captain's log: day -6

[Taking a page from Alex's blog: dramatic travel blogging!  I didn't trek through Eastern Europe per se, but I hope between my various adventures and mad blog skillz the next few posts will be worth the read]

So I moved to Philadelphia on August 16th and have left the city exactly once since then.  This past weekend I determined to go big: Florida!
In November!

Which is at least 20 degrees warmer than Philadelphia in November, according to this Wikipedia article.

This trip began several weeks ago.  My biannual syllabus-writing party in September had left me with ink-stained fingers, a virtually unreadable planner, and precious few weekends to spare.  I dug my birthday out from the surrounding crowds of assignments and weighed my options.
I love my birthday.  I especially love when my birthday is a numerological miracle.  However, I'm perilously close to shooting myself in the foot with towering stacks of work and rapidly disappearing days in which to do it all.  Plus, an exciting complication also chose to rear its head this semester.  It's kind of a secret, but as you guys are in the circle of trust: I have job prospects (and a final interview on Dec. 4th) down South that need prospecting!
And, you guys.  My birthday.

There was nothing left to do but compromise.

• November 12: Fly into New Orleans for compulsory alligator cheesecake, much-needed visiting, job-scoping
• November 13-14: Pensacola Beach for indulgent birthday activities!
• November 15-16: Travel to NoLa->Philadelphia for conferences, further prospecting, and an old-college-try at the piles of work on my desk in advance of real birthday

Fair and balanced weekend if ever there was one.  I booked my flights, set up my itinerary, and happily began packing my (new! giraffe-print!) duffel bag.  UNTIL --

November 8, 4pm: Governor Jindal declares a state of emergency for Louisiana in advance of Hurricane Ida.

This is the thing.  I grew up by the Oceanfront and we get hurricanes.  I am intimately familiar with the hurricane.  I know the season traditionally ends on November 1.  I also know that the 2009 season, though forecast to be one of the worst seasons in decades, fizzled out early with barely a tempestuous whimper.  The specialists called the season a wash like months ago: global warming, you guys. Shrug.

But of course, Ida.  Naturally.  Forecast to gather strength the week of November  8th, Ida tore through Mexico and lay in wait over the Gulf of Mexico, harbinger of a harrowing future for an already battered region.  The same specialists took to the airwaves, shouting each other down with "breaking" wind shear data and Gulf temperatures, debating her landfall in Florida or Louisiana or both on the 11th, maybe 12th ...

Governor Jindal took no chances.  New Orleans braced itself and waited for the dawn to break.

Four days before my flight.