Trip Diary: Week 3
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Day 15: April 19 (Thu) | Kirbyville | 34 miles today / 340 miles total In the morning we give the chicken slippers to the proprietor. Lara can't take the rose with her, so I suggest we give that to the owner also, and we do. Finally, we give her a "Beware of Dog" sign, written in both English and Spanish, that I had bought for Lara a few towns back as a silly gift. This works well because the owner has a dog chained up outside that barks at everyone as they go to their rooms. The owner gives us some homemade Indian bread and imported pickled tomatoes. Wow, we've gotten homemade Indian food twice now! Good thing I'm making it a point to joke with the owners and ask where in the tiny little town I can get aloo naan, baghan bharta, etc. We hit the road. It's been flat for the last several days, which makes things a lot easier. We're also flying -- relatively speaking -- now that Lara can go faster without the added weight. Bumping up to just 10 mph from 7.5 mph means that we can cover 45 miles in 4.5 hrs. instead of 6 hrs., or, for that 4.5 hrs. of biking, means that we can cover 45 miles instead of 34 miles. We go off the map route, taking a state highway instead of farm roads, because the route is more direct and is fewer miles. There's more traffic and it moves a lot faster, but we have a super-wide shoulder so we feel safe. I feel a lot better about this, because Lara doesn't always like to move over to the extreme right when a vehicle is trying to pass us on a shoulderless road, even when it's a great big logging truck and the solid line says they're not supposed to pass us. That's really worried me, and I've talked to Lara a couple of times about it. I'm not trying to hassle her, but I have been worried about her safety, as well as the safety of oncoming vehicles when a big truck has to cross the solid line completely into the oncoming lane in order to pass us. She's been receptive to that, especially after a couple of close calls in which trucks have run oncoming traffic off the road when the trucks have tried to pass us. We get into Jasper County, but not Jasper itself -- the home of a horrible racial murder a few years ago. As soon as we enter Jasper County, wouldn't you know it, someone is flying the Confederate flag, so I take a picture of it. I'm glad we're not going to Jasper proper. In Kirbyville we stay at the Gateway Inn, and are now five for five on Indian-run hotels. These people were no fun, though -- probably part of the "killer" class the previous proprietor had warned us about -- unfriendly and completely humorless. When I had called ahead to check on the price of the room and the guy told me $29, he also started ticking off the amenities, "HBO, free local calls," so I exclaimed into the phone, "Free local calls!?!?" But he had no reaction. Our room is the cheapest so far on the trip, but also the smallest so far. I can't easily fit both our bikes into the room, so I have to put one bike on the bar. I take a picture to prove it. With our increased speed, we've arrived just after 5:00pm (instead of around 8pm, our usual quitting time). So there's plenty of time to roam around, and wouldn't you know it, there's a carnival in town. I insist that Lara win me a prize on the balloon-dart game, though actually I paid for it and I threw one of the three darts. We get a plushie spider, and it occurrs to me that I could have just bought a plushie spider for about $2, while the three darts cost me $5. I guess I was distracted by thinking that the catch is usually that the games are unwinnable. They figure you're expecting that, so they devise a game you know you can win and maybe you don't notice the cost of winning. Or maybe you're just willing to pay so you can feel like a winner. Anyway, Lara says the spider would go well on the front of my bike, and that's where it winds up later. Some junior highschool girls buttonhole Lara because they're amazed by her hair and her piercings. They ask how many she has, and she tells them "Eleven." They're confused because they can only see about five or so, so they start counting out loud and thinking, then it hits them, and they put their hands over their faces in shock. They all want to get pierced and get their hair wigged out, and Lara has helped to corrupt some bored small-town kids. We ride the hammer-head, which is the one which sends you in loops, backwards and forwards, so you go upside down. I remember riding this repeatedly when I was 17, about 16 years ago. I guess I'm not the young man I once was. It's terrifying at first, then kind of fun, then actually nauseating -- probably because the generator that powers the thing is spewing diesel fumes and adding to our illness. Lara feels queasy as well. We stagger back home for dinner. We've actually eaten pretty well on this trip -- mostly fruit, whole wheat bread, carrots, frozen vegetables (thawed or warmed up by various methods), and veggie burgers. Many of the groceries stock veggie burgers, even in these small towns. When we go out to eat, there's always baked potatoes, vegetables, Subway, etc.

