Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Thanksgiving on the Road (and photos!)

     I know it's belated, but there's still an awful lot I'm thankful for. Ben and I had an interesting Thanksgiving, to say the least. I'm going to share it with you, but first of all, WE MADE IT TO NEW ORLEANS!!!!! Our final destination! It's very exciting, but also feels strangely surreal. We've been talking about New Orleans since we finished the last bike trip, and now we're actually here. It's amazing. More on that later.

    After spending two nights in Pecan Island with the loveliest of hosts, Juanita, we pedaled on to New Iberia, where we had lined up another host. Normally we don't spend all our nights with warmshowers hosts, but Louisiana was experiencing a rare cold snap all of last week and we weren't super excited about camping in freezing temperatures. We had a lovely night with Ronda and her children in New Iberia, and enjoyed Thanksgiving Dinner #1, which was their family's leftovers from an early holiday dinner the night before.

    We headed out in the morning frost, bundled up in all our pathetic layers (We were not planning on it being this cold in Louisiana. In fact I think I'm going to make a bumper sticker that says, "The South: Not as hot as you think). The riding was pretty good, determinedly flat, good roads, etc. We decided to stop for Thanksgiving Dinner #2 at The Yellow Bowl in Jeanerette. The food was buffet style, but unlabled so we just went for it. Think: shrimp fettucine, crawfish etoufee, potatos, deep fried turkey, iceberg lettuce salad, and deep fried dinner rolls. Everything just blended together on my plate to make one big creamy Thanksgiving lump. The owner of the restaurant (somehow) noticed that we weren't from around there, and we pretty quickly found ourselves the center of attention amongst all the guests, who were apparently all related to him. He brought us red wine and crawfish bisque, and spoke to us in real-live Cajun French, his first language.

After somehow managing to pile ourselves and our full bellies back onto our bikes, we headed back on the road. It was a good 30 or 40 miles before Ben realized he had a problem. The two supporting posts of his rear rack had managed to completely sever themselves, leaving his rack (and all the weight of his panniers) to balance on his poor rear fender. We weren't really sure what to do! Obviously it was totally ruined, so we probably needed to find a bike shop to get a new rack, which was a relatively unlikely scenario in middle-o-nowhere Louisiana on a holiday weekend. We tried feebly to hitchhike on the side of a busy highway, but it soon got dark and very cold and we decided to abandon that plan.

    We found ourselves in a weird non-town affiliated residential area, a mix of trailers and houses and a random frito-lay packaging plant. Bicycle tourists often talk about knocking on peoples' doors and asking if they can camp in their back yard, so we decided to give it a shot.

    The first house we knocked on was answered by a gruff hulk of a man who said "no," like it was the most shocking thing anyone had ever asked him. And it might have been--remember, we're no longer in liberal west coast cities, where traveling long distances by bicycle and camping every night is a perfectly acceptable way to spend your time. We crossed the street and knocked on another trailer. We had just seen a woman pull up and go inside the trailer, so we thought we had a good shot. No answer. Ben knocked two more times, still no answer.

    We started to get a little nervous, and decided to try one last trailer. This one had little kid toys spewed all over the lawn, so we guessed whoever was inside would be a bit more compassionate. A young woman holding an baby answered the door, listened to our spiel, and shrugged, "Yeah, you can sleep in the backyard," then walked away from the door. Thrilled, we started scoping out a place to set up the tent and discovered that the backyard was actually more or less a swamp in disguise as a lawn. But before we had a chance to think much about that, a young man came out of the trailer and said in the thickest Louisiana drawl possible, "ya'll should come inside, it's cold out here."

    And so...that is how Ben and I found ourselves inside Quiana and Catfish's trailer, nestled in the warmth and comfort of an overstuffed couch, surrounded by piles of clothes, baby toys and other assorted objects, looking at photos and videos of their absent 3 year old daughter (on a camping trip with her grandparents). We spent the evening watching Duck Dynasty, listening to Quiana talk about pretty much anything (she seemed grateful for the company), and holding her 3 month old baby. It was very interesting--we were obviously from very different worlds, but we found some common ground and stayed there. They didn't ask us too many questions about our bike trip, which was kind of refreshing after a few weeks of people being so shocked by our choices that they can barely even see straight.

    At some point Quiana told us a little about her neighborhood. Ten or so miles down the road from Franklin, Ricahoc (sp?) is actually its own town, though all it consisted of was the few houses and trailers we had found ourselves in. She told us very casually that there's a high population of sex offenders around, including the yellow house across the street (the first door we knocked on!). She also mentioned that her neighbor, the second door we knocked on, called her after she saw "two strange men in bright yellow jackets" knocking on her door, and was looking for her pistols before she opened the door. Great. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

    Besides being presented with amazingly generous hospitality, the best part of the whole experience happened the next morning. We had explained to Quiana and Catfish what was wrong with Ben's rack, and Catfish immediately suggested that we call his buddy who lived across the street and just happened to be an aluminum welder (a rare find indeed). We didn't want to get our hopes up, but sure enough Jesse met us outside his house the next morning, and welded Ben's rack back together in about 15 minutes before he took off to go deer hunting. What are the chances?

     So...all this is to say that we have an awful lot to be thankful for. I'm thankful that I have the opportunity to be on this wild bicycle adventure, of course. What a privilege! I'm also thankful I don't have to live in Ricahoc with sex offenders and people who will pull a pistol on anyone who knocks on their door on Thanksgiving night...although I'm also thankful that the people we met took care of our needs and treated us with kindness and respect. I'm thankful that an aluminum welder just happened to live across the street. But most of all, I'm thankful for the opportunity to let humanity do what it does best: take care of each other.

Here's some photos from the last few weeks! I promise to write more about NOLA in a couple days. For now, I'm out there experiencing it!

 Ben keeping cool in Joshua Tree
 Me behind the wheel enjoying the countryside in a different, more air-conditioned way
 The Grand C! Sure is grand.
 Our humble home for 1 night--the town hall of Merryville, Louisiana
 The Yellow Bowl--a Jeanerette, LA staple where we ate Thanksgivingg dinner #2, before Ben's rack broke
 The bayou!
Made it to New Orleans! Ben poses with Phil, our high school friend who is now an actual NOLA musician! He's so famous he's on a poster.

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