Welcome to The South.

"You're not from around here, are you?" -Librarian, Thibodaux Public Library
I open my mouth, and I'm clearly a foreigner. If it's not already obvious before I speak. My speech is neither as colorful nor as melodic as the locals'. And I do not pepper my conversation with descriptive phrases, like the Wal-Mart tech salesman who told me that "there's more than one way to skin a cat," or the postmistress with the visibly blue eyeshadow and the 80s bang wave who, while selling her banker some stamps, explained, "He's mah bankah. He helps me out. If Ah wouldn'ta had him, Ah'd be up a creek."
That was in Bridge City, LA, the first town I biked through. It's a cluster of small clapboard houses that huddle in the shadow of the Huey P. Long Bridge arching overhead. They're shotgun style-- ultra-skinny and long, with rooms linked like railroad cars. If you shoot a shotgun through the front door, the bullet will whizz through every room in the house before it exits out the back.
I first stopped to get water in Ama, a tiny town on the River Road, about 15 feet from the Mississippi Levee. I walked in and asked if I could get some tap water. "Really?" the woman asked. "You drink that?" Hmm. But she filled it up anyway. "You're biking?" she asked. "On this road?" Hmm. "Are you from around here?" I tell her no. "Ahh," she knods her head. "That's why then."

A different kind of landscape.
It is hot. And you can chew the humidity, it's so thick. The trees are huge, fantastically huge, their moss-covered branches swooping down to rest on the ground. The narrow green blades of the sugar cane wilt under the sun, wooden houses sag from their brick stilts to decompose back into the earth, stairs from long-gone plantations climb to nowhere. Roadkill litters the edge of the pavement. Possum, armadillo, nutria (giant rats with viciously long incisors), hawks, snakes with poisonous red stripes. One armadillo I passed had been neatly split open and gutted (perhaps by a resourceful cook?), and several-weeks-dead possum sounds like dried seaweed when you bike over it. In the bayous, the bullfrogs and the birds chime together in constant off-key jubilation.

"Tell me you didn't bike here from New Orleans!" -Debbie, Thibodaux, LA
Many historical plaques mark the way along Rt. 18, known as the River Road because it's as curvy as the Mississippi it follows. In between the rain showers of my first afternoon, I stood reading about the namesake of St. John the Baptist Parish when a voice behind me asked, "Where you ridin' from?" I turned and found a large woman in blue scrub pants and a black plastic trash bag shirt (it was fantastic-- it beat the poncho hands down). "Just from New Orleans," I told her with a sheepish smile. I was only about 20 miles out. She widened her eyes and stared. "You ridin' back tonight?" "No." "Where you ridin' to?" "Eventually North Carolina." "On dat bike?!" "Yeah..." She thrust her head forward, gave me another pointedly disbelieving stare, spun around and walked off without another word. She looked back once over her shoulder and dismissed me with a quick flip of her hand, the kind that declares, "I don't have time for crazy, here."
Further on down the road that afternoon, a forest green Dodge with a lawn mower in the back slowed next to me and the the driver called out, "You want a ride that way?" He pointed up the road. Plastic skulls and green leaf garlands hung from the rearview, a child's stuffed dalmatian sat on the dash. He and the woman riding next to him glinted gold teeth when they smiled. I smiled too-- "No thanks." They waved and pulled off. I kept pedalling.
I reached Vacherie (that's Vetch' a ris according to the Sheriff) around 5pm. That's where Rt. 20 meets the River Road and heads south into the bayous. The only place I saw to get food that evening was the crossroads gas station/mini-mart. And mini it was. There was about one representative of each food category sitting on the mostly empty shelves. Pulling up, I attracted a lot of attention from the crowd of young guys hanging out by the door. They were flabbergasted when I told them I was planning to bike to North Carolina. "But you're going da wrong way!" they cried. Good point. "I'm going to do a bit of a loop," I explained. They just kept shaking their heads. "Baby, you ride safe."

Skulking in Shorts.
Biking, particularly as a woman alone, is a bit like being a fugitive. You skulk about, evading questions of where you'll spend the night, waiting for dark to duck into some unobserved corner, and slip out before the sun shines a spotlight on you. Let's just say I didn't get much rest the first couple nights. Even when (or perhaps because) I realized it was the St. James Parish Deputy Sheriff who was asking where I would sleep. I already stand out. It just seems like good policy not to advertise my sleeping whereabouts.
While it is 2009, and I am certainly not the first biker to pedal through these parts, in an effort to prevent any potential Easy Rider scenarios, I have decided to wear shorts over my biking spandex, both off and on the bike. I guess when you notice that a truck full of workers is watching, waiting for you to get on your bike and pedal off, you feel a little self-conscious.

"You're a Yankee." -a park bench relaxer, Thibodaux, LA
"Your ass hurt?" An old man with an enormous potbelly and a large nose that protruded over a white mustache sized me up from behind his aviator sunglasses. I had just told him I'd biked from New Orleans. He next asked me if I liked Cajun food, and then proceeded to explain the various details of south Louisiana cuisine. First, the process of making 'etouffee,' a Creole specialty. You create an "emulsion" by frying the holy trinity (bell pepper, onion, and celery) in oil, then you add the seafood. Crawfish fat turns the dish yellow. Plate specials are the norm here-- it's white beans 'n' rice with fried catfish for Lenten Fridays, red beans 'n' rice and spicy sausage on Mondays, something different for Tuesdays. When I eventually turned to walk toward the library, he called out, "Where you from?" "New Hampshire." "You're a Yankee," he decided. "Yeah, yeah, I guess I am..." "Y'all are kinda like a hemorrhoid," he continued. "Once y'all come down, ya don't go back up." All I could do was laugh. It seems most people think I won't be leaving anytime soon.