Day 277
38 hours in Marksville
How do you match our random encounter with Jacye and the legend that is Harrison (not Ford)? Well you go stay in small town Louisiana with the man they call Rodney Rabalais.
First we had to get there, after a lazy morning with Jacye, listening to more of her music we finally tore ourselves away around 11am. The route was straightforward, stay on Route 1 until we get to the Broken Wheel Brewery. It sounds pretty simple, a nasty and busy bridge was no problem, we heard a siren and some words of encouragement. Yep one of Louisiana's finest was keeping us safe with another escort.
Then the punctures started, I lost count, Tom says it was about 5, I thought it was 9! Then his chain started to fall off, repeatedly. Our short day was getting longer. Rodney valiantly agreed to wait in the pub and we ploughed on. Finally we arrived. What can I say about the Brewery? We were at ‘Cheers’. Rodney was holding court in his usual seat at the bar. We sank a few beers, met the gang and headed out into the darkness to Rodney’s. I will blame the beer and punctures but I was struggling to follow Rodney’s map, thankfully his very wise girlfriend, Chris, had given us a head start (she drives a Maserati) and showed us the way. We ate a fantastic home cooked meal, drank some wine and talked late into the night. Marksville we discovered was named after Mark, who stopped to mend his broken wagon wheel and never left. He had a successful career trading with the local Indians and gifted his land to create Marksville. At some point it was agreed we would stay another night, Rodney and Chris departed and left us the house all to ourselves.
After a morning of bike servicing and blog updating it was back to ‘Cheers’, sorry the Broken Wheel Brewery for lunch. By now Tom and I were local celebrities, we worn our free BWB T-shirts with pride and drank more beer. A plan was hatched for the rest of the day. Be back at BWB to watch Jeopardy, Omar, a friend of nephew of a friend several times removed was competing, then a night at the open-mic event. Omar fought the good fight but was beaten into second place, Chris arrived and us girls cracked open a bottle of rose champagne, none of that Prosecco imposter for us. We made plans to be interviewed by the local radio station at 6am but first it was off to the open-mic night. My, does Louisiana have talented singers. Jacye is still our first girl, but we sure had a blast. It was one of those nights that you had to be there, Janis Joplin lives in Brandy! Though if I never hear the moose song by the guy from Alaska again I won’t mind.
It all gets a bit hazy now, I think I turned down an offer to drive us all home in Chris’ Maserati, I know we got home and I wasn’t at the wheel! We overslept so didn’t make our 6am radio appointment,we had woken to yet another puncture, Rodney appeared bleary eyed and we knew it was time to give him his house back and hit the road. We left with 38 hours of Marksville in our soul forever.
The pics only tell a little of the story - just wait for the video!
