We’d quit riding in mid November, thinking we’d concentrate on our writing. We did concentrate on the writing, but then the bad weather snuck in, and it was way too hard to get going again on our rides. Seeing Marcus (our touring cyclist visitor) got us inspired, and we finally started riding again the third week of January.
We have loved the riding, as usual. The first time out we rode twenty-two miles, but we were pretty tired, and the weather was so cold and windy that we opted for our sixteen mile ride for the next few weeks. After some slow times (recovering from the Mardi Gras Ball and Mardi Gras Run) we’re now up to a steady twenty-two miles a day.
We have never ridden in weather this cold. The temperatures most mornings are in the forties – if they reach the fifties it feels almost balmy. One morning it was down to twenty-seven degrees with fifteen mph winds. Many mornings it’s in the low thirties. This morning we left when it was thirty-three degrees, with winds of fourteen mph, gusting to nineteen. We are definitely getting to be tough cookies!
I think we are in the last of the serious cold spells for the season; they should be over in the next day or so, and our rides will get prettier and prettier for the next few weeks.
The birds have really varied – some mornings in January we saw the long lines again, horizon to horizon, but for the most part it’s been really quiet. Lately there aren’t even many geese. We haven’t seen a single roseate spoonbill, and only a few blue herons and great egrets.
We did have fun yesterday and today with wildlife – we had our first good sighting of a nutria yesterday in a crawfish pond out off Hwy 712. It had built itself a bed of reeds and grass, and was happily enjoying the morning sun. While we came closer and closer taking photos, it just sat unconcerned, munching on the grass.
Then today we spotted a mother nutria with her babies off North Pure Oil Rd, sitting in the marsh grass. We stood for quite a while watching her with the binoculars, and watched another nutria about fifteen feet away. We couldn’t get any decent photos, as we have a very poor zoom on our camera, but we were sure excited to see them!
We’ve gotten to know the area so well, that when we saw a huge cattle transport truck pulled up in front of one of the farms on our regular route one morning, and all the cattle crowded into one small pen, including the calves, we were consumed with curiosity.
The next day I saw the farmers out front, so we stopped. I tiptoed carefully across the cattle grate (bike cleats and cattle grates are not a good match), and headed over to the farmers. “I’m just being nosey” I called out, as they watched me approach. Cajuns being pretty curious themselves, they just laughed. I asked why the cattle had all left, and found out that the farmer had lost his pasture land (it’s most often leased around here) and sold his cattle. He’s getting out of the cattle business after many years.
The longer we’re here, the more places we go, and the more events we attend, the more we get honks and waves when we’re on the road. We’ve become a familiar sight, and even though many don’t know us, they know that we’re “the ladies on the bicycles”. It’s rare that we have a ride without seeing someone we know.
There are the farmers who see us every morning on the back roads, and faithfully wave at us; there are those heading into work who see us each day; there’s Francisco who works the crawfish ponds six days a week and waves every morning as we pass; there are those in their homes who glance out and see us as we go by (and tell us later “we saw y’all this morning”); and there’s occasionally someone outside waving at us, so we stop to chat.
We have a favorite spot to take a short break, only about five miles from “home”. We lay our bikes down and sit for a few minutes, usually eating a quick snack. Nearly every day we have people stop and ask if we’re all right, or if we need anything. One morning this week, as we sat quietly enjoying the peace and the sunshine, a pickup truck came around the corner at a good rate of speed. The window rolled down, and the driver hollered out at us with a big smile, “Y’all cain’t win that way!” It gave us a great laugh…
We love all of it, and we love being a part of this community.