You can always depend on the kindness of strangers.

Acadiana.
Cajun Country. Bayou Country. Where tire treads lie like alligators on the side of the road and front porches with rockers, rubber boots, and a cigarette are indispensable. I’ve never traveled through a place where people are so vocally proud of their landscape, their homes, their music, and food.

“You doin’ okay, boo?” -Henderson, LA
People have been extraordinarily kind and generous. In Thibodaux I ended up spending 3 days waiting out the thunderstorms and tornadoes. I started running into the same people around town. At the university there, I attended a poetry reading and ended up having dinner with the poet and the Frenchman who organized it. Mark grew up in Chicago, lived in Europe for several years, and now teaches at Loyola. Jean-Marc grew up in France and has lived in the south for the last 14 years. They took me out for etouffee, fried catfish, wine, and creme brulee. We talked about southern living and immigration and the reasons behind provincialism. Then Jean-Marc drove me and my bike through the torrential rain to my motel.
I met Dustin on the university campus. “I like it,” he said when he saw me roll up to the library on my bike. He pedaled out with me the next day, breaking the wind ahead of me for 50 miles. With a strong southern accent and a deep guffaw for a laugh, he discussed roadside trash and recycling programs, the loss of coastal lands, methods of crawfishing and frogging, carbon fiber seat posts, documentaries and Prairie Home Companion, and how an acquaintance got shot in the back while bicycling in the next town over. We were chased by a water moccasin, and he saved me from being hit by a kid in a dune buggy. His campaign against unfriendly drivers involves getting a tattoo on his butt that reads “Go Around.”
At Angelle’s Old-Fashioned Burger Café in Breaux Bridge, Angelle was the first person who did not temper his excitement for my trip with many words of caution. He boomed his enthusiasm from the moment I walked in the door. With his dark slicked back hair, he looked like Travolta in Grease. Before he left for his grandbaby’s birthday party, he called out, “If I’m not back before you leave, the burger’s on me.” It was quiet after he left, and Dessa the waitress said, “It’s nice now, huh?” She was manning the antique store, burger grill, and ice cream parlor by herself. Whenever the doorbell rang, she would run from the grill to the store, leaving me alone to handle the customers who came in for ice cream. Each time she rushed by me, she’d put a hand on my shoulder and apologize, “I’ll be right back, boo.”

I was tired. It was a beautiful day. -Breaux Bridge, LA
I rolled into Lake Fousse Point State Park about 9pm the night before. It was Saturday night. The swamp invaded the campsites, and RVs outlined in lights seemed to float on their own little islands of pavement. Campfires smoked. A song about Elvis and blue suede pumped out of a pick up. I spent the night out on the dock, listening to the turtles plop and alligators flip. I was up at daybreak to beat the rangers.
When I reached the outskirts of Breaux Bridge, I was tired. My ass was sore. I was sick of headwinds. The cemetery looked inviting. So I sat down, had a little snack, and then lay down. Just for 15 minutes. It was the kind of spring day that invited you to lie in the grass and stare at the clouds. As I was packing up, a cop car, lights flashing, rolled onto the grass toward me. A tall, thin policeman unfolded out of the squad car. I couldn’t see his eyes behind his sunglasses, just his hands tapping an unlit cigarette against his lighter. “How you doin’?” “Good...” “How long you been here?” “Oh, I was just having a snack and resting a little bit.” “Well, we got a call that someone was lying down out here.” I started to explain. Tap, tap went the cigarette. “People here are lookin’ out for you...” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two more cop cars, lights flashing, pull up on either side of me. More cops got out. I now found myself surrounded by flashing squad cars and wary cops. I fought the urge to laugh. “She was just restin’,” the first one called out. He looked back to me, stuck the cigarette in his mouth, and turned to go. “You be careful, ma’am.”

