Ville Platte, Louisiana, to St. Augustine, Florida, 1,004 miles, 21 days on the road. Total distance from San Diego, 3,074 miles, 70 days on the road.

“New York City is a thousand miles away, and if you ask me that’s OK, ‘cos that’s the way it was meant to be”
‘I’m a Country Boy’, Lynyrd Skynyrd, ‘Nuthin’ Fancy’, 1975

As discussed in Part 2, dog chases are to be expected by the touring bicyclist, but as I pedalled further into Louisiana’s Cajun* country they seemed to increase markedly in number until a ride through one parish brought 18 in one day, including a great dane during which all I could do was emit a primal scream, throw my head back and pedal for dear life with the thing easily keeping up with me at 25 miles per hour. One store owner who wished to remain anonymous reckoned that the other worst offenders, a pitbull and a german shepherd, were protecting the local meth labs and the sherrif was in league with the producers so dog restraining ‘leash-law’ was not enforced.

Shortly after this conversation one of several instances of southern hospitality occured, as a pissed, rum character struck up conversation outside a store and a couple of miles down the road pulled over his truck and invited me in to sample a bit of his ‘product’. ‘Not while I’m working’ was the best I could come up with to avoid hurting his feelings. This was followed a couple of days later, more pleasantly, by an old chap remarking on my dirty clothes and frayed tarp tied to my panniers, and handing me $13 to ‘help me on my way’. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I wasn’t really a charity case at least for the time being, so any suggestions for suitable charitable causes are welcome.

Before leaving this part of the state I had intended for the second time this year to check out some cajun music but my attempts were thrawted when the manager of Floyd’s record shop, the leading source of information, falsely accused me of urinating behind his truck which made for a somewhat awkward subsequent conversation. Nevertheless, after crossing the Mississippi by ferry this was compensated by finding several enjoyable juke joints** in small towns and one half hidden by the woods at a remote crossroads.

Louisiana and Mississippi were markedly poorer than Texas with many people living in mobile homes on small plots in the woods. Often these were surrounded by numerous rusting vehicles and other assorted junk while being fenced off and posted with numerous ‘no trespassing’ and ‘enter at own risk’ signs. I couldn’t believe anyone would want to nick a broken axle and often found it all the very definition of pathetic. Chatting to the locals Springfield-Shelbyville syndrome was very much in evidence. I was frequently warned that in the next town I would be robbed, shouldn’t camp or would be mown down by the worst drivers in the country. However, when I got there each place was very much like the one before it.

Mississippi also brought some of the most enjoyable cycling of the trip; gentle hills and some nice spots in the woods for stealth camping. However, I didn’t manage this as much as I’d hoped as hunting season was now in full swing and on a couple of occasions shortly after I pitched my tent, a pick-up pulled up and camouflage-clad hunters starting blasting away. Consequently I was forced to retreat to the local indian-run motel if there was a room available not inhabited by permenant residents. It was also getting a little cool for camping and I awoke in the morning several times to find my tent coated in ice and waterbottles frozen. The temperature also provided a clothing challenge as I’d stupidly ditched most of my cold weather clothing in Austin, thinking I wouldn’t need it. The solution however, came in the form of a pair of women’s high school baseball trousers from which I cut out the seat to minimise chafing.

As Thanksgiving approached I crossed into Alabama and gave thanks to the bike for having got me this far with a meal of canned Dinty Moore beef stew. This was on the Gulf Coast which provided some great views of the oil rigs in Mobile Bay. A ferry across the bay then took me to 30 miles of strip malls and condominiums and finally into Florida.

Despite reaching the final state of the trip I still had 500 miles to go across the Florida panhandle. This seemed to fly by as I finally had a tailwind lasting more than one day, and was enlivened by getting my first ever traffic ticket for an offence committed riding a bicycle. I’d decided to take a four mile shortcut along a freeway but didn’t realise that in Florida, unlike other states I’d passed through, bicycling on freeways is forbidden. I got pulled over by a state trooper who told me to walk back, the wrong way up the freeway including up the narrow exit ramp, rather than leaving at the next exit which had been my intention. I’m not good with petty authority figures and pointed out this was just because he fancied rubbing it in and I would be off the freeway quicker and more safely if he let me ride forwards to the next exit. This challenge seemed to send him into a minor rage and he hit me with a ticket. The conversation ended with me politely asking him for information on how I could sue him for putting me in a dangerous situation and whether I could get a snap of him next to his car. He declined both requests. I was repeatedly asked by people whether anyone had ‘messed with me’ on the journey but this was the only real twat I came across.

Finally, after 70 days on the road I approached St. Augustine, the oldest city in America on the Atlantic coast. I ran into a swimming pool store and asked the easiest way to the beach and hauled my bike through the sand for a ceremonial dipping of the wheel into the ocean. I’d done it.

* Cajun (IPA: /’keʒən/; French: les Cadiens) are an ethnic group mainly living in Louisiana, consisting of the descendants of Acadian exiles and peoples of other ethnicities with whom the Acadians eventually intermarried on the semitropical frontier. Today, the Cajuns make up a significant portion of south Louisiana’s population, and have exerted an enormous impact on the state’s culture.

**the vernacular term for an informal establishment featuring music, dancing, gambling, and drinking, primarily operated by African American people in the southeastern United States. The term “juke” is believed to derive from the Gullah word joog, meaning rowdy or disorderly.