I went to New Orleans for the weekend, to attend Bryan's wedding. Someone really didn't want me to get off this island. My flight was supposed to leave around 10:30am on Friday, arriving in New Orleans at 3:30pm. However, hurricane Charley felt otherwise, so early that morning I got a call from American Airlines telling me that my flight out of Miami was cancelled, and they could put me on a different flight, through Houston, leaving from here around 12:45pm. She was clearly in a hurry (I guess they had lots of people to call and reschedule) so I didn't take much of her time, said thanks for the information, and hung up. Unfortunately, that meant I didn't take the time to carefully write down my flight number, time, airline, etc.

Once arriving to the airport around 11:45, I realized I had no idea which airline I was now flying out on. I thought I had bought my ticket via Delta, as I usually do, but since it was American Airlines that had called, I took a gamble and went to the AA terminal. The ticketing machine couldn't find my reservation, so I started to suspect that it was Delta after all, but I decided it was faster to ask them to look it up at the information counter than to walk to the Delta terminal on the other side of the airport and then find it was in fact AA or something. So I waited in line and was finally told that yes, it was AA, but the flight leaves at 12:10, not 12:45. By now it was 12:00. So I asked what other flights they could put me on, and it turned out there were none to be had until one leaving at 2:30, flying through Miami (!?), which would put me in New Orleans around 6:45pm. So I took that, and waited. Finally, 2:30 arrived, and I got on the plane and immediately fell asleep (I'd gotten off work at 5am without having packed, so I had just opted to stay up until my supposed 10am flight).

The plane took off without waking me. I later sleepily felt the plane land and thought to myself, "Awesome, I slept through the whole flight." Then the captain came on the PA and said "Folks, we're back on the ground in San Juan. We've had some problem in the hydraulic system, and have no steering, so we're waiting at the end of the runway for a tractor to come out and tow us back to the gate." Blast. (I also find it interesting that we had no steering capability. I wonder if perhaps there was actually significant danger we narrowly avoided).

We sat at the gate for an hour and then they told us to get off the plane. Two hours later, they had it fixed and we got back on. We finally left around 4:45pm. Fortunately, my schedule included a 5-hour layover in Miami, so even with the large delay I still had some time to sit around in Miami before my flight.

So I arrived in New Orleans at about 10, seemingly just in time to go to bed, the party over, the day wasted. Fortunately, there were still a few people there (Richard, Maria, Matt, along with Cat, Bryan, and Andy, obviously), so we had a mini-party-revival in which an excessive 196 pictures were taken (The selection in my photo gallery is a significantly pared down subset). Finally, it was time to go to bed (read: collapse and sleep where you fell).

The next day mostly consisted of renting tuxes and an endless search for a pen for the guestbook. Oh, and of informing me that apparently the Best Man is supposed to give a toast at the wedding. Ohh, good.

The wedding didn't feel real. Weddings are things you are dragged to where a bunch of old people get all dressed up and you complain loudly until finally you get to go home. This was populated by a bunch of my best friends. It felt like a performance we were putting on for the assembled relatives. The only stress or nervousness was about not wanting to forget a line and mess up the show. Afterwards, they were still just Bryan and Cat.

Speaking of messing up the show. We'd been kept busy, so I hadn't had a chance to sit down and think of something to say for my toast. So when the time came to give it, all I had was a vague idea that I wanted to talk about how I had the good fortune of knowing both of them really well, rather than what I assume is more common, where the best man is the groom's good friend but doesn't particularly know the bride. I wanted to talk about how they had both taught me many things, and my life was immeasurably better from knowing each of them, and how happy I was that two people I care a lot about had each found the person who makes them happiest.

However, it actually came out something like this: "I've known both Bryan and Cat for a long time, and they've both shown me lots of things. ...And I hope you have a good life, for the rest of your life. ...Because that's how long lives... last. ...Cheers" (hurried drink). Yeah, that was awesome. Fortunately, they got it all on video, so I will be able to relive the agony in excruciating detail for years to come.

The rest of the night was pretty uneventful, aside from the fact that Cat asked me to dance towards the end of the evening, and I stepped on her train and broke her bustle and she had to hurriedly retreat to the back room to have it fixed. Oops.

But, my multiple faux pas aside, it was a great night. Amusingly, Cat and Bryan seemed reluctant to leave the company of their friends. They had gotten a really nice hotel room for their wedding night, but when they realized that all the rest of us would be staying up and partying at their house, they started to consider coming back to hang out with us after a few hours. On their wedding night.

But I can understand the feeling. Having few friends in the area, spending time alone together is nothing new to them, whereas having all their friends assembled there and having a good time certainly IS a rare commodity. I can understand the reluctance to let it go to waste and to willfully go off to spend even MORE time alone together. It's like living on a tropical island, and finally being offered a rare opportunity to go frolic in the snow, but being expected by tradition to go to the beach instead. Of course, I'm sure they had fun on their own as well. Probably sat up all night getting used to calling each other "my husband" and "my wife".

The return was uneventful, aside from the hour-long delay while they unloaded 400 pieces of cargo from the plane before loading our luggage, which was awesome, but not worthy of further mention.