Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day. We wanted to get the makings of a car bomb, Guinness and Baileys, but it was way too problematic, so we settled for wearing our St. Pat’s Day earrings that Alex’s girlfriend Amanda had given us two years before.

We felt very festive! Thank you again, Amanda Kincade!

We cycled madly home from the Museum, changed faster than two winks, and flew over to Erika’s next door.

To celebrate Erika’s daughter’s seventeenth birthday, “the girls” were heading out to Lafayette for ear piercing and a Chinese buffet. After we got a tour of Erika’s house and appreciated all the changes she’s made over the prior few months, Erika collected Amanda (her daughter), Megan (her son’s girlfriend, now living with them), and met us in the car.

First stop was Wal-Mart for Megan and Amanda’s ear piercing. While Chelsea captured it on film, I slipped off to find packing tape and trail mix for our imminent trip to South Carolina. I was back for the main event, though, watching as the earrings were punched into the ears. We were very honored to be a part of the process!!

Dinner at Hong Kong Buffet

But the day had just begun. We still had a quick stop to meet Heuetta at her son Kenney’s house, where Peggy came by to say hello and goodbye, followed up by a stop at Heuetta’s boyfriend’s place.

We met up with Tim and took off for the main course of the day, dinner at Hong Kong Buffet.

Dinner was just what you’d expect. Great food, great atmosphere, and we all ate ourselves silly. Tim provided a memorable and humorous counterpoint for the meal by spilling his dish of melted butter for the crab legs not once but twice!

By the second spill the waitress was ruthlessly teasing him.

Talk about a greasy mess…I was glad I wasn’t sitting next to him, because I would have managed to get some on myself somehow. I know how that works…

Our days had been filled with goodbyes lately. This was no exception – we wouldn’t be seeing Heuetta before we left, as she was spending Sunday in Lafayette. That was sure a tough goodbye!

We are going to make absolutely certain that Heuetta comes to visit us somewhere over the years.

Erika, Amanda, Megan, Chelsea and I piled back into Erika’s car for the trip back to Gueydan.

If you think the day was over yet, you’d be wrong.

Butterfly Tattoos

Erika’s been having a tough time lately with a painful divorce. We think she’s doing extremely well under the circumstances.

She’s lost weight, she has a job, she looks healthy, her hair and skin look great, she’s got a potentially nice relationship on the horizon, and she’s more outgoing than we’ve ever seen her.

That being said, she still has a need every now and then for a pick-me-up. Since we’d last seen her she’d gotten her first tattoo. She now wanted a small, simple butterfly on her wrist, and she wanted it now.

While Chelsea looked up tattoo parlors on her Droid X, Erika talked herself into the tattoo. With directions to the tattoo parlor up on Chelsea’s phone screen, we wasted no time getting there.

Watching the whole process of the tattoo was fascinating. The parlor was very clean and upbeat, with very professional tattoo artists.

Walk-ins kept the artists busy almost nonstop even though, or maybe because, this was Saturday night.

Erika first had to pick her design, which she did by slowly browsing hundreds of designs tacked up on the walls. Once the decision was made, she paid the fees and was put in line to be done.

I hung out on deliciously comfy couches watching a large muted color TV up on the wall and chatting with other folks who were waiting for friends or relatives to finish, meeting some unusual characters.

The girls all browsed designs, deciding what they’d have if it was their choice.

To our collective delight, the guy doing Erika’s tattoo allowed us all to troop in and watch the whole process. He even let Chelsea document it in photos as long as she didn’t take any photos of proprietary designs. How cool is that?

Neither Chelsea nor I had ever seen a tattoo done, though back in 2008 we watched Alex’s then-roommate go through the process of getting a full back (top to bottom, side to side) color tattoo of the Grim Reaper, complete with scythe.

John would be worked on for several hours at a time, then have to heal before going back again.

We were totally intimidated by the obvious discomfort he felt, by the red weeping skin with its pinprick drops of blood popping out, and by the restrictions on bathing and swimming and clothing that John had while he was getting all the stages completed.

