Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 As I closed in on Baton Rouge, I came upon an unexpected visitor center in the small town of Grosse Tete where I could confirm that the ferry across the Mississippi in Plaquemine twenty-five miles away was in operation and find out what its hours might be.  No worries, as it had a regular schedule departing every half hour on the hour and half hour.

Then I asked if my information was correct that Baton Rouge didn’t have an Amtrak station. That was true, but I didn’t have to go eighty miles to New Orleans for a train, but could cut that distance by thirty miles by heading to Hammond, due east of Baton  Rouge.  The woman with the answers knew the station was staffed during the day and that it offered baggage service.  And she made a quick check to confirm it offered bike boxes, although it turned out I didn’t need one as the City of New Orleans line will take bikes as is stripped of its baggage.

All the good news made the cycling even more enjoyable on the quiet, perfectly flat roads intertwined with rivers feeding the Mississippi.  It was quite a contrast to the evening before when I spent twenty miles on 190, a four-lane divided Highway heading directly into Baton Rouge.  The final seven miles were on a stretch elevated above swampy terrain.  It had a retaining wall to keep vehicles from plunging into the murk and no shoulder.  

I was lucky it was a Sunday with a minimum of eighteen-wheelers, but only slightly less than bumper-to-bumper traffic speeding into the big city.  It was no place for a bicyclist, but there was no alternative.  As the light waned I wanted to put on my flashing red light, but there was no space along the side of the highway for me to stop.  If I’d had a flat, I’d have to keep riding. 

When the road finally dipped to solid ground and a shoulder reappeared, I dug out my flashing light, and began to look for a place to camp.  It was better than a mile before I came to a patch of solid ground, but with only a thin shelter of trees and within sight of the road.  It was dark enough I had little concern of being spotted, though I knew I’d have to be on my way at first light.

I didn’t need to layer-up in the morning, as after enduring the ice and snow of two winter storms earlier in the trip, I’ve been hit by a heat wave pushing the temperature into the 80s with it staying warm enough through the night that for the first time I didn’t have to start the day with wool socks or long pants or more than a shirt on my back. Suddenly it was summertime. It was nice not to have to stop several times during the day to shed clothes or swap socks as the day warmed up.  

The warmth has brought with It mosquitoes and other bugs in the tent and a genuine craving for ice in my water bottles.  It is a first-rate bummer when the ice dispenser at a fast food restaurant is out of order and one is restricted to a mere cupful from a server behind the counter, almost enough to make me want to cancel my order and go to another of the franchises, as they generally congregate in bunches.  The warmth also means I need to eat the Hershey chocolate bars Ricky gave me in the morning before they’ve turned too soft and gooey to extricate from their packaging. 

Knowing the ferry schedule I timed my arrival for five minutes before departure.  The last two miles through Plaquemine the road was dotted with beaded necklaces as I’ve come upon through most towns in Louisiana, remnants of recent Mardi Gras parades. I had collected enough I didn’t need more, but it was hard to resist scooping them up if any presented themselves at my feet when I stopped at a red light.

There were a dozen cars and a few pickup trucks and a school bus waiting for the ferry, a little less than its capacity.  It took seven minutes to cross the mile width, as recorded by my Garmin cyclometer, of the river.  

It deposited me fifteen miles south of Baton Rouge, a good location, as my friends Bob and Catherine lived on the far south side of the city.  They had moved to a larger, more spacious house from where they had been when Janina and I visited them eight years ago.  Best of all, it had a three-car garage for Bob’s three vintage Corvairs.  It was extremely lucky that Catherine had stumbled upon the house, as even a one-car garage is not so common, with open carports the standard.

Bob had retired from Trader Joe’s just two months ago at the end of 2021 after thirty years as a manager, ten in Baton Rouge after moving from California to get this one started.  He was plenty busy with projects around the house, including restoring a bench he had found along the road and constructing a long, deep vegetable bed where he was determined to finally grow a tomato and also building a new gate on his driveway, as the previous one had been damaged by a hurricane last August.  

It was the first hurricane they had experienced since moving to Louisiana and were lucky that it veered at the last moment and didn’t inflict them with its full fury.  They were still without electricity and telephone service for four days.  As the hurricane bore down on them they weren’t sure what to do.  None of their more hurricane-experienced neighbors were evacuating, as it was just a level three, one less than the worst, so they stuck it out.  Their trees were severely bent by the winds, but none were toppled, unlike others in nearby communities.  Bob and Catherine got a first-hand view of the destruction as they participated with their church in clearage missions with chain saws.

They would have missed the storm had they been in Telluride, where they have worked for the film festival with Janina and I for years, but opted out this year.  Bob was extremely Covid-weary with it falling upon him at Trader Joe’s to deal with customers who declined to wear masks.  Many of them were belligerent, spitting on him and aggressively coughing in his face, forcing him to call the police from time to time.  

He feared more of the same at Telluride, where both he and Catherine had positions of responsibility.  Fortunately it wasn’t an issue at Telluride with all those attending obliging the mask and vaccine protocols.  They greatly missed not being there and look forward to next year with much anticipation.  

We had a lot of catching up to do, not having seen each other since Telluride of 2019, as 2020 had been cancelled.  His daughter, who has joined us at Telluride several times, had just earned her PhD in microbiology and his two sons were doing well too.  Freed of his workload at Trader Joe’s, Bob was looking forward to attending a few track meets at LSU for the first time.  He’d been a miler in his high school and collegiate days, nudging the four-minute barrier as a teen nearly fifty years ago, earning him a scholarship to track powerhouse UCLA.

Spending an evening with the two of them was a fine capper to these travels.  Unfortunately I had to be on my way early to reach Hammond in time for the 2:45 train.  There was a staggering amount of traffic pouring into Baton Rouge as I left with little going my direction at seven a.m. The direct route took me back on 190, but twelve miles out of town, by which point there wasn’t much traffic and with a shoulder that alternated between narrow and wide, even when the highway reduced from four lanes to two.  

The lands weren’t so marshy that the road had to be elevated, so I never lost what elbow room I had with no restraining wall along the road, as had been the case on the other side of Baton Rouge, and could enjoy the final miles of these travels. I passed under Interstate 55 on the outskirts of Hammond.  If I were driving I could have hung a left and driven north for nine hundred miles and come within a mile of Janina’s  house.  The small railroad station had one final plaque that couldn’t resist a reference to the Civil War.

The final fifty miles brought my total to 2,734 for my six weeks on the road.   That averaged out to about one hundred miles per Carnegie, as I made it to twenty-six I had not been to previously, along with three in Texas I visited for a second time.  As always, each has left a lasting impression that made any effort to reach them, even through the snow and ice, worthwhile.    

 

The tread on my rear tire began wearing thin after 2,500 miles, but held up. It yielded just one late flat when it picked up a wire thread from one of the many tire fragments along the roads.  As always, the bicycle served me well and was a wonderful companion.