Day 16: April 20 (Fri) | DeRidder, LA | 47 miles today / 387 miles total "Mmm...Sleepy butt!" "Have you even heard of Metallica?" I happen to get up an hour before Lara, so when I see her wake up, I say, "Hey, sleepy butt! In her groggy, stretching state, she squeals, "Mmm...Sleepy butt!" While Lara is showering, I return the room key to the office at 11:10 (10 minutes past check-out time), and the owner makes a big deal out of looking at his watch. I start moving our things out of the room to get ready to go, and by 11:30 the owner and his wife are standing outside our door wanting to clean it. I ask, "Can you give us a few minutes to get our things out?" He says, "No, alreddy eet eez eleben thirdy and dees eez de last hroom." I say, "Are you really going to be a hard-ass about this?" and he nods and says, "Yes." I ask, "Do you have someone waiting to get into this room?" and again he nods and says, "Yes." (In reality, there were only one or other two other rooms rented the previous night, and I expect the same tonight. The parking lot is completely 100% empty.) Lara's fairly pissed about their insistence on arbitrarily rushing us out of the room as quickly as they can. When she's finished getting ready she heads out to the grocery store, and I stay behind to explain to the owner how we weren't happy about the way they treated us, and that we might not have overslept if his wife hadn't walked into our room at 9:00am for some reason and woken us up, making it hard to get back to sleep, that all the other motels we've stayed at have allowed us to check out a few minutes late (though admittedly, I've usually asked beforehand if that would be okay) and that the reason he's not listed on the bike map is that other people have had bad experiences at his place. (I'm guessing on that last one, but what the hell.) I said all this very calmly and without insult, but it went in one ear and out the other. I met Lara at the grocery store. I brushed my teeth at the side of the store building while Lara was getting coffee inside. Lara doesn't like it when I gag while brushing my teeth, so today I was able to gag with impunity. We stopped at a junque shop (that's how they spelled it) just before the Texas/Louisiana border, and stayed about an hour, during the hottest part of the day. Previous days have been cloudy so that saved us from the heat, but today the sun is relentless. It's relent all over again. How I wish for that relentful sun we used to have. Anyway, the shop has antiques, used records, books, knick-knacks, tools, candy, flags, patches, housewares -- you name it. A good chunk of the merchandise is outside under a tent. I ask the highschool-age clerk inside if I can try the guitar, and he gets it for me, and mentions that he likes Metallica. Then, for some reason, he asks, "Have you even heard of Metallica?" Jesus, does he really think that because I live outside of Bon Wier, Texas I wouldn't know about Metallica? Small world-view. I mention that Metallica is well-known internationally and that I'm quite familiar with Lars and the boys. I get Lara a woman superhero comic book for $0.50. (The story is road warriors, appropriate, I think.) Lara finds a hot plate, which we've been needing, and the owner knocks the price from $5 to $4 because I tuned his display guitar. Lara also picks up a book (Ingrid Bergman's memoirs) for only $0.25, and also gets a $0.25 visor, since she needs something to protect her face, but she doesn't like to cover the spikes on her head. It's uncanny how we always find exactly what we need. I keep telling her, Allah will provide. Lara is amused by a religious keychain and calls out to me loudly, "Look, Michael, I Love Jesus!" Worriedly, I quickly add, "Well, that makes two of us!" I had to take Lara aside and remind her that Southerners take their Jesus seriously and the last thing you wanted to do was to make fun of it. We take some pictures and then split. A few miles later, we cross the Texas/Louisiana border and take some more pictures. We did 47 miles today, nearly matching our previous distance record of 48, though the last hour was really hard for us, probably because we didn't eat enough throughout the day and hit the wall. We check in to the Dormez Inn, which makes us 6 for 6 on Indian-owned hotels. Day 17: April 21 (Sat) | (DeRidder, LA) | 0 miles today / 387 miles total "Take me to DeRidder. Drop me in the Wal-Mart." The hotel won't let us wash our clothes here, but there's a laundramat down the road so I go wash our clothes. I also catch up on this daily journal, which I haven't updated in several days. Whew! We started running dangerously low on chocolate chips several days