Day Thirty-Six
Today I covered about 78 miles, from Eunice to Port Allen, Louisiana. I rose not quite as early as hoped and I was still feeling yesterday's 104 miles. I'm glad I pushed hard yesterday because it really smoothed out some strange accommodation gaps on my path to New Orleans. But, today, I pay the price.
At least partly because I hurt, today's ride was an emotional rollercoaster. These days are part of any long adventure, days when I (or anyone on a damn fool adventure) have to perform, even while questioning every stupid decision that got me to this place, right now, feeling terrible and out of sorts. I could feel it coming on, like a bad cold. Grumpy, achy, and resentful. But I've been here before, and it doesn't last. I just let myself feel it, not fight it, to get it out of my system a little quicker.
I'm in Cajun/Creole country. Honestly, I'm having a hard time connecting with the place or culture. It seems mutual. I feel zero interest in me. My kind of trip may not make much sense to folks here, just another oddity passing through. It's a fact that I am just beelining it through rural Louisiana, which is very much not the way things are done here by the people who call it home.
The variety and volume of rotting dead animals along the road is like nothing I've ever seen. I rolled past an armadillo on its side, legs twitching, apparently just hit by a car. It'll die there, slowly, of its injuries and dehydration, but not before some bird comes along and pecks its eyes out. Dogs, cats, snakes, birds, opossums, otters, squirrels, raccoons, turtles, frogs, mounds of indistinguishable fur of all colors and stages of decomposition, an entire menagerie of swamp and forest critters like I've never seen. Dead.
It's also hard to not notice that while the highways are good, with good shoulders, as soon as I enter a town, where roads are locally, not federally funded, they are the worst roads I've seen in 2,000 miles (Yes! I passed the 2,000-mile mark today!). I mean, if you are driving, the in-town streets are wreck-your-alignment bad. They were the worst in Opelousas, (home of Zydeco, I read, but I didn't hear any Zydeco, just loud, bad hip-hop from a junker rolling by). In Opelousas, it looked like repairing potholes consists of throwing shovelfuls of asphalt on the street from a moving truck.
At the town of Krotz Springs, I stopped to catch my breath and eat an ice cream sandwich prior to ascending the biggest hill I've seen since the Texas Hill Country--the bridge over the Atchafalaya River.
A local feller warned me that the bridge had four miles of fast highway with no shoulders. I thanked him as I looked at the bridge with perfectly wide shoulders. Whatever, man. I grinded up the bridge, stopped to take a photo of the river and coasted down the other side, to see what he was talking about.
Stretching to the vanishing point on the east horizon was a concrete causeway over the Atchafalaya National Wildlife Refuge, which was a flooded forest from all the recent rains.
The causeway indeed had no shoulders, just two lanes of high-speed traffic and a railing tight enough to the lane to take off your truck mirror if you weren't careful. Later I measured it as 4.7 miles long. Deep breath.
I rolled onto the causeway and glued my wheels to the white line, trying to hold a perfectly straight course at 15 miles per hour. All I could do was just go, not swerve, and absolutely not stop. Of course, that's how I try to ride every mile, but this had no breathing room for error. Then—and I never looked back out of concern for swerving—I felt a presence behind me, and soon all the traffic was passing me in an orderly way in the left lane, not my lane. I'd say this began not at the start of the causeway, maybe a mile or so onto it. I just rode as straight and steady as I could. This thing seemed to go on forever. I just pedaled steadily and steered straight. Eventually I could see the end of the of the railing and a shoulder ahead as the causeway reached the east bank of the wetland. I veered onto the shoulder smoothly and immediately, then pulled up short for a drink of water and few deep breathes. At that moment a county sheriff cruiser gave me a quick beep of his horn and accelerated away. That was the presence I felt. He had simply slowed down to my pace, a few car lengths behind me, and all the traffic went around him and didn't brush me. He literally had my back for 3+ miles. Good cop.
And you know, it's things like that make you appreciate a place. My attitude was officially adjusted. I felt better and my body wasn't so creaky. I checked my mileage to see that I would get into Port Allen and off the road when I had hoped to.
I should mention that I've pretty much given up on camping. There's no place to camp here, just an occasional RV park that will take a tent camper, but they aren't really set up for it. In fact, my idea of camping is in a tent. Staying in an RV or travel trailer is not camping to me. But here, camping and RVing are synonymous terms. And for a northern person, when the temperature at night doesn't get below about 75, there's no real rest, which I cannot afford. So at least through New Orleans, I'm moteling it. It's going to be very hot here through next weekend, then cool a bit. But the good news is, it will be nearly 10 degrees cooler along the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. I don't know if that's normal, but that's how my weather is shaping up. I hope to get the tent out more next week. I didn't budget for an all-motel trip.
Tomorrow, I cross the Mississippi River, on a ferry boat from Plaquemine to Sunshine. My ride into New Orleans the next day will wind along Old Man River's east bank. I'll take a couple non riding days in New Orleans
I’d love to hear from you. Donate to the ride and send along your words of encouragement and tell me why getting kids outside matters to you.
