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We really hit it off with Peggy after meeting at Heuetta’s, and during the week Peggy called to see if we’d like to spend Friday night at her house after going to see Zachary Richard (pronounced Ree-shard) at Downtown Alive in Lafayette. The next day we’d be going with her and Heuetta to Fred’s in Mamou for Cajun dancing in the morning, then we’d see the Festival Acadiens et Creole in the afternoon. Sounded good to us!

Peggy picked us up right on time (coming all the way from Lafayette to get us), but she needed to check on her mom first. Peggy’s mom’s house is only about 5 blocks from where we are, so we went over with Peggy. We walked in the door, and 6 heads turned to look at us…all women in their sixties and seventies. I will never forget all those heads swiveling to look at us, and my feeling that they were related. When Peggy had to step outside I couldn’t resist asking, “So are ya’ll related?” They all nodded, and I asked, “Sisters?” They nodded again. Peggy later told us that her mom has a number of sisters, and that they always came to Lafayette for the Festival Acadiens. This year was no different.
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We’re back to riding again, and wow, does it feel wonderful! Hurricane Ike blew in a cold spell that turned into the Louisiana fall. Weather is drop-dead gorgeous – it’s about mid 80s during the day, dropping down to the 60s at night, with low humidity and 5-10 mph winds. We’re up before dawn every day, in the pitch black, and we’re out the door by sunrise. We are doing two separate rides, alternating – one is 16+ miles, the other is 22+ miles, in a big square around Gueydan, five to six days a week.
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Chelsea’s and my relationship with alligators extends back to 2002 when we started kayaking the Loxahatchee River. It was common for us to see alligators, and after 4 years of weekly all-day kayaking trips, we got to know a lot about alligators in the wild. We saw them hang out in their favorite spots, we knew the moms and we’d track the nests and the babies, and we’d see them grow or disappear over the years. We knew when they hung out together (very unusual) and we knew the ones that had some kind of deformity. At least half a dozen of these gators were clearly identifiable personalities to us over the years. We got really good at spotting the gators in the water, and we knew where they’d usually hide.
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Hanging out at the Museum before Gustav, we chatted with one old timer who kept referring to the hurricane as Faye – one that had missed us earlier. Jane gently corrected him each time, and finally he heard her. He thought for a moment, and said “Well, Gustav is a guy, and I’m not into guys, so maybe I will leave town”. We also had a wry comment from a member of the congregation who saw us ride up on our bikes on Sunday, when Gustav was supposed to hit that night. He commented, “These folks from Florida…cruising around so blasé…”. Locals had expected that this was our first hurricane, not knowing that we had gone through our own intense hurricane experiences, and more of them!
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After all our anxiety about the “devastating” hurricane, we ended up with absolutely no effects at all in our area – we didn’t even lose electricity. We did lose Internet for a few hours, and there were some interesting winds late Monday afternoon, and we lost a couple of somewhat big tree branches, but that’s it. How lucky can we get?! We can’t say that for the rest of the state, as huge areas are without power and many may be without for a month.

Since we were unable to concentrate on much of anything pre-hurricane, we rode our bikes around town again on Sunday morning. Once again, the weather was beautiful. More houses were boarded up, and Chelsea got more photos, thinking we would be able to do some great before and after albums. There was a group of firefighters and police outside the station, so we pulled up on our bikes and chatted for a while, introducing ourselves around. We told them we’d be here for the storm, and we’d holler for help if we needed it.
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Well folks, it looks like we are in the crosshairs for Hurricane Gustav. We’ve been closely watching the weather channels, and it’s pretty much focalized on our area, but as we know, that can change anytime. Everyone around here has had the pre-hurricane jitters for the last few days. Everyone’s really calm, and there’s a lot of laughter and stories about prior hurricanes, but the food, water, batteries, and dry goods are flying off the shelves.

Lynn Hair took us up to Wal-Mart in Crowley LA yesterday afternoon where we got food that can be cooked easily and quickly on our camp stove (think ramen, soup and oatmeal). They were completely out of water already, except for a few palettes of lower quality small bottles of water, and there is no camp stove fuel to be found, but we still have several liters with us. Lynn found water last night at Sam’s Club in Lafayette so she got some for us.
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Gueydan has one really big festival each year – the Duck Festival (the town bills itself as the Duck Capital of America). The festival and parade are a really big deal hereabouts, and draw people from quite a distance. They’ve got duck-calling contests, skeet shooting contests, a beauty pageant (there’s a queen for nearly every 2 yrs in age difference!), duck carving, and a duck and goose outdoor cook-off. There are at least 4 Cajun bands that play each day, and the grounds have an arcade along with a crafts show.
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Of course, it’s not just the services that define a town, it’s the people, and the people have been the biggest reason we’ve stayed here so long (okay, the food is great, the music is great, there’s always something to do, we’re in a great house, and the weather has been near perfect the last 8 weeks or so, too). I’m going to give you a cast of characters in brief, of our last few months.

TJ and Cassie – Elray Schexnaider did some work for TJ and his daughter Cassie, and when Elray found out we were going through Gueydan he told TJ that we were coming through and that we needed a place to stay. TJ and Max Hungerford are the two characters who met us on the highway and took us to lunch that first day we were here.
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Surrounded by rice farming, crawfish ponds, and cattle ranches, and billing itself as the “Duck Capital of America”, Gueydan is a small town of 1200 people, on Hwy 14. It’s 24 miles west of Abbeville, 12 miles east of Lake Arthur. As the crow flies, it’s about 20 miles inland (north) from the coast, and about 10 miles south of I-10. It’s right at the intersection of Hwy 14 and Hwy 91.

A bustling and prosperous town in the oil boom of the 60’s and 70’s, Gueydan declined in the oil bust of the 80s and never quite recovered to its former level of growth and activity. Though there are at least a half-dozen vacated buildings on Main St., some in very bad repair, the others are occupied, with steady car and foot traffic. The buildings are well maintained and the streets are clean. There’s a general feeling of cleanliness and being well maintained throughout the whole town.
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We really miss Fred; he’s become a big part of our lives, so we’ll take any chance we can to see him. One Sunday we made arrangements to come and see him in Abbeville. We agreed that we’d ride over on our bikes (about 24 miles), fly with him in the afternoon, and then he’d take us back. It didn’t work out quite as easily as we’d hoped. First of all, we stayed up until 3 a.m. with a binge of blog-writing, album prep, and website posting, so we didn’t get going until about 9:30 or 10, after only a few hours of sleep. Then we were dealing with the awful traffic on Hwy 14 (we didn’t know alternate routes yet), and the heat and humidity were incredible. Chelsea was showing signs of heat exhaustion after only about 7 miles. We finally limped into Kaplan (15 miles from Gueydan) in the face of a rainstorm, both of us dying. We collapsed in the air conditioning at MacDonald’s and kept trying to get Fred, but we couldn’t raise him at any of his numbers. We had that familiar feeling of “well, what now?”
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