Make my bed and light the light

Our taxi driver was a really cool dude, and when we got chatting and I mentioned Fats (Antoine) Domino, he told us that he grew up in the same neighbourhood and was friends with his kids - whose names all start with the letter "A".
He said that Antoine was a really nice man and so were his kids, and that his whole life he never got a driver's licence. Phil asked if that was why he wrote "Walkin' to New Orleans". 😁 Fats would have someone drive him wherever he wanted to go in his Rolls Royce limousine, and of course, everyone wanted to drive him (it!).
Fats' Lower Ninth Ward house was flooded by Katrina, and he had to be rescued by boat by the Coastguard. The house has been fixed since and is still there. Our driver told us that every year on his birthday, he goes to the Musical Legends Park and takes a photo of the statue. He said that Fats' "second line" (funeral procession) was the biggest he'd ever seen and ended up at Fats' old house ... there are videos of it on YouTube.
The trip home was long but uneventful until we got back to Auckland. There was an hour long wait for the first bags to arrive - Phil's was in the first batch - and another 20-30 minutes to mine to come through. It was on the second trailer.
The slow trickle of bags meant there was already a huge, long queue for biosecurity. All up, it took two and a half hours from the time we landed till we were "free."
That meant we missed our connecting flight to Nelson. Three bookings, a false start with checking our bags, and three hours later (one cancelled flight, one standby and one that worked), we were on the last leg of the journey.
We were met at the airport with bright sunshine, a full tide, and a warm welcome home from our very good friends Chris and Baumie.Läs mer