That was entertaining, Nottso. New Orleans is just one of those cities where crazy stuff happens. I'm not the best at storytelling, but here's one that I was a part of... When I was going to school in Madison I signed up for one of those spring break service trips to New Orleans about a year and a half after Katrina. 2007 I think. The way it works is that they select a group of 10 students (nobody knew anyone else in the group), give us two state-issued vans, and send us on our way to do service. Nothing could possibly go wrong... We make it down there ok and find that the service organization is basically this impromptu group run by a single guy out of a ancient victorian house in the Carrollton neighborhood that the owner let him convert into a boarding house. There were about 40-50 college students from all over the place crammed into this house. When we arrive, we are advised to be quiet at night because they are feuding with the neighbor who apparently isn't pleased with having 50 college students living next door. The leader tried solve things by sending us over to paint the angry neighbor's house, but he wasn't having any of it. Instead, we did work in the lower 9th and went down to Bourbon St. to party at night (of course only two of us were 21, but with the city's economy in ruins, that didn't matter much). The third day, we come back to find signs all over place reading "STOP THE ILLEGAL BOARDING HOUSE", not long after the news media shows up, and we suspect we are going to get kicked out but the leader guy assures us he'll take care of it. The boarding house did end up getting closed shortly after we left. It was definitely illegal, but the leader assumed it would be ok because it was for Katrina recovery. Anyway, it looks like the excitement had all passed over until we reach our last night in New Orleans. The other guy in the group, lets call him Mike, was a funny but reckless fellow. He injured his foot playing basketball the week before the trip and was in serious pain. However, he insisted upon not only doing all of hard physical labor in gutting a house, but worked twice as hard as everyone else. He was being sustained by a bottle of painkillers and was definitely taking more than the recommended dosage. On the last night, we bring a few bottles of liquor back to the house and start drinking. It doesn't take long for Mike to become extremely intoxicated, but fortunately we hadn't gone anywhere yet. He insisted on going to Bourbon St but that clearly wasn't going to happen. After about an hour we eventually convince him to go to bed, he passes out, and that appears to be the end of it. In the morning, we wake up and Mike's bed is empty. We start looking around the house and he is nowhere to be found. This is concerning, since we have to head back to WI in about 2 hours. We split up into groups and start driving around the neighborhood because in his state there was no way he made it more than a few blocks. No luck. Finally someone calls the cops and they respond that they have him in jail for disturbing the peace and underage drinking. Embarrassed, we call up the organizers in Madison and they instruct us to leave him there and drive back since it was Saturday morning and he can't be bailed out until Monday. I held onto all of his stuff and I brought it back to him in Madison about a week later after the whole thing had passed over. Of course I wanted to know the story before I gave back the stuff. According to Mike, he "just wanted to have a good time" and decided to walk downtown. He was listening to his iPod and quickly encountered two suspicious characters who approached him and knocked him out. Unfortunately, a cop witnessed the whole thing and chased down the assailant. When Mike came to, the cop had arrested the assailants but apparently there was a struggle. The cop asked Mike to sign a form stating that he witnessed the cop being struck by the assailant. At that point, Mike made the unfortunate decision to say that he was unconscious and didn't see anything. The cop asked, "Will you sign it anyway?" Mike refused, so the cop slams him against the car and cuffs him, saying "Not going to rat your buddy out are you?". On the way back to the station, Mike kept asking why he was arrested but got no answer. He asked if it was because he was drinking, and the cop said, "No, but I'll put that one on there too". He tried to plead his story, saying he was a Katrina volunteer and he had the WI drivers license and UW student ID to show for it. All the cop said is, "That's quite an elaborate story you've got there." After the weekend in an overcrowded New Orleans jail which I'm sure wasn't pleasant, he eventually got to tell his side of the story. They decided not to press charges, which suggests it wasn't the first time something like that happened. The iPod also mysteriously disappeared. The moral of the story is: don't mix alcohol and vicodin.