Blow Outs on the Basin and Whiskey Chitto
I guess the penalty of complaining about a series of uninteresting weeks is a week that finishes with jam packed, life threatening good times. I think I officially had enough experiences within one week to fulfill my excitement quota for the summer.
Granted, Monday was less than exciting. My mother kindly drove to Baton Rouge to take me to a doctor's appointment. I really enjoyed visiting with my new temporary doctor, Dr. Landry. We talked a lot about gastrointestinal disorders and anatomy which is something I am extremely interested in. He took a lot of time with me and was very personal which is something I find rare in physicians lately. After my appointment and blood work my mother and I headed out to Chelsea's for grilled cheese on foccacia and their AMAZING tomato basil soup. When we drove back to the East Campus Apartments we realized that my roommate Rita had a flat tire. Unfortunately, Rita had been in the lab ALL evening. When Rita finally returned we got chase to put Rita's spare tire on. Granted, it wasn't that exciting, but for a Monday night this was something to talk about.
Our Tuesday talks consisted of three speakers. The first guy talked about breast cancer research, another about horticulture, and our final speaker about hallucinogens. The hallucinogen speaker was HILARIOUS. He is my friend Jamie's mentor and she said he is just as crazy when he's not public speaking. He definitely changed the pace of the Tuesday morning talks because usually we all tend to fall asleep. After the talks, Rita and I headed back to the apartment for an early lunch. It began to downpour while we were inside and we decided it was time we needed to head out to our labs. It was just my luck that I happened to pick up an umbrella my mom gave me... that was broken. I ended up getting soaked by the time I arrived at my lab. I left a huge puddle of water on the first floor. I figured that I would do better research in dry clothes so I headed back to the apartment in suddenly sunny weather without a cloud in site.
Wednesday was a sort of boring day in the lab that turned out to be rather significant in the upcoming days. Dr. DiMario assigned his high school research student, Elisabeth, and I to research ways of differentially dying proteins containing RNA. I knew from previous biology classes that methylene blue was great for this type of thing, but Dr. DiMario said it was a rather simplistic and, dare I even say, archaic method. Elisabeth and I did some more research and found that acridine orange and propidium iodide have been used for similar results. Acquiring said dyes was a nightmare. Only two labs had either of the dyes. It just seemed somewhat hopeless and frustrating.
On Thursday we realized that the acridine orange and propidium iodide stains were just too impractical to use. Not to mention dangerous. We decided to go ahead and try the methylene blue as a last result. Great thing we did. The slides we dyed with the methylene blue yielded some very interesting results on Thursday and Friday. We found that not only were the imaginal disc tissues stained well by the methylene blue, but we believe that the tissues with the RNAi-knockdown (meaning they have less RNA present) do not stain as well as the tissues with RNA.
After work on Friday I packed my bags for a weekend of outdoor fun with my family and friends. Before we left for our mini road trip, Jamie, Allison H., Rita, and myself decided to head out to have some sushi before “roughing it”. We went to the Hello Sushi restaurant which had a really mod Japanese décor complete with televisions playing art deco videos and really modern art. Rita had never had sushi but she really enjoyed it. I love introducing friends to new things and finding out that they love it. Afterwards, Allison H. and I went to Cold Stone Creamery for some ice cream (although, I had watermelon sorbet, but whatever). We packed our bags into Jamie’s car and headed out to Crowley, Louisiana.
Crowley is my mother’s hometown and the current residence of my maternal grandmother. On our way to Crowley we had to cross the 18 minute long (given normal traffic) bridge over the Atchafalaya Basin. As we were crossing one of the larger bodies of water in the Basin we heard a loud exploding sound and the car started going nuts! Jamie had a tire blowout! We were in the left lane and started screaming. My first instinct was to call my dad, and I did. Mind you, we are all still screaming. We switched into the right lane so we could pull over… and to our horror there was NO SHOULDER ON THE INTERSTATE! So, there are these cars flying by at 70-90 mph around us and my dad keeps telling us to pull over on the shoulder. Panicked, I tried to explain to my dear father that there was no shoulder. Going 5 mph, we finally found a place to pull over after about three minutes of snail-like movement. An SUV had pulled off on the shoulder ahead of us and a man got out an headed toward us. He approached the car and offered to change the tire. We, four girls who have never changed a tire in our lives, nodded and agreed that this was the only way. His son came out to help his father change our tire on a 5 ft wide shoulder next to a busy interstate. It was so dangerous!
After the man changed the tire he asked us where we were headed. I told him we were headed to Crowley and wouldn’t you know it, his wife and her family were from that area. In fact they are related to my Aunt and to a special friend of my grandmother’s. It’s a small, small world. Going much more slowly, we finally made our way to Crowley and my friends were able to meet my grandmother, Gran. Needless to say, everyone retired pretty quickly.
We all woke up pretty early, I’d say 6:30 am or so, and my parents took Jamie to get her tire fixed. We soon headed out to Whiskey Chitto (as I have sometimes seen it spelled). This is a favorite canoeing spot of my family’s. Once we reached the canoe outfitter’s we were loaded onto a bus with a lot of shirtless people. The bus was covered in handwritten graffiti on the inside. In fact, one of the messages written was “Possum Head + Cotton Top”. We were dropped off on the banks of the river and quickly loaded into our canoes and took off. Things were going pretty well, minus the people who had already begun to partake in spirits and loud music along the sandy beaches lining the river. Regardless, we all smiled at these passersby and continued on our way. About midway along the river, we could hear thunder and we saw dark clouds overhead. As soon as we realized it, a thunderstorm downpour descended upon us. We pulled off on the bank of the river and tried to find shelter under the trees. It really was not much better under there and my friends and I huddled together for warmth. We began to shiver because we were soaking wet and the wind was blowing. After about forty-five minutes we decided it was best to just work our way to the end of the river. We did just that and the weather lessened up on us.
The end point of our journey is just past an old bridge. Finally, I saw the bridge and a big feeling of relief overcame me. Just as my father and I approached the bridge our canoe just tipped over. There was no hesitation and very little splash. It was just sort of a “bloop”! Right at the end of the journey, we tipped. We still don’t know how it happened. I guess it was just a great end to my canoeing experience.
After many problems with the bus taking us back to our car (loading a bus, unloading the bus because it broke down, waiting for a new bus, loading the bus, etc.) we finally headed back to Crowley where we all showered and ate. My friends and I headed back to Baton Rouge where we retired for the afternoon. I was not able to sleep so I read a book about Elliott Smith and started getting dressed for a night on the town.
Jamie, Ashley, Rita, and I went out to the Varsity to dance our canoeing troubles away that evening. We had a lot of fun, but I was still not tired enough to go to sleep. I was disappointed when the Varsity shut down for the evening and we met up with Naomi, Chase, and the rest of our group back at the apartment. I decided that I wanted to go to IHOP since it is open all the time and everyone else loved the idea. There was a long wait at IHOP but we were all having a great time. Finally when we sat down, I fell asleep. What a lovely end to a wonderful weekend.