I’m happy to report it wasn’t anything like that with Erika. In less than an hour she was out the door with her delicate new butterfly tattoo sporting a thin cover of medicated salve under a slim bandage. Erika was thrilled.

If you think that now we were done for the day, you’d be wrong yet again.

Still waiting in the lineup of stops to be made was a trip to Wal-Mart in Abbeville, where Chelsea and I bought supplies for the long trip to South Carolina, followed by a long-awaited trip to a drive-through daiquiri place.

Though we can at long last check that off our bucket list, the daiquiri was disappointingly flat and far too syrupy-sweet. I guess we’ll have to try again another time.

Champagne Project

Finally back at the trailer, we were too wound up by then to sleep so we tackled our champagne project.

Back in 2009, when we were optimistic beyond belief, I bought a bottle of Korbel Brut champagne on sale at Costco, saving it to drink when my first book was finished. I resolutely kept it in the refrigerator through all our ups and downs.

As time went by we inherited two additional bottles from move jobs Chelsea went on with our neighbor Ivar. I resolutely saved those as well and stored them properly.

Completely unwilling to let go of my vision, I carefully packed those three bottles of champagne, heavy and breakable though they were, and brought them along with us to Gueydan, transferring the heavy box from vehicle to vehicle as needed.

Now we were leaving once again on a car trip and I couldn’t bear the thought of lifting that heavy box any longer. I decided it was time to celebrate all our accumulated accomplishments and open the champagne.

I’ll cut to the chase and say it wasn’t what we expected. The old bottles we’d inherited had gone bad long since. The only decent one remaining was our Korbel Brut from 2009.

What can I say? We drank it all up from our Wet Willie’s plastic Mudslide cups and had fun doing it. We got a bit weepy and homesick but I figured that was okay after all we’d been through.

Though we’d had a daiquiri and finally had our bottle of champagne, we never did get our Guinness and Bailey’s car bomb on St. Pat’s Day.

Who needed it by then? There’s always next year.

Last Day in Town

We’d made arrangements to see Lynn and Hansford after church on Sunday, but Lynn was called out on a job. It was just as well for us since we had so much maneuvering to do in getting our things packed into our pesky, tiny panniers.

We did laundry and all manner of last minute things, cleaned the trailer, packed our day bag for the truck, and got our trip food ready.

In the midst of our packing and cleaning our good buddy Donny visited us from Oak Grove for an hour or two. Donny and Chelsea talk regularly by phone so they stay up on what’s happening in each other’s lives, but there’s truly nothing quite like face time.

That Sunday was one of the gorgeous-weather days, and since the trailer is so small, we met outside on the back patio with Donny, his friend Rick, and Kenneth.

Only a few minutes into our visit a nephew of Kenneth’s came by on horseback for a visit, bringing along a group of others on horseback.

Chelsea had great fun taking far too many photos, but I did keep a few of them. Izzy the dog was highly displeased with the horses in her territory, so she spent the whole horse visit ensconced in my lap on high alert.

Later in the evening we packed the truck with our bikes and panniers and were off to bed by ten, though that didn’t mean off to sleep. We’d still been having those incredibly persistent sleep disturbances; this was yet one more night. It was nearly three before we finally drifted off to sleep.

Gueydan Goodbye

We’d had a full month in Gueydan, recovering and resting and getting things done. Of the people and places on our want-to-see-list, we only managed a tiny fraction.

We were surprised at our level of culture shock, going directly from south Florida to south Louisiana. They are worlds apart.

The guinea fowl noise from the neighbor’s yard kept us amazed at its decibel level. We loved the hummingbirds, the purple martins, and the cedar waxwings. We added blackbird jambalaya to our new-foods list.

We did boot-slapping-leather line-dancing classes on YouTube with Heuetta and tried Zumba.

Best of all we refreshed our love affair with Cajun country and its absolutely amazing people.

Monday, on the Road Again

With very little sleep we were up early for showers. All last-minute items were packed in the truck, our day bags were in the back seat, the trailer was cleaned.

By six-thirty we were off to Montgomery, Alabama with Krisy and Kenneth.

Pat met us many hours later, eighty-five miles shy of Montgomery.

South Carolina foothills, here we come!