tribally This is end of the road. No more driving south.
http://marionjensen.com/2008/03 We scurried back to our hotel, threw our things into the truck, and checked out. I presume they were used to guests missing check-out times. The clerk said nothing about it.
South we went. We went over the Mississippi on that big bridge, and I just marveled at the thing. “Look at that! Look at that! We’re crossing the Mississippi! I’m going to BIKE that sonofabitch!” We were then on the West Bank, and it looked just as it always did, utterly unbeautiful, a six-lane highway cutting through sunbaked storefronts – it looked like Crossbay Boulevard in Queens but with fewer lights. We stopped at a small supermarket, picking up my food for the next few days – some bread and cheese, more or less. Every other vehicle in the parking lot was a pickup truck, except for one SUV. In Louisiana it gets country very quickly.
South, south we went – through strange land, levees on both sides, and cows grazing under the levees – who knew they had cattleranching south of New Orleans? Everything interested us, though it was maybe more strange than beautiful. It was all just completely different – sundrenched, waterlogged, just a bacon strip of land right next to the river, jutting out into the ocean. It was almost two hours before we came into Venice. We looked for the hotel my guide recommended but could not find it. We nosed our way around, and found a side road going even further south – we saw a gator sunning himself by the road, and some beautiful irises that I just had to take pictures of, blooming like Staten Island irises would out of the scattered garbage – and there was the end of the road, and the sign that said it was the Southernmost Point in Louisiana. Really it was the Southernmost point on the road system of Louisiana – we could see there was plenty of land to our south, but none of it firm enough to put a road on.
Well, you can't accuse me of following the crowds. The Venice Inn.
Catherine took a few pictures of me down there – the starting point of the bike ride – and then we headed back to town. We asked at one hotel, found it too expensive, and then tried the Venice Inn, whose vast empty parking lot boded no particular good. It was $75 a night. I took a room.
We then transferred all my gear to the room, and took my bike out. I was afraid Catherine would have a miserable drive back – and indeed she ended up driving all night, she had left so late. She wished me luck, and then drove off.
I was left alone, at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico, a hundred miles from the nearest soul I knew, two thousand four hundred miles away from my destination, and just my bicycle to get me there. Alone is the word, I think. I felt alone.
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