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…
Over the weeks we have done an amazing number of things. We lived at an airfield for 11 days; toured an alligator farm; we’ve been on lots of ultralight aircraft flights and done aerobatics in another plane; we went to a family Father’s Day party; we had a tour of Breaux Bridge, St Martinville and Martin Lake, and enjoyed food and Cajun dancing at Mulates and Randols in Lafayette; we went canoeing on the Vermilion River; we’ve been zydeco dancing at breakfast in Breaux Bridge, and checked out old antique stores, Cajun microwaves, and really old gramophones; we’ve gone boating on the Vermilion (short rides, twice); we saw an awesome renovation of an original Cajun cabin (about 150 years old) attended two birthday parties, and more.
Meanwhile, we’ve even kept riding 11-18 miles, 3-5 days a week. Except for a couple of times, we did all our grocery shopping by bicycle – about a 10 mile round trip. And if that’s not enough, we’ve sorted and catalogued hundreds and hundreds of photos (Chelsea took 220 photos in one afternoon alone!) and gotten the albums up on Picasa. And even more, we’ve gotten two articles underway – one on sunscreen and one on couchsurfing, along with notes for at least a half dozen other articles. As if that wasn’t enough, we’ve thought about and researched some repairs and modifications to the trailers, and managed to implement them.
Can you see why it was hard to keep up with the blogs?
Getting there
Thirty mph tailwinds made our 15 miles from New Iberia to Broussard go pretty quickly, which was great since we didn’t leave until after 11 a.m., and the heat was pretty intense. It was one of our prettiest rides in some parts, and we had more overhanging shade trees than anywhere else on the route to date. We loved that part. The shoulder kept disappearing, and the traffic was heavy and fast, but because of the tailwinds and shade, we didn’t mind so much. The last mile was into crosswinds, and they were really fierce. The gusts blew us sideways, and the speed got a lot slower! We were so happy that it was only a mile!
James, our couch surfing host, had forgotten to tell his wife Beth that we were coming, so when we knocked on the door, we were completely unexpected. Her daughter Gwinn and son James (known as Bubba) were also there, staying temporarily while their job and housing situations are in flux, so it was pretty crowded right about then. Add to that the fact that Beth was on crutches from having just broken her foot a week earlier in a motorcycle accident, and it made for an awkward situation.
But Beth is nothing if not resilient, and while we sat and chatted with everyone (in the blessed air conditioning), she organized transportation for us out to their airfield about 12 miles southwest of Broussard, northeast of Abbeville. Eventually she and Gwinn got James’s truck, Bubba helped us load our trailers and bikes, and we were off to encounter more adventures.
Living quarters – Thibs airfield
Our home for the next 12 days was a small Cajun cabin – one room, about 250 square feet – with a counter top, sink, microwave, and mini refrigerator. We did have the luxury of a small bathroom, complete with shower, and a window air conditioning unit (yes!). We’re not big fans of foldout couch beds, so we opted for throwing our sleeping pads on the floor and using our sleep sacks and travel pillows. That turned out to be a wise move. We had a couch, kitchen table with chairs, and a to-die-for covered porch with to-die-for porch swings on each side.
James loves to collect “old junk”, so the cabin and the outside are chock full of amazing memorabilia and kitsch. From his latest addition – an oversized Icee cup made into a lamp (yes, it works) – his large collection of hubcaps, the snake inside the toilet on the front porch, his old and new signs, an amazing collection of airplane related items, to the parking meter out front, there is always something fun to look at. Examining everything is like a walk down history lane.
Abutting the cabin is the hangar. The hangar holds equipment, parts, and storage, along with a single-seater and several double-seater ultralights, a handmade Hummel ultralight, James and Greg’s Citabria, and another plane owned by Albert and James. It also has a huge refrigerator, which we used, it had a sink with running water, an odd assortment of chairs, including a wheelchair, and a full sized barbecue for the Sunday afternoon get-togethers.
