Once again our incredible luck has come through. We are in a private home in Oak Grove, getting closer to the Texas border all the time. We have Verizon Wireless signal, both cell phone and data, for the time since early last July. I haven’t used Internet since February 28 – it’s been so long I’ve forgotten how to use it!
The house we’re in is wonderful – it’s up on stilts – it survived both Rita and Ike, though Rita broke windows upstairs, causing an almost total loss upstairs of the contents; completely destroyed the downstairs living quarters; and Ike’s storm surge rose up dangerously high, washing away anything that was remaining downstairs.
There are big beautiful windows with expansive views, large open rooms, comfy chairs, and we are in real beds for only the third time in nine months. We have hot water that really works, a real shower, and the use of a private bathroom. Life is good….
Rockefeller
I was proud of my self-discipline in writing the blog, and was even prouder of Chelsea for figuring out the stove. We’ve had an irritable relationship with the stove from the first time we used it and couldn’t figure out how to turn it off, to the times we’ve spent trying to get it going in the wind, to the times we’ve spent trying to get our oatmeal done quickly before we take off for a day’s riding.
One of my favorite memories of this trip will be seeing Chelsea sitting on the concrete, her legs stretched out, with the bits and pieces of the stove laid out neatly around her, and the stove instructions held carefully out. She didn’t fuss at all (unlike her usual highly verbal annoyance with the stove) and when I complimented her later on how quiet she had been and on how quickly and efficiently she got it going, she replied, “I figured I could make it hard on myself, or easy on myself. I decided to make it easy on myself.”
We were glad our time at Rockefeller was short. The mosquitoes were so bad on the lawn that we set up the tent on the concrete, but that meant that we couldn’t tie out our rain fly. By not tying out our rain fly, it meant we had to pack a very wet tent and rain fly in the morning.
It was also tough not having bathroom facilities. I knew we couldn’t last all day and all night without some kind of compromise, so after dinner we got on the bikes and went looking for a bathroom, any bathroom, that we could use. We found a woman around the main offices (a spouse of someone who worked there) and she knew that the main workshop – a big metal building – had facilities.
Not a soul was around to ask permission, so we decided to use the old tried and true maxim “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission.” The door was open, so we ventured inside, finding a huge open workroom with an assortment of machines and vehicles. It didn’t take long to find the bathroom – there weren’t too many doors to open!
Using the bathroom, even though it was the men’s bathroom, apparently maintained by men, was a wonderful treat. We even brushed our teeth and washed our faces, away from the mosquitoes! We had to hurry and finish our ablutions, as we had no idea where the lights were, and the sun was setting fast. As it was, we were feeling our way carefully around the tractors and machinery to find the way out, guided by the twilight from one window near the door.
Just as we settled in for the night, talking quietly about what we’d done during the day, we saw the most amazing lights flashing through the tent, and heard the sound of engines coming very close to us. We discovered we had come just in time for the mosquito spraying. That truck circled us so closely it felt like the truck was coming right through the tent. The lights and sound of the spraying went on until nearly 10 p.m. We didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so we got a serious case of the giggles.
The next morning we were awakened around dawn by the sound of a real lawn mower, droning on and on nearby. It didn’t appear that the mosquitoes had gotten the message about the spraying the night before – they were still out in full force. We opted to skip breakfast, skip the bathroom stop, and pack up our tent to head out as soon as possible.
On the road
The ride was truly beautiful. We had our longed-for tail wind, so even though we were quite tired, the riding felt almost effortless. We cycled through marshland again, but we had many more trees along the water, and we had sections of water and trees right next to the road. On one section just before Grand Chenier (sheh-near) we saw so many birds that it felt as though we had ridden into a 3-D bird book.
We saw egrets, blue herons, ducks of all kinds, stilts, willets, several dozen tri-colored herons, roseate spoonbills, green herons, night herons, and several types of birds we couldn’t identify. We were on cloud nine. We kept stopping to check out the birds, so the riding went slowly, but we sure had fun!
We came across a little bitty store in Grand Chenier, so we stopped to see if we could use the bathroom facilities and find anything to eat, since we’d left without breakfast. We ended up staying almost an hour chatting with Tammy who was minding the store, swapping stories about our trip for her stories about hurricanes Rita and Ike.
Tammy lives in Oak Grove and lost her home in Rita. The family got a mobile home to replace the destroyed home, and kept intending to put it up on pilings, but never got around to it, then Ike hit. The water rose so fast for Ike that her home was flooded before the storm even hit Oak Grove.
They’ve been in a small camper ever since Ike hit last September; it’s taken forever to work their way through the new rules and regulations and inspections in order to get their platform finished.
They may be finished with the new platform on stilts by June, but now Tammy refuses to get a new doublewide until October – she can’t bear the thought of losing it all again after living in the new place only a month or two.
The store she works in, where we met her, was a big beautiful store prior to Rita. Rita completely destroyed the store. They were in the process of rebuilding, using a small trailer to house the essentials till all the building was completed, and then Ike hit.
Thinking in advance, the owner called together numerous friends with trailers and pickup trucks. They loaded the entire contents of the store into the vehicles and evacuated the goods and equipment.
When they were allowed back after Ike, they discovered the trailer had been washed off its foundation and was lying on its back. The owner got the trailer righted again, dried it out, put it back on its foundation, restocked the shelves, and carried on with business as usual. The much larger new store was undamaged, and is now within weeks of opening.
After the story swap with Tammy, Chelsea and I ate a hot egg biscuit with sausage, drank some chocolate milk, sitting in the cold wind outside, then headed on down the road.
Oak Grove came sooner than we expected, but our dilemma was how to find Jo-Ann’s house. We knew her first name, but we’d lost her phone number and had to remember the house. We’d gotten approximate directions from Tammy at the Grand Chenier store – she lives in Oak Grove, and everyone knows everyone else down here.
After dithering a bit, we chose a tall white house on stilts, parked our trailers and bikes, and climbed the stairs to knock on the door.
We’d chosen well – I recognized Jo-Ann immediately from the few minutes we’d spoken with her last July. I’d had a bit of a speech ready to go – after all, we were perfect strangers knocking on her door, asking for a place to stay, but in the relief of recognizing her, my little speech went right out the window, and I blurted out, “I recognize you!”
Not surprisingly, she was puzzled, but when I explained, she remembered us immediately. Inviting us in, she offered us food and drink right away, and assured us we could stay a day or two. Our relief was tremendous. We were hot and sticky from needing a shower, we were cold from the cold wind that had been blowing all day, and we were ready to rest and get some nourishment.
Signing off from Oak Grove…