Day Two: Feel My Heat

Start: Gulfway Motel in High Island, Texas
Lunch: Lil Kim and Big H Seafood & Grocery in Port Arthur, Texas
Dinner: Cajun Charlie's in Lake Charles, Louisiana
End: Holly Island, Louisiana
Today's biking distance: 82 miles
Total biking distance: 170 miles

 

Check out the Flickr photostream for all the pics so far!

Well, let me begin by being frank (you can still be you......zing!): a lot went wrong today. Let's take a look, in bulleted list form no less!

• While the guys enjoyed a relatively pleasant morning of wind at their backs and clouds shading them from the sun, I was driving through a torrential thunderstorm.

• While trying to find a good lunch spot, my hopes were risen to great heights by the sign of a small cafe, only to be dashed upon further inspection (it was boarded up). It's sign read "Richard's Cafe: Where It's All Gravy, Baby"

• We settled on a grocery/seafood joint called Lil Kim & Big H. It had neither the hip hop diva or heroin.

• Immediately after Jason ordered his lunch, the power went out...on the entire block.

• Since we had cash, and they don't need electricity to fry seafood into oblivion, we still stayed for lunch. But that lunch was accompanied by some sort of alarm sounding every 17 seconds or so. We called it the "EVERYTHING'S FINE" alarm.

• Of course, once we finished eating, the power came back.

• After lunch, the sun came out and wreaked havoc, creating water concerns for Brennan and Jason, and most tragically, shortening my trip to the super cool fort we saw on the side of the road, a.k.a. Fun Island Depot!

the graffiti-riddled sign made it seem less fun....so did calling it a Depot.

• To celebrate the end of the day's run, the guys excitedly ran into the Gulf of Mexico...and proceeded to get covered in dirty seaweed and random trash. 

somehow, you can still see their disappointment (even with their backs turned)

• Despite our attempt to spend our night in the whimsically-named Hackberry, Louisiana, the one