Category: United States

On our way to Broussard originally, we had written to another couchsurfing host in Lafayette, Ernesto, hoping to stay with him after Broussard (thinking that we would only be in Broussard a night). We never heard from Ernesto, but it didn’t matter since we had gone to the airfield and Abbeville. About 2 weeks after we had written to Ernesto, he wrote us back and explained that he’d been out of town. We did want to meet him, as he was from Peru, and we had hoped to get his ideas and comments on traveling through Peru. Ernesto was very interested in the ultralight flying so we invited him to the airfield one Saturday. He got to go up with Fred, and loved it.
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June 27th, 2008

A chronic issue for us on the trip is getting decent haircuts. First is finding someone to do it, and next is hoping that it turns out okay, and third is paying for it. I was so frustrated in December of 2007 when I was in Santa Ynez, California, that I asked my good buddy Gary Whalen to use his RoboCut on me. For those who don’t know, the RoboCut (www.robocut.com) is a device that looks like a hair dryer, and attaches to a vacuum cleaner. It sucks the hair up into the device with the power of the vacuum, and spinning blades cut the hair. You can do buzz cuts, layered cuts, or an even cut. You can do anyone’s hair, and can even do pets with it. Gary had been cutting his and Kevin’s hair with it for years, and their hair looked great. I had thought it all through, and realized that if my hair were all one length in layers, I’d be fine. It might not be a designer cut, but it should work fine. And sure enough, it did! That haircut was one of the best I’ve ever had!
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Abbeville

Abbeville is a fun and lively town, for only having a population of about 12,000 people. As is true of many communities around here, Abbeville is growing after Hurricane Katrina, when so many were displaced from New Orleans. Many locally consider Abbeville and not Lafayette, a much larger town to the north, to be the real capital of Cajun country. There’s an amazing amount of diversity in Abbeville – it’s got the local farmers, Cajun cowboys, medical centers, and a beautiful courthouse that serves a wide area, drawing in the population from surrounding areas. It’s got a Wal-Mart Super Center, Stines (a large home improvement store), Sally’s Beauty Supply, Quiznos, Radio Shack, there’s a Lowes under construction, and there’s even a small friendly local health food store on the main drag. There are several restaurants that are hangouts for locals – two that we frequented are Comeaux’s (known by the regulars as CC’s) and the Courtyard Café, both right downtown across from the courthouse. And there’s an amazing supply of smaller stores that supply just about anything you could want.
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The Schexnaiders are an amazing family, and they definitely need their own section in our writings. We first met Lee when James Thibodeaux took us into Abbeville one day. James and Beth had told us about Lee and Sheila, but without ever really seeing which house they pointed out, and without meeting them, it was hard to relate. On this particular day Lee had come home at lunch to care for one of their English Springer spaniel dogs that had a broken leg, so James stopped in to introduce us. Having only a few brief minutes to talk, we were nonetheless really entertained by Lee’s dry sense of humor, and we loved the house. As we left, Lee told us he’d have us over to dinner one night. We figured it was nothing more than the usual polite comment that people make.
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Now I must say that flying in what looks like a funky go-cart with wings and a lawnmower engine was never high on my list of must-do’s. In fact, flying in anything smaller than a 200-passenger jet was never on my list of want-to-do’s.

Suffering from a fairly acute sense of vertigo and fear of heights, not to mention the occasional bout of motion sickness, getting into a bucket seat supported by thin Dacron “skins” and aluminum struts and flying several thousand feet above the ground with nothing, and I mean nothing, between me and the ground (we’re talkin’ legs dangling in the fresh air here), didn’t seem like a relaxed thing for me to be doing.
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James Thibodeaux is the guiding light behind the airfield, and is the one responsible for getting it built. Piece by piece, he and Beth (his wife) and close friends built the airfield and cabin and hangar, and it’s his love of the place that keeps it going, along with the amazing crowd of people he has managed to attract.

When he’s not flying, which he’d rather be doing more than just about anything else, James manages a local orthopedic doctor’s real estate and whatever various business projects the doctor has going at any one time.
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June 7th, 2008

Shane Stelly is one of James’s ultralight students. He’s learning to fly an ultralight for business – his family owns Stelly Farms, part of which is an alligator farm. They raise and skin anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 alligators each year. The process starts with finding the alligator nests, which had previously been done by airboats or helicopters. Both methods are noisy and expensive; he said the airboats were always in for repairs, and the helicopters are quite expensive. So, buying and learning to fly an ultralight is a good alternative. Shane had asked James to teach him how to fly, and we met Shane at the airfield our first afternoon. I started chatting with Shane, trying to find out what he did, and I was absolutely fascinated hearing about the gator farm. I really, really wanted to go see it!
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June 5th – 17th, 2008

Hi Everyone,

Sorry about the long silence… on a trip like this we have discovered that there is an inherent conflict with staying in touch – we either go out and have the adventures or we stay back and write about them. We have chosen to be out having the adventures, but that sure slows down the writing side of things, especially when the adventures just keep coming, and coming, and coming, and coming…
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Getting out of Centerville

It should be no big surprise that we got bed at almost 2 a.m. on our last night in Centerville, considering how much fun we had with Russ and Paul, and considering how much we were getting done.

We managed to not only get rested after our hellacious Memorial Day weekend, but we got our blogs and photos nearly caught up, and we managed to send off nearly 30 pounds of gear and clothing back to Alex (we opted for not carrying our seasonal gear right now, but rather have Alex send it to us when we need it).
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We have died and gone to heaven. We are about 12 miles south of Centerville LA, down Hwy 317, staying with CouchSurfing hosts Russ and Paul. Back in 1989, Russ moved an old slaves quarters house onto his land, now measuring perhaps several acres. The land is bounded by 317 in front and by sugarcane fields in the back, and much of the surrounding land belongs to other family members. Everything is lush and green, and there’s a bayou – Bayou Sale’ (pronounced bayou sally) running along the property in the front.
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