ago, and then ran completely out. Unfortunately we haven't been able to find vegan chocolate chips in any grocery store along the way. But the local Wal-Mart here has a grocery store built into it, and they have them! In fact, they have two different brands: Ghiradelli and Sam's Choice, the Wal-Mart in-house brand. Sam's choice is 80¢ cheaper and we weigh the moral implications of further supporting the Wal-Mart empire by getting the cheaper Sam's Choice bag, but we cop out and get the Sam's Choice. (When we get to the hotel and I log onto the Internet, I read that Sam Walton Jr., the head of Wal-Mart, has just surpassed Bill Gates as the richest man on the planet. D'oh!) Since we're at the Wal-Mart in DeRidder, Louisiana, Lara sings the old Talking Heads song "Take Me to the River", but changes the words to "Take me to DeRidder / Drop me in the Wal-Mart." Clever girl. Day 18: April 22 (Sun) | (Oberlin, LA) | 40 miles today / 427 miles total "Are you tingling with excitement?" "Yes I am. Tingle tingle tingle." On our way out of DeRidder we stop by the Wal-Mart so Lara can pick up the photos for the film she dropped off last night. I ask if she's excited about seeing the photos, and we have the exchange mentioned above. Once we're in the store and I'm waiting for her, I refill our gallon jug from the filtered water machine inside the store next to the cash registers. The lines at all the registers are long, so I figure I'll fill up the water bottles on our bike while I'm waiting for the lines to get short enough to pay the $0.25 charge for the water. So I walk the few feet over to our bikes (which we'd brought inside) and start filling up our bottles from the gallon jug, and the Wal-Mart security person is all over me immediately wanting to know if I'd paid the $0.25 for the water. Later, after I've waited in line and paid for it, I attached the receipt to my head with a rubber band and walked from the register to the doors that way in protest. On the road, Lara finally gets to see an intact armadillo, though it's still quite dead. In Oberlin, we stay at the only motel in town, the Oberlin Inn, for $41. (It's normally $45 but I get the biking-across-the-country discount.) Unfortunately, this is our first non-Indian-run motel, so we break our streak. More importantly, there are no phones in the rooms! No email or Internet for us. We note that each of the three times we've stayed in a non-Indian-managed place, there were no phones. (Heartland had phones in the office but not in the big house we stayed in, and that cat-pee-smellin' cabin at the Chain-O-Lakes resort had no phones.) A lot of nerve they have trying to charge $45 a night without even a phone. Get a load of their crappy stenciled sign in the photo! If that doesn't scream "Quality!" I don't know what does. Although we're in the middle of nowhere, there's a big Native American casino five miles down the road in Kinder, so here's our first opportunity to gamble. I've just started learning how to count cards at Blackjack and I could use some practice. Lara wants to play Blackjack but doesn't know the best way to play. So I start teaching her Basic Strategy, which is a decision table that tells you whether to hit or stand depending on what your card total is compared to the dealer's upcard. With Basic Strategy, the house edge is only 0.5%, which means that in the long run you can expect to get back 99.5% of the money you wager, making it a cheap game to play. That's an expected loss of only $1.50 an hour when betting $5 a hand. Of course, because of standard deviation (or luck), you could actually be up or down $50 or so at the end of a single hour. Anyway, we'll hit the casino tomorrow. Day 19: April 23 (Mon) | (Oberlin, LA) | 0 miles today / 427 miles total "I don't care, bet it all, fuck it!" Last night Lara hadn't picked up the basic strategy quite as fast as I expected her to, so I was worried that it would take several hours for her to learn the whole table instead of the 1-2 hours I'd planned on. But after having a night to sleep on the first half that she learned yesterday, she picks up the second half really quickly (even though it's harder than the first half). She's also much quicker at recalling the plays from the first half now. I quickly write a flashcard program on the laptop so she can drill herself, and with just a little practice she's got the whole thing down, 100%. She's a little blackjack machine. Me, I'll be counting cards. The principle behind card-counting is that you keep track of what cards have already been played, so you know what cards are remaining to be dealt. When you know that the remaining cards are in your favor, you bet