We went to 9 mardi gras parades in three days with my friend Greg I met at D&D Summer Camp

We've been back to New Orleans many times, especially since I reconnected with my friend Greg who I met at Dungeons and Dragons Summer Camp in eighth grade. Greg has lived in NOLA for thirty years at this point. So now when we visit, hell yeah, we're those tourists all excited to tag along with the locals and pretend we're all cool like that.

Greg told me he likes to OD on Mardi Gras parades. The whole month is an event. It's a thing. There's three parades a day and a whole lingo too, for example:

Parades roll. If you're in a float, you're rolling in the parade. 

There's also throws. This is the beads, or etc, they toss out of the floats. There's good throws and bad throws... meaning the quality of the items getting chucked out are evaluated based on a metric I couldn't quite discern. 

The locals, however, are very clear on what's a good throw and a bad throw. They have a keen eye for bead quality, creativity, and adherence to the alleged theme of the parade... because every parade has a theme, come to find out.

Meanwhile, I was just trying to avoid getting clocked in the head by people rolling in the floats hurling throws of all qualities at distracted spectators. Such as myself.

Years worth of throws in the trees along the parade route.

A close up of this tree, chock full of throws.