An empire of boulevards.

Now that's what I call a genuine New Orleans Southern Oak.

Somewhere on Esplanade Avenue.

Contrary to what many Bostonians may thing, Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans is pronounced "Esplan-Aid"  not "Esplan-ahd."  The city is full of unfamiliar pronunciations.  Dryades Street is just "Drieds," Clio Street is "Cl-eye-o."  Conti Street is "Cont-eye."  Burgundy is "Burr-GUN-dee."  Chartres is "Charters."  Who said French is alive and well in New Orleans?

I was on Grand Route St. John today.  How's that for a street name?  Nice street.  It intersects with Mystery Street parallel to Ponce de Leon Street.  One of the pleasures about tootling around New Orleans is not the streetscapes themselves, which are lush, but the names of the streets.  Whatever collective, subconscious genius named these roadways did a dandy of a job.

Humanity Street, Desire Street, Law Street, Magazine Street, Coliseum Street, Camp Street, Gen. Pershing Street, General De Gaulle Drive, Barracks Street, Rampart Street (North and South), Music Street, Jewel Street, Warbler Street, Elysian Fields Avenue...a body can get lost in the mind's associations.

Some streets are dull.  Most are interesting.  New Orleans is full of surprises around most corners.  The city is a work in progress, rebuilding itself from the sediment up.  Vast in area and dense in details, wandering New Orleans is an expedition that brings as many rewards as a Kenyan safari.  What should be familiar, disorients.  What seems repetitive is perfected in each, next incarnation.  

Sticker symbolism

People have been asking me, "What are those stickers on the side of the Littlest Ninja?"  If you are new to the Dot Matrix, the Littlest Ninja is my motorcycle, a 250cc, 2006, blue Kawasaki Ninja.  Formerly the Littlest Ninja this side of the Charles River.  Now the littlest on the East Bank of the mighty Mississippi.

Here's what the Ninja looked like in Boston.  New stickers now, visible here.

This isn't entirely true.  The 250cc Ninja is Kawasaki's most popular bike.  I see them all over New Orleans.  I saw a few in Boston, but less often.  I always find it amazing to read that this is a best seller because every asks me about it, mistaking it for a larger 500cc.  "I didn't know you could get a 250!"  You can.  It costs about $3000 and gets 75mpg.  It's a nice commuter bike and it's very forgiving.  You can handle the twistys and keep up with larger bikes as long as you aren't racing.  Sometimes I think about trading up, but for the minimal upkeep and expense, I'll take my Littlest Ninja.  So far, so good.  I've gotten more than my money's worth.  It's got 22,000 miles on the odometer and it purrs like a kitten getting it's ear scratched when I pull on the throttle.

So, what are the stickers about?  On the right hand side from front tire to rear, they are:  One of Coop's voluptuous devil girl stickers, not the naughtiest of them but risque nonetheless.  The one on the right side is clothed in pink lingerie.  The one on the left is a mirror image except nude with one nipple showing.  There are also three flags on the right faring.  One is German, one is Connecticut, one is Louisiana.  This represents the composition of my household and where we now call home.  The Louisiana flag replaced the Massachusetts state seal over a year ago.

On the right side is the aforementioned naked lady.  Why devil women in states of undress?  These tend to get a lot of attention when I'm stopped in traffic.  Young men will hang their heads out the window and say, "I like your sticker."  I reply, "That's how I like 'em: big and naughty."  Not really but close enough.  There is also the logo for Air Hamburg Airlines, a carrier you probably never heard of.  I've never flown Air Hamburg except in my dreams.  On the Littlest Ninja, it often feels like I'm flying when I'm not stuck in traffic.  I like to think I am going to exotic locales, islands in the North Sea, for instance, even if I'm just headed to the supermarket.  That is an adventure of its own in its way.

So now you know.

A Gruesome Mission

Bella Donna packs a double whammy of desirable attributes. She is beautiful and young. To put icing on the cake and round out her attractiveness into a trifecta, she rides a motor scooter. She tools around Boston on a Piaggo Typhoon 150. That's a ride as sweet as an American girl with an Italian name. That kind of girl is easy to find in Boston but that kind of ride is pretty rare. A woman like Bella Donna is a rare find indeed.

Bella Donna, never to be mistaken for her arch nemesis, Bruto Uomo, grew up in idyllic Kane Sqaure in the shadow of St. Peter's Church. She was reminiscing with Trixie Herlihy last night about a wristwatch she lost when she was a child. She and Ms. Herlihy have been pulling duty at the Peppermint Squad's Meeting House Hill satellite depot, near where Bella Donna grew up. It is a fairly quiet outpost with ample downtime during which squad members can bond and share their memories and goals.

The ladies were sitting on the front steps sharing a nip of cinnamon schnapps and watching the world go by. Bella Donna told Trixie the story of how she lost her wristwatch after burying her pet guinea pig in Ronan Park. Trixie said, "That's so sad."

Trixie asked where the guinea pig, whose name was Piggy, was buried. Bella Donna gave a rough description of the whereabouts. She is young but people didn't regularly rely on GPS in those days so she isn't sure of the exact longitude or latitude. Moved to the brink of tears, either for the lost watch or the dead pet is uncertain, Trixie assembled a posse this morning. Luckily it had rained much of the night and stopped just after sunrise. The ground was wet and loose but the skies were sunny and dry.

Trixie led the posse which consisted of a gaggle of Peppermint Squad hangers-on wanting to score brownie points with a full-fledged member as well as Tweedledum who had nothing else to do and who happens to own a metal detector. Tweedledum pulled his motorscooter up to the others already assembled on Mount Ida Road. After dismounting, he flashed Trixie The Peppermint Signal with his left hand and said, "Where did you find these rubes?"

Trixie apologized, explaining that this was the best group she could assemble on short notice for a Thursday morning. The posse went to work. Tweedledum activiated his metal detector and, with Trixie's direction and a entourage of stumble-footed onlookers, made his way to the spot Bella Donna described.

The metal detector started to beep like a gieger counter on a forbidden planet and Tweedledum knew that he had hit paydirt. He announced, "If this isn't a watch, it's Fort Knox!" One of the posse answered, "I just hope its not a dead guinea pig!"

This remark put a damper on everyone's excitement. As the leader of this posse, Trixie selected a deputy, one of the wannabes whose hands shook the least and handed him a trowel to discover what was buried. The deputy stepped up to the task with aplomb and went to work in the muddy soil. Soon enough he hit paydirt: a rusted wristwatch circa 1994 with the hands stopped at precisely 3:14:55, whether AM or PM wasn't apparent. It was a Hello Kitty wristwatch and when the deputy held it in the air, the buckle end of the moulded wristband fell of into the grass.

Trixie said, "Bella Donna is going to be so happy to get her watch back."

Tweedledum said, "You did your good deed for today, Trixie."