Neighbor promises one last Mardi Gras surprise

I am going to try to get back to New Orleans for the final Mardi Gras weekend. Getting back is no problem. Getting to our house in Uptown takes good timing and luck.
Four krewes will be staging and starting their parades Uptown on Friday night, including my favorite, Krewe d’Etat which builds imaginative floats satirizing all things political. Can you imagine what that will be like this year with all the material they have to work with?
Uptown gets a reprieve on Saturday with only two parades, both starting at midday, clearing the way for the Krewe of Endymion late Saturday (Samedi Gras) afternoon. Endymion is considered a “Superkrewe” and fields huge floats with spectacular lighting, but it starts in mid-city, giving Uptown a rest until Sunday (Dimanche Gras, I guess, though I’ve not heard it so called), when the Superkrewe of Bachcus rolls as the fourth Uptown Parade there that day.
Whew! By Sunday, traffic in Uptown will be totally gridlocked.
Our neighbor Bob has always sponsored a Thoth party on Sunday at his house, coinciding with that krewe’s parade that was once the only one that came close by on Magazine Street. He opens his house for a party that includes potluck dishes and much grilling. The pace of adult beverage consumption has waned considerably. Age does that.
This will be Bob’s last party there. Though he is the last person that I had thought would move, he and his wife are going to a house where the stairways are less challenging to him and his wife, both of whom now have after-market knees, surgically installed.
Each year, Bob has teased friends and neighbors with pre-Thoth messages hinting at what surprise appearance he has in store for us as we stand in the crowds along Magazine Street waiting for the Thoth parade to start. Most often it has involved him riding up, costumed, on a unicycle. Once it was a bicycle built for two; once a hoverboard, but he keeps coming back to his unicycle.
Bob’s invitation this year hints that he might return on the unicycle — “Will he be a whimp and let metal knees and a busted shoulder stop him?” it asks. (The busted shoulder required surgical repair after a recent accident on a bicycle with two wheels.)
So I really want to get back and find out what Bob has planned as his grande finale. I’ll keep you posted.