NEW ORLEANS -- My first clue that this might not be such a good idea came approximately five minutes after landing in New Orleans on Wednesday.

	Come for the gumbo, stay for the catastrophic flooding.

"Dang, they're still letting flights in?" asked the kid at the National Car Rental counter. "Yours must've been the last one."

Indeed, it was -- the New Orleans airport closed its doors behind me in preparation for Tropical Storm Isidore. When I left New York that morning, I knew all about this mean bastard Isidore -- the storm that had blown through Cuba days before. But I was assigned to do a story for The Magazine on Saints running back Deuce McAllister, and I'll be damned if a little rain was going to stop me. Well, that and I had never seen Bourbon Street before.

So I headed out to the intermediate lot to select the craft that would guide me through this tempest. After kicking a few soggy tires, I decided on a gun barrel-grey Dodge Stratus. Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Folks, my years on Earth have been spent in relatively habitable climes, and I had never seen anything like what I saw Wednesday. The only time I've ever seen rain like this was in movies, and they're the scenes where you lean over and say to your buddy, "Yeah, right, like it ever rains that hard." The rain never even slowed to a downpour; it was a straight-up monsoon the whole day.

By the time I white-knuckled it over to the Saints' practice facility, most of the roads were already flooded. Players were scarce -- I saw some tattoo ink disappearing out the back door, and after Kyle Turley had left, it was mostly special teamers. Still, nobody seemed overly concerned about getting home -- they were all driving 4-Runners to the 'burbs, whereas I had to navigate my Stratus back downtown, which is literally below sea level.

At his press conference, coach Jim Haslett was equally unfazed. A day earlier, the Saints had been mulling an early escape to Detroit, where they play Sunday. But Haslett made the call -- the Saints were staying put. A few years ago, rising waters reached Haslett's front door and he was similarly unconcerned. Now that's a metaphor. "I'll just watch TV until it goes black, then move upstairs," he joked.

	In this rain, nobody goes marching in.

Haslett asked me where I had flown in from. I told him I was considering a return trip as soon as the airport would let me. Haslett chuckled. "This is Louisiana," he said. "It rains like this here all the time." Coach's theory: The daily weather is so mundane that whenever something out of the ordinary happens, they treat it like the apocalypse. The beat writers also nodded, and the locals were dead-on -- by Thursday morning, the rain had slowed to a drizzle and the roads were clearing.

But that didn't make Wednesday's weather any less terrifying. On my trip back to the hotel, I felt like I was on The Weather Channel (which I probably was). I saw some guy canoeing from his car. A bus almost completely submerged off the side of the road. It was like driving in a video game, with people completely ignoring all traffic laws, going the wrong way down one-ways on search of routes home.

With all the freeways closed, I stopped at a convenience store, where people were loading up on beef jerky and Aquafina. Some people bought beers and cracked them right there in the store, with nowhere else to go. Out of options and cursed with a terrible sense of direction, I'd probably still be one of them if it weren't for the DoubleTree concierge, who guided me home through some empty back roads.

On my way to my room, I stopped by the front desk and followed The Weather Channel's preparation advice for impending hurricanes: immediately determine the resiliency of nearby casinos. "Yes, sir," the clerk assured me. "The Harrah's across the street will be open no matter what."

My mood considerably buoyed, I set out for Bourbon Street. If any place was still alive in this weather, that would be it. My hotel was on Canal Street, which is fitting, because it was on Canal Street in NYC where I purchased the umbrella that was to be my only defense against Isidore. Four dollars and 99 cents worth of cheap metal and paper-thin vinyl, my umbrella put up a good fight. It groaned mightily, hanging on for dear life for a solid five minutes before Isidore ripped the material clear off, sending it spiraling into the sky.

	Ah, Harrah's -- a beacon of warmth.

Now defenseless, I darted from awning to awning as I made my way to the French Quarter. Amazingly, even in this land of sin and excess, people have their limits. Everything had closed early, sandbags guarding the front doors, signs in the windows promising to reopen tomorrow. There were a few hardcore revelers out -- "I came all the way down here, I'm having a Hurricane, dammit!" -- but most of the streets were utterly deserted. The biggest group of people I saw was five kids getting arrested on the corner.

I walked past closed restaurant after closed restaurant. All I wanted was some authentic Cajun food, a po' boy, some gumbo, whatever. And the only place open? T.G.I. freaking Friday's. Now, my go-to at Friday's is the blackened Cajun chicken sandwich, but I would have officially been Sellout of the Year if I came all the way to New Orleans and ate a Cajun sandwich from someone wearing pieces of flair. Man, Bourbon Street sucks.

I swallowed my disappointment and waded back to the hotel. My embarrassment reached its zenith when I was picked up by the cops and given a ride because I was out past the 10 p.m. curfew, which had been imposed to keep people like me from looting the empty stores. Good thing they got me -- I was considering breaking into a restaurant and making my own dang po' boy. Instead, I got dropped off in front of the DoubleTree, in front of a hotel bar full of people who didn't dare venture outside. Needless to say, I kept walking, straight to my room.

Thankfully, I awoke Thursday morning to find that the rain had slowed to a drizzle, businesses and highways were reopening and Isidore appeared to have moved on. I've got an interview with McAllister later today, so right now I've got some time to kill. And now that Isidore's gone to Mississippi, I'm going to Bourbon Street.

Andy Latack is a weather reporter for ESPN The Magazine. E-mail him at andrew.latack@espn3.com