Living at an airfield
Living at an airfield was a truly unique experience. Our days would frequently start with a rush, as someone would unexpectedly drop in, either by land or by air, often as early as 7-8 a.m. We found that we could be out of our sleep sacks, dressed, with the sleeping pads tossed upright in a corner, in about 3 minutes or less. We did hold a number of those early conversations in our p.j.’s, however. We never knew when someone was coming to visit, or simply practicing touchdowns and take-offs, so we’d always run outside to check it out and wave. One morning, about a week into staying there, a plane landed and taxied right up to the porch where I was working. A tall, rangy-looking fellow got out and introduced himself as RJ. He admitted that he had been doing touch-downs and take-offs for the last few weeks, and had been seeing us each time, so he felt it was time to stop and introduce himself. RJ has 30 years in with the oil fields. At present he works in Algeria, 28 days on and 28 days off, studying the reservoirs, looking for resources to develop. We had an extremely interesting 15-20 minute chat, and then off he went, tipping his wings as he left.
We loved the practice of buzzing the hangar and cabin – James and others would frequently buzz us and waggle the wings upon leaving. Chelsea and I would always laugh and high-five each other.
The airfield has two grass landing strips, and is surrounded by sugar cane fields. There’s a crawfish pond off the north/south landing strip, where, on a sunset walk one night, we surprised a blue heron and a great egret and several snakes. We saw a big fat raccoon heading across the fields one day, over to the pond, and we know there are coyotes and bobcats. We saw bobwhite quail, red-winged blackbirds, hawks, cardinals, meadowlarks, and sparrows. Right at the entrance to the airfield, a killdeer had laid her eggs in the gravel. We walked out several times to see the nest and look at the eggs, and the killdeer would raise a ruckus. She’d cry out to get us to notice her, and then pretend to have a broken wing to draw us her way instead of hanging around the eggs. One evening we went out to check again and the eggs were gone – they had hatched!
The tree frogs were an hilarious part of our stay. The second night we stayed, I had the laptop set up outside on the porch. It began getting quite dark, but I was really focused on getting my task done.
Suddenly I felt a splat on my shoulder. Brushing at my shoulder, I felt something soft and damp and much bigger than I expected. Immediately there was a thump on the swing. Whipping around fast to see what it was, I spotted a little frog.
The next morning when I told Fred about it, he picked up a long stick, looked around up on the rafters, and poked a frog off the beam. It “fell” about 10 feet down, landing with a very wet splat. I was horrified, thinking he had killed it, but no, it just hopped away after a minute or so.
That’s when we learned that these tree frogs go pee when they fall or jump hard. Thank heavens they didn’t make a practice of it around us. We had dozens of these frogs around the porch at any one time. Check out the photo gallery for the photos. One of the funniest is a mama frog lined up inside an old metal sign, with at least 8 little frogs lined up right around her (we couldn’t get them all in the photo).
Also known as rain frogs because they starting croaking during a rain, these little guys could really create a ruckus! Several times we thought we heard dogs barking, but it was only the frogs. At night they’d get going and it was like a chorus.
Each night we’d have to do frog patrol inside, as at least one of them would find its way in through the air conditioning unit (it wasn’t caulked, and left a pretty big opening to the outside). We’d capture it with a cup and paper, and then toss it outside to join its buddies. We’ll miss those characters.
We had really strong winds nearly the whole time we were at the airfield – from 15-30 mph. Occasionally the winds would drop down to the usual 5-10 mph, but not often. It’s hard to go flying in that wind, but it was great for keeping the mosquitoes and bugs down.
We had very little rain, either, for the first week or so, but then the afternoon storms started coming. One memorable day, Fred took me up in the ultralight to see a rainsquall approaching, and we made it back in the nick of time, with rain dotting the windshield. Chelsea opened the hangar door for us, and we worked really fast to get the plane in and the hangar doors shut, making a mad dash for the cabin.
Wow did it rain! The wind sock on the airfield was flat out, and the rain just pounded. Fred told us it was called a microburst – when the rain pounds in a certain localized area, accompanied by high wind (check out microburst on Wikipedia). It was absolutely incredible to watch – we huddled near the windows in the cabin for almost 45 minutes, watching the rain and the wind – it looked like a hurricane! Fred told us he has seen areas where these microbursts hit and the sugar cane will be flattened down one way one side of the microburst and the opposite direction on the other side.
We loved the quiet out on the airfield. We had big skies with a great sense of openness; we were quite literally living in the middle of a field. We’d often go outside at night to take a walk on the airstrip just to see the stars (very little light pollution here!). Telephone and Internet was iffy – we had to be out on the airstrip to get signal for the phones, but we did have some Internet at the cabin. It was extremely slow, but we at least got connected once a day.