. I can’t say for sure, but other instances of a similar nature during this fucking trip made me realize that there genuinely IS an illegal CDL issue out there for really-reelz.<\/span><\/strong>

Other scenes as I mentioned were like events where trucks had been running people off the road, trucks in car crashes (no fatalities that I saw leastways BUT!
MANY of the trucks involved seemed to be tagged with “Singh Shipping LLC” on them… Make of it what you will…. and me?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So b\/c of this realization, I was worried that I was going to get smoked by one of them fuckers, so I figured to be on my feet, and IF and only IF The Boat got smoked, I’d then go over, and terminate the driver with extreme prejudice with the .45 because fuck that guy for real…

Personally when I imagine it, I can only think of how a Jeet would react after smoking another American Vehicle initially thinking “Oh well… guess it’s back to Punjabistan!” and then thinking “Well, I’m fine, fuck that guy and I’ll be back within 6 months!” only to see the owner walk up, and start blowing him apart w\/a .45, ankles, knees, hips, balls, shoulders, elbows, and then maybe, just mayyyyybe <\/em> if I was feeling sorry for him, one thru the brain pan.

I mean I don’t have collision, and 90% of those companies are shells w\/out Insurance. Wreck my ride? That’s a killin’ right there y’all.

Because fuck those guys.

Tell you what, IF we started doing that, instant on-the-fucking-spot executions, we’d no longer HAVE that particular problem.
Tell me I’m wrong.
Go ahead.
I’ll wait.

So yeah… the majority of the trip was summed up in the poast from the other night. Good times. The only other things that happened were me doing (as suggested by one of y’all) the Natchez Riverboat Luncheon Cruise<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The live Dixieland Jazz was great<\/strong>
The lunch was aight…
Generic N’awlins Chow.
TBH Cafeteria Level.
The Louisiana 256th BDE In Tigerland in 2005 fed us better in Iraq. THAT right there was some premium Cajun Cuisine…
A story for Christmas Later…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Meh.
TBH, the prices of the good <\/strong>restaurants were extortionist by my standards… add on the $75 parking for the ‘event’ I might have to raffle off the new rifle to make bills LOL!

The other thing I did, well…. a wee bit on the personal and deep side… To do the long\/short of it, I went into a Catholic Church for the first time in like oh holy hells! since my 1st Marriage which was a High Catholic Mass, or maybe the Christening of the Spawn, and the first time I went to confession in 45 years.

My reason for the MAJOR lapse in going to confession was that the first and last time was when I attended the Volkschule in Mondsee Austria as a kinder. When FedBro and I were on our youthful Euro Trip in the early 80s, we attended the local school.

It was a Very Interesting thing to compare it w\/Jr. High in the states. There? The fucking krauts ran<\/strong> between classes as a mandatory thing<\/strong>: “Vorwarts MARCH!!!!HUT!HUT!HUT! Run! Run you verdammnt Americanish Swine!!!!” with the teacher having a switch to swat slow asses…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pretty fucking intense to an American Kid.

And Art Class was held by a Catholic Nun… Sister Mary Elephant (to steal that one from Cheech and Chong). Once a week, Sister Mary, who looked like she was built out of Krupp Steel by a panzer factory, was mighty quick<\/strong> with that metal ruler man… Get caught fucking off and WHACKUM!!!<\/strong>

Bleeding knuckles.
Again… NOT the American expectation
Rather shocking IMO

The ruler I knew about from the frens I had who went to Sacred Heart Academy, HOWEVER the STEEL ruler? Maaaan… the fucking Austrians don’t fucking play…

As an aside: Did you know the Austrians made up a significant number<\/strong> of the SS? Per the Google AI: “Austrians comprised approximately\u00a013% of the SS<\/strong>, despite making up only 8% of the Third Reich’s population”

Yep.
The German Version of Appalachian Mountain Folks…
Harder and Meaner than boiled woodpecker lips.
And as my DeadDad said when he met her at one point, he wanted to ask her “Where were you in ’42 Sister?”