“But you started at the wrong end! Because it doesn’t get any better than this.” -Paul, upon hearing I was headed to NC, at Angelle’s Whiskey River Landing, Henderson, LA
“You’ve come all the way up here into Cajun Country just to hear the music. Now is not the time to wimp out.” Biking toward the levee in Henderson, LA, I was trying to psych myself up for the bar. “It’s crazy there,” the burger café owner had said. “They dance on the tables.” Now I was headed for that bar, attempting to bolster my flagging courage. I crested the levee and surveyed the pick ups that stretched out all along the levee. It doesn’t matter that I’ve never been to a bar by myself before, I counseled. The swamp pop thudded from within the wooden building. I squeezed my bike between some cars and pushed through the door. Geno Delafose and his band were on stage and in full swing. The accordion squeezed, the washboard scraped, the snare drum tapped the beat. The deer head and the wild pig mounted on the wall wore mardi gras beads, beer cartons wallpapered the walls. I peeked down to the room below that overlooked the bayou. The dance floor was a jam-packed jumping, twisting, swirling mass of cowboy hats and hunting caps. I headed straight for the bar. I asked for a water. It was bottled. I asked what they had on tap. “This is Louisiana.” Right. I ordered a Bud Light, can. Close enough to water, I reasoned. Then I pushed my way to the edge of the crowd below.
Everyone at Angelle’s loves to dance. It's a hip swiveling, syncopated foot tapping, bouncing extravaganza. I never did quite get the hang of it. My first few partners tried desperately to count out the beat, but as the night progressed, I either got a little better or they got a little drunker. “Look at this place," one exclaimed. "It’s all races, cultures, ages. This is the best place on earth.” He was right. I’ve never been in a room with so many people who are so enthusiastically happy to be exactly where they are. Some of the folks:
Paul, the Altar Boy: Paul found me with the introduction: “You’re the girl on the bike! We passed you when we drove in. I wanna dance with you cuz you must be in good shape.” Baby-faced in his late 30s, Paul loves to dance. After he got divorced, he says he wore through 3 soles of cowboy boots coming here to Whiskey River. Sometimes his enthusiasm for the dance could only be expressed in spontaneous whistles and revved up booty-shaking. He loved it when I tried to dance. “With your dark hair and your dancing, everyone looking at you thinks you’re Cajun,” he claimed enthusiastically. “Except that you don’t have a big butt. But they’ll just think you ate some bad crawfish.”
Paul was there with his brothers, and they, along with Judy the bouncer, became my protective surrogate family for the night. “You don’t have a gun?” Paul cried. “I’m gonna get you a gun. I’m gonna give you one with the serial number scratched off. I have one in my truck.” When I refused the gun, he bent over and pulled a knife out of his cowboy boot. He shoved it at me, insisting I needed a good knife. When I wouldn’t take it, he shoved it in my bag. I’m not going to lie– when I slept out in the Simmesport park the other night, I had two items next to my pillow: my prepaid cell phone and Paul’s knife.
Paul’s brother: Older than Paul, he has a ready smile and enjoys his whiskey. He was easier to dance with because as he said, he “didn’t dance too well either.” When he heard I’d studied English in college, he laughed and said, “You’re gonna have to write a ticket for folks down here, for slaughtering the English language. I never heard it so bad... Call up English, tell ‘em they forgot a state.”
Darren: Fifty-seven and bald, as muscle-bound in his Under Armor tee as a 22-year-old, Darren is one of the best dance partners I’ve ever had. Even being shaky with the steps, it’s the closest to gliding I’ve ever come. But Darren doesn’t go easy on newcomers. When he spun me around, he told me to hang on. I tried. And barely made it. I’m ashamed to say I even yelped, and more than once. When the song ended, an onlooker leaned forward and said, “You deserve a medal for that.” Darren got divorced 8 years ago and started dancing here 6 nights a week. “If they took away this place, it’d be like takin’ away my drugs,” he said.
Demetrius: Young, black, and ultra-thin, he can bend his tall frame down to dance with the shortest of partners. When he asked me where I was from, I told him, “I’m just passing through.” “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I’m trying to learn how to dance.” “It’ll take more than passing through to learn how to dance.”

“I was born on the levee.” -Bert, Henderson, LA
While I was taking a photo of the Henderson Crawfish Plant, a man wearing the usual camo baseball cap comes up to chat about what beautiful country it was. “I was born on the levee,” Bert tells me. “You could jus’ jump off your back dock and go swimmin’.” He talks about his childhood there, before they kicked everyone off the levee in the 70s. “We were huntin’ squirrel and deer and possum. You ever eat any of those?” He asks with a grin. “What about reindeer? Don’t they have reindeer up there in NH?”
Bert tells me his job is to keep the grounds clean. He asks if I want a tour of the crawfish plant. “You wanna see da inside?” I follow him in. “Dis is where you wash da crawfish, den you boil ‘em. In there, they’re peelin’ ‘em.” Bert’s distinctive Cajun accent is hard to reproduce, but it’s great and he knows it. “You like my accent?” he asks once with a sly smile. He takes me out back to show me the bayou. “See those sticks out there? Those are my brother’s fishin’ poles. You have your line and you tie a liette.” He looks at me. “That’s French. That’s what we call a loop. And den you put your hook on dat, and you have the sinker, and you drop it in.” I ask him what he’s fishing for. “Catfish. Not the salt water ones, not the little ones in your aquarium. Big ones. Seventy-five, eighty, 130 pounds.” He stretches his arms as wide as they can go. “This big. They eat all day, they don’ sleep.”
Back at my bike, a few more crawfish peelers come out on break. We talk about family, and how reunions become less frequent as people get older. One observes that it’s when the grandparents die that folks start splitting off. Bert says he’s glad his brother and sister “aren’t foreign. They jus’ live in the next town over.” He decides that biking must allow me time to appreciate family. He taps his head and nods toward my bike. “Gives you time to think on it.” He smiles knowingly. “I bet you I hit the nail on da head there.”
As I prepare to leave, Bert stares at me, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, cigarette in hand. “What?” I ask him. “I’m jus’ thinkin’ you’ll be comin’ back here.”

Back to the Mississippi.
As I bike north, the landscape dries out and the bayous give way to deep green alfalfa fields and horse pastures. Every house has a dog. I lost count after the twentieth dog came out charging and barking. I tried to formulate a solid “Dog Bite Prevention Plan,” something that would involve some clubbing with my bike pump. But when a dog actually did lunge for me, all I could do was yank my ankle out of the way and yell, as loudly and deeply assertively as I could, “Go home!” He settled for my panniers instead, ignoring my commands until he’d gotten in a few good chews. So much for the plans.
At the bank of the Mississippi River now, it’s time for the Natchez Trace.