Mardi Gras Day, Greg already ate the King Cake

Here is our map for the day. Now we have a new and improved version with an elevation profile. Thanks Perry!

This is a King Cake, what Greg consumed about 85% of at Perry and Lep's place.

Greg enjoys an after-dinner- its-so-cold-I-have-to-eat-it-in-the-tent snack

Jackson to Easleyville, LA- Mardi Gras Day

2/16/10

Day 104

30 bike miles, 15 car miles.

We slept like babies yet again in the cave-sleeping room last night. We got up and had breakfast with Perry and Lep and enjoyed more good conversation. Our big goal today is to go to the post office in St. Francisville and pick up our BoB trailer wheel as well as get some more blog entries written and loaded. We always start feeling guilty when we get behind, so now is the time to buckle down. Perry was nice enough to let us use her truck to go into town and run errands. First we drove to the Post Office to get our wheel, which was a success. Our friend Nate helped us so much by getting the wheel, re-truing it himself and then applying spoke-freeze to ensure the wheel stayed true. We can't thank him enough! We stopped at the library hoping to enter blogs and maybe apply for jobs but there was no wireless to be had, the library was closed for Mardi Gras! Instead we returned to Lep and Perry's place and tried to upload some entries using their internet. It turns out where we are staying the signal isn't very strong, so we didn't get much done. We apologize for the lull in posts.

After the business was done we had a great lunch with Perry, Lep and their friend Bucky, whose birthday it is today. We had heart shaped pasta with marinara sauce, or as Perry humorously calls it, “red shit.” Now before you judge, you have to hear the hilarious story that goes along with her nickname for red sauce. When she was a little girl, about 6 or 7, Perry was riding in the truck with her father when he said, “oh no, its Wednesday, your Mother is going to make something with that red shit on it.” Perry thought, “what's wrong with that?” Perry said her Mom was not the best cook...but now anything with red sauce is called “red shit,” which we think is pretty funny. Well, to say the least, the red shit was awesome. We loved our last meal at Perry and Lep's home. By the time we were ready to go it was 2PM. I was worried about how far we would get and about riding on Mardi Gras. I asked Perry what she would do and she said this is the only day of the year she refuses to ride her bike because of drunk drivers. She suggested giving us a “bump” down the road in the truck so that we could get in at a safe hour, and we took her up on the offer. She drove is 15 miles down the road to Norwood and we road the rest of the 30 miles to our RV park in Easleyville.

We made it safely with no problem from drivers, and we even saw two other cyclists out for a ride. Our RV park was in a nice location but old and a little run down. We pitched our tent under an awning and set about making dinner. A goat nanny and two kids were tied to a tree nearby. They were taken inside when it became dark, and then we began to get very cold. We hurriedly cleaned dinner pots and got in the tent as quickly as we could. It is going to be a cold one, with the low tonight being 26. I thought Southern Louisiana was going to be warmer than this! The cold weather will just not leave us alone. I'm so glad to have a warm sleepingbag, it has not been overkill. Tomorrow promises sunny, beautiful riding, so I will sleep well.

Also, even though we didn't go to Mardi Gras, I don't feel like we missed out because of the other cool things we have seen and done. Mardi Gras is not a safe place for people on bicycles, so I will leave that to another visit to the state of Louisiana. I'm sure we will find lots of beads on the road tomorrow. P.S. We bought a King Cake at Whole Foods two days ago for Mardi Gras and Greg ended up eating a lot of it (eventually all of it), so much that Perry started giving him a hard time about his consumption of King Cake. It was gone before Mardi Gras, oh well, we enjoyed it. As Perry put. "I went out in the garage and saw the empty King Cake box with the little baby just laying there in the middle and I was amazed."

Dani

A note from Greg:

What can I say? King Cake is Good Eats. I have a sweet tooth that is not helped at all by bicycling. When I am hungry and there is a big sweet King Cake in front of me, well, it can get a little crazy.