Myself? I was like ‘Bad Idea Da!’
I think she would have kil’t his ass had he had the gumption to do so… I think he knew it’d be a bad idea to do so, so he stayed quiet…

BUT
That sets the stage, ‘cos one day, we all marched down to the Big Local Church, which just so happens to be the church in the movie “The Sound of Music” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Per the google: “The church in the movie\u00a0The Sound of Music<\/em>\u00a0wedding scene is the\u00a0Basilika St. Michael<\/strong>\u00a0in Mondsee, Austria. While the real Maria and Georg von Trapp were married in the Nonnberg Abbey church in Salzburg, the Mondsee basilica was used for the filming of the elaborate wedding scene due to its grandeur and availability.”\u00a0
Yep.
At the time, we were living in Mondsee for 6 months.
Off and on… we used it as a ‘home base’ so to speak to hit Italy, Belgium and other Euro-Points… this was when it was still 2x Germanies, East and West…

So Anyways…
Back to my childhood trauma
My first confession was in that fucking church
And it scarred me, and scared the fuck out of me.
They even went as far as to find a Priest who spoke English, and there I was shitting myself b\/c GIANT FUCKING BASILICA and I was NOT ready for that shit…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Crazy amiright?
Lil Billy was NOT ready for all that prime-time intense Austro-Germanic Catholicism man…

Sooooooo…
Got an aversion to it.
BUT
SOMETHING <\/strong>this time in NOLA had me go into that church… and I ended up talking out a lot of things, some to personal too talk aboot. I told him (the Padre) A LOT about the ‘rocks in my ruck’ and things, to include all my service in Iraq\/Afghanistan\/Kuwait… all of it… I did a major emotional trauma dump<\/span><\/strong>.

Needless to say I felt\/feel great<\/strong> after.

And I think that THIS was the reason I felt compelled to go, as the Padre who took my confession? He’s the Big Man of the church from what he told me… Head Boss-Dude.

Seems he’s the Archbishop of the Diocese.
AND
The reason I know this was a summons or something?

Seems as he’s the headman of this Tribe of Catholics if you will, and while we talked, he told me as part of his training, he was required to do 8 weeks +\/- in the Army as a Chaplain. They sent him from the Vatican to Iraq.

He’d been there\/done that.
He ‘got me’ so to speak…

And maaaaaan he told me about a particular hairy incident that he had to deal with that I specifically remember when 6 guys got wasted in two attacks in Baghdad in 2004… and he was on VBC at the same time I was!!!!
Smol World or something else?
I’ll go with something else…

God’s Will

And after 45 minutes, he was joking w\/me about how the 45 minutes we spent was “One Minute Per Missed Year” in being a lapsed Catholic. He then gifted me a rosary:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If that<\/strong> isn’t the most “Marti-Gras” Rosary for around Halloween, I’ll eat my hat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So yeah.
A great experience<\/strong>
I’ll have to go back.
I feel recharged. positive. even upbeat.
Other things of a positive nature happened on the trip, as well as some negatives, but overall, I feel “right” if you will, and man, it’s been a long fucking time<\/strong> since I felt this way.

So I’m still exhausted having been Flogged by People’s Tractor Factory where I’ve been training my replacement (I think joke or not? Not sure…) and I didn’t get enough sleep last night as I got in at 21:30 but didn’t crash until 0130 as I was ‘road wired’

So lets do some more Later
Big Country<\/p>\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings and Beat-to-Death Salutations!Holeeeeeee Toleeeedo!!! as Professor Hikita in “Buckaroo Banzai” said…. (I think) I know it was a late 80’s early 90’s movie but the brain is smoked like a cheap cigar tonight… I made it home…THIS is a big deal as the beginning of this trip almost ended at the start (along with … Continue reading “A Slight After Action Report From N’awlins!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8269"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8312,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8269\/revisions\/8312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}