New Orleans, Louisiana (1992)

From left to right: Jim Wilde, Paul Catanzarite, Jamie, Lenny.

Everyone but Jim was Major Bill 5th Floor.

Jim was a DU at VT and a great guy.

For years we’d talked about going to Mardi Gras. Sophomore year, Pope (who was spending a year away from school at the request of his Engineering Dean) was supposed to drive up from Suffolk in his parent’s Plymouth Cougar and drive us there. But around Charlottesville he crested a hill and right in front of him was a broken down 18 wheeler. He went under the truck’s trailer and totaled the car.

Finally, in 1992 we all drove down there. I can’t remember whose car we went in, but we couldn’t afford a hotel so we CAMPED at some crummy campground in the middle of the city.

I did so many embarrassing things that trip I don’t even want to think about it.