more. This gets you a tiny advantage over the house -- instead of playing with a 99.5% return, your return is about 100.5%, or just 0.5% in your favor. Of course, if you suddenly start making big bets after making small bets, the casino supervisor (the pit boss) may notice. It's not illegal to count cards, but the casino can kick you out if they figure you're counting and winning too much. So our "cover" was going to be that I'd keep betting just $5 a hand, and Lara (using my money), would increase her bet from $5 to $25-50 when I gave her the signal. I tell Lara that I'll give her 50% of whatever she wins, but she says I don't have to do that. As a compromise, I offer her 20%, which she reluctantly accepts. (Is Lara just completely unselfish or what?) I joked that I at least had to give her something, to give her an incentive to play Basic Strategy right and to bet big only when she's supposed to, otherwise she just might throw all her chips (my money) out and to the table and say, "I don't care, bet it all, fuck it!" We take the free shuttle to the casino. I'm surprised at how large and ritzy it is, since it's in the middle of nowhere. Oberlin and Kinder are barely on the map. We sit down at a blackjack table and buy chips, and I ask how many decks the game uses. The dealer tells that it's four decks, and points out the continuous shuffling machine -- which keeps the deck constantly shuffled, making it impossible to count. I'm a moron for not noticing that before we sat down, but if we get up and leave immediately then it could be pretty obivous that I'm here to count cards, so we play a few hands anyway before switching tables. At the new table, my idea of signalling Lara when to make big bets doesn't work so well, and more importantly, it feels unnatural and it's not fun, so I just increase and decrease my own bets, and Lara flat-bets $5 every hand. After a couple of hours I'm up $60 and Lara's up $75, and we leave the table. Besides our winnings, the pit boss gives us a voucher for two free breakfast buffets. (It would have been the dinner buffet, but it's 11pm and the dinner buffet closed at 10.) Lara's ecstatic about our winnings and does cartwheels in the slot machine aisles. Then we enjoy some free fruit, bagels, juice, and cereal. We surreptitiously take a couple of photos, being careful not to be seen, because casinos don't like you to take photos inside. (It's a privacy thing for their customers who might not want to be identified as gamblers.) Day 20: April 24 (Tue) | Opelousas, LA | 56 miles today / 483 miles total "First, I'll sterilize it with some Tang." We might have stayed a third night since the casino was pretty cool, but not without a goddamn phone in our room (and therefore without net access), so we hit the road again. And today's biking scraped. ("Scraped" is my replacement word for "sucks", which I think unfairly disparages sucking.) There's a strong headwind and it slows us down considerably. Plus we've got a buttload of mileage to reach our destination, Opelousas. The only bright spot is that there's almost no traffic at all on the little farm roads we travel. We pull off the road for lunch. The Sam's Choice chocolate chips we bought had completely melted in the heat of our last riding day, and then re-fused as a solid mass. I decide to mix the rest of the Tang powder into our water bottles so the Tang container will be empty, and then cut the chocolate into smaller pieces to fit it into the Tang container. That way, when it gets hot and the chocolate melts later today, it won't threaten to splorch chocolate all over everything. Lara and I are consulting about this whole process, as we do with most everything. So as I get out my pocket knife to cut the chocolate, I announce, "First, I'll sterilize it with some Tang." Lara thinks this is incredibly funny for some reason and bursts out laughing. It makes me happy that I'm entertaining her. I consider that the Tang has served us in four different ways: (1) Tang + water provides calories, so it's better than water for keeping us going while we're biking. (2) It takes the edge off the chlorinated water in the motels. (3) The empty Tang container holds the chocolate, and (4) I used the mixed Tang to psuedo-sterilize my pocket knife. Long live Tang! I actually remember reading a press release from a small alternative energy company, and they were playing up the resumé of their chief scientist, whose accomplishments included inventing Tang (which was used by the astronauts decades ago). As though coming up with a colored sugar powder to mix with water was some kind of brilliant idea. Suspiciously, this supposedly high-tech company is located