Pedaling for Patriots

We spent the night last night in Amite, Louisiana and left this morning about 7:00am.  The terrain evened off a bit and we had a great morning.  We passed many churches and cemeteries, along with farms and wildlife management areas.  We saw signs selling cages for wild hogs, which had us a bit concerned, but we never saw any live ones!

We stopped in Clinton, Louisiana at T-Man’s Down Home Cafe for breakfast and met a wonderful man, George Veal, and his grandson.  Mr. Veal bought our breakfast and stayed to chat for awhile.  Once he found out we were both former Marines, the stories really began!

We were about 10 miles outside of Clinton when the shoulder of the road completely disappeared.  We were pedaling along just fine until an 18 wheeler carrying logs decided that we were in his way.  He laid on the horn over and over and over again and then blew by us so fast we were forced to go off into the grass.  Well, that was it for me.  I told Rob I was just going to walk my bike until the shoulder reappeared.  Of course, after yesterday’s experience, he wasn’t too thrilled about walking in the tall grass!

After a mile or so of walking, we got a call from Penny that two TV stations in Baton Rouge wanted to interview us.  So, she came to pick us up and we drove about 45 minutes to the station for our first interview.  We then stopped for a Starbucks (hey, we were finally in a big town!) and drove to the second station across town.  After we got to the hotel, we were interviewed by the Times Picayune reporter!  All the interviews went well and we were so happy to be able to get the word out about the Memorial Fund.  (Click here to see one of the interviews)

Stats:

Live Animals:  Hawk, Mule, Horses, Cows, Lots of Dogs

Dead Animals:  Rattlesnakes, Raccoon, Armadillo