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One big advantage of the rainstorm was that we got to stay and have one last sailing trip with Paul Cassity. The weather was absolutely gorgeous on Wednesday, with the winds almost totally calm – not good for sailing, but great for motoring.

We’d had a slow and easy start, motoring out of the Yacht Club around the Narrows, when we spotted a huge number of great egrets in one section of shoreline on a small point out into the lake. Paul got us really close, and we realized that we’d discovered a nesting area for blue herons and great egrets.
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We’d gone sailing with Paul early in January, but he left shortly after for a three-week tour of Cambodia and Thailand, so we didn’t have another opportunity to see him till late February.

Not only do we love the time on the water, we also thoroughly enjoy our time with Paul. He’s a really relaxed and well-balanced guy, with lots to talk about, and he’s a willing listener. He asks great questions, and really thinks about what we say. He’s got a great sense of humor, he’s traveled a lot, and he’s easy-going. It all adds up to us having a great time when we’re with him.
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We’ve been working on several major projects since Thanksgiving, and things always seem to take longer than expected, so we’d asked if we could stay at the house in Gueydan until the middle of March. We’ve been working on launching two new websites, I’m well underway with our first book, and we’ve been restructuring our site, as well as working on the blogs and photos. It’s been a huge amount of work.

We hadn’t heard anything, though we knew that several groups of church volunteers were planning on arriving in the area to work on homes damaged by Gustav and Ike. The group scheduled to arrive in February was canceled at the last minute, and as far as we knew, we had until mid March.
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We’ve been struck with what a unique part beads play in the life of south Louisiana. It’s a longstanding tradition to throw beads from floats at every parade, and there are many, many parades. Just in our time here, we’ve been at the Duck Festival Parade, the Gueydan High School Homecoming Parade, Festival Acadiens in Lafayette, the Christmas Parade, the Mardi Gras Ball, the Mardi Gras Run, and three Mardi Gras parades in Lafayette.

Beads have been an integral part of each event.
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We decided that if we’d done so many Mardi Gras activities this far, we couldn’t ignore Mardi Gras itself, so we set up an outing to Lafayette with Heuetta and Peggy. Heuetta picked us up at 7:20 a.m. and we headed off.

The first thing we noticed was how quiet Gueydan was – it was quieter than Sundays! That tickled us no end…then we realized that all the surrounding communities are shut down on Mardi Gras Day. Nearly every town or community has an event of some kind, or the locals are all going to a nearby event.
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(Note: Be sure to read the prior blog on the history of Mardi Gras if you aren’t familiar with the history of the Mardi Gras Run.)

Our day started innocently enough. We headed out on our morning ride about 7:30 am, as usual. However, as we looked west when we reached the intersection of Hwys 91 and 14, the sky looked really threatening, as if heavy rain was headed our way. Undecided, but really wanting a ride, we pulled into the Lougnon’s parking lot to think things over.
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We were incredibly honored to be invited to the Gueydan Mardi Gras Ball by Lynn and Hansford Hair. It’s hard to be here in southern Louisiana without hearing about Mardi Gras, and since we thought we had to leave by February 9, it looked as though we’d be missing Mardi Gras itself – on February 24. The chance to go to a real Mardi Gras Ball was too good to be true.

One obvious question that came up early was what we could possibly wear. Formal wear (beaded dresses, shawls, and high heels) were not on our packing list when we left Delray almost two years ago (though with the fun we’ve been having we may consider what we could bring that is light and packable). Enter our fairy godmothers in the form of Lynn and Heuetta.
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By most accounts, the history of Mardi Gras dates back to Roman times and the feast of Lupercalia. In an attempt to convert the pagans, the Catholic Church wove many of the customs of Lupercalia into its own activities. Mardi Gras became the time before Lent – forty days before Easter, when the church members feast and have fun before the abstinences and penances of Lent.

Known as Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras was big in France, and since southern Louisiana was settled by the French, it’s a particularly big festival here, dating locally to the late 1600s. The Mardi Gras colors are purple, gold and green, representing royalty, though costumes are varied and wildly colored.
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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.
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Gueydan Museum

The Gueydan Museum is an elegant little museum right on Main St. The ongoing exhibits all concern Gueydan itself and the history of the local area, but they have various rotating exhibits every other month on a wide variety of subjects. When we arrived, Lea Hair had created an impressive and well-done exhibit on butterflies as part of achieving her gold award for her Girl Scout troop – that display ran from July through September.

Since then, we’ve seen the Lafayette Photographic Society “Focus on People” display – an exhibit of photographs that ran in October and November; a display of brightly colored oversized paintings of all the political candidates for the election of November 2008, with additional paintings of Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Marilyn Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, painted by Adrian Fulton (December); and then the Noel au Musee – the traditional display of Christmas trees created and decorated by local businesses (December).
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