Thursday October 21: Beaumont to Lake Charles: about 60 miles

We made it to Louisiana! We’ve been riding in Texas for about 850 miles. That’s a good portion of our trip, so it’s mentally healthy to know we’ve made it this far.

We passed over the Sabine River into Lousiana. Jacques failed to notice two “Welcome to Louisiana” signs, which makes me think he is getting crazier and crazier as the trip continues. There were some flying fish at the first rest area in Louisiana; I’m not sure what the they were jumping for. Joy perhaps.





As we left the rest area, we came across a bridge with a very narrow shoulder. We made a run for it, not realizing until we had started that there were gaps of 4-8 inches every five feet on the bridge. Jacques, without a trailer, could easily bunny hop over the gaps. Myself, on the other hand, had the trailer and therefore couldn’t maneuver the same way. I took the gap head on, and after about five rough hits, I heard a loud pop and knew I had at least popped my rear tire’s tube. I couldn’t stop because traffic was wizzing by just a couple of feet to my left, so I road out the final fifty feet on my rim. When I arrived on the other side of the bridege, I inspected my tire and saw that it had a gaping hole. Luckily, I had a spare, so I changed the tire and tube and we were back on our way.

This day was full of adventure.

We had been hearing from our Lake Charles hosts that we would need to traverse one of two bridges into the city. They warned that neither were really passable by bike, and they would be willing to pick us up on one side and give us a ride to the other side. Jacques and I weren’t comfortable with this, knowing that we would look back and remember the time when we crossed the country...almost. We decided to take Interstate 10 to the bridge, and if there was a moderately safe way to cross without risking harm to ourselves or others, we would go ahead and cross.



In the distance, we saw the bridge. This was no ordinary bridge. This was a mammoth bridge. A bridge civil engineers drool about in their dreams. We rolled up to the bridge and saw that there was a slightly elevated section that provided about a 2.5 foot wide section to ride on. That was our home for the next two miles. On one side of the 2.5 wide section were screaming semi trailers required to use the right lane to cross the bridge. On the other side- a three foot tall metal barrier, with a drop off that would a make grown man pee his pants. I may or may not be speaking from experience.

Needless to say, as evidenced by writing this post, we made it. This much to the shagrin of our hosts.

We stopped at the local Wendy’s for a celebration Frosty and instantly began to feel the Lake Charles’ hospitality. Jacques scored a free frosty, and I made conversation with a local that donated to Beautiful Gate. We stopped by the church where Margie, our second night’s host worked. She ended up giving us a lift to our first night’s host and we received some more donations for Beautiful Gate. .

Clint and Kathryn hosted us the first night. They attend a church on the south side of town, have three beautiful children, and provided us our first cajun meal. Clint is a triathelete, so it was good to talk about his races and competitions. Their children were hilarious, and although the youngest (3 years old) and I had a conversation, I still to this day have no clue what he said.




Tomorrow: we rest.