in Las Vegas.... We get to town after doing 50+ miles, most of them very difficult because of the headwind. Lara's very worn out and is very eager to get to a motel. We stop at a convenience store so I can ask directions, and immediately one of the locals descends upon her to ask the usual battery of questions we've been subjected to over and over and over again every time we stop anywhere: "What kind of bikes are those?" "Where are you riding from?" "Where are you riding to?" What did you do to your hair?" "Where are you from?" etc. etc. I've been tempted to make up cards that contain answers to the frequently asked questions we're asked and just hand them out when we're accosted. I know that people are just trying to be friendly, but it really gets old after a while, especially when you have to brace yourself for it whenever you stop somewhere. So as I see this guy approaching a physically-exhausted Lara in the parking lot as I'm going into the store, I think to myself, "God, just leave her ALONE!" The guy asks some question and Lara doesn't even have the energy to answer. He repeats his question and all Lara can say is, "Tired." We get to the hotel, and it's only $22, but the area looks scary, the room is extremely dingy, smelly, and tiny, and there's no phone in it! Well, it figures, it's not an Indian-run motel. Lara's tempted to stay anyway since she's so beat, but neither of us really likes the room, so we take off for the next motel. But the person who gives us directions at the convenience store sends us in the completely opposite direction, which adds a few more miles to our trip, which wouldn't be a big deal except that Lara is really eager to get to the motel, and I'm feeling bad that it's taking so long for us to find lodging. On the way we pass a different motel, and we inquire about rates, but they charge for phone calls, and claim there's no way to dial an 800 number (which is what we have for Internet access). We finally get to the Yambilee (whatever the hell that is) Motel, which thankfully is Indian-owned (though managed by a black woman), so we can expect a telephone. They charge for phone calls but when I inquire about that, the manager says she won't charge us for them. Plus she gives us the biking-across-the-country discount. We did 56 miles today, our farthest yet. We would have been happy to break our record with a simple 50 or 51 though, and not have had so much trouble getting to the motel. That night, drug dealers (or something) were making a lot of noise in the adjoining rooms. At one point they tried to open the suite door that connected our room to theirs, and then they pounded on our front door. (We didn't answer.) I'm glad I had thought to pack earplugs for Lara before we started the trip. I'm so freakin' thoughtful/resourceful, huh? Day 21: April 25 (Wed) | (Opelousas, LA)| 0 miles today / 483 miles total We stay an extra day since we'd had such an intense ride yesterday. Unfortunately, there's nothing to do here, even though this is the biggest town we've hit since we left Austin. (Pop. ~22,000.) There are no movie theatres, even though Silsbee had a movie theater even with a population of only 6,200 or so. The restaurants are 99% Cajun, meaning they're heavy on the weird meats. There are no casinos, and the video poker is in smelly, smoky bars, and have really bad odds. There's a grocery store right across the street, but it's dingy and pathetic, and the food is really old. A clerk there accused Lara of shoplifting (so now each of us has been suspected of that on this trip), which pisses her off. We bought a bag of rice cakes there, identical brand that we bought in the previous town, but these were really soft instead of crunchy. We checked the date on the label, and they expired four months ago. We're told there's a Chinese restaurant about three miles up the road, which is just about it for non-Cajun food, so we set out. It turns out to be only half a mile away. This is like the gazillionth time that a local has demonstrated their shaky handle on units of measurement. Anyway, the dinner was surprisingly good. And they let us bring our bicycles inside. Back at the hotel, the phone stopped working, even though we're in an Indian-owned motel. I checked the wires and saw that they were barely twisted together, hanging by a thread, with no electrical tape. I got out my pocket knife and enlarged the hole in the wall so I could get to the wires, reconnected them, and then wrapped them in some electrical tape that I had brought. (Very handy for many things.) Now the wiring's in better shape than it was when we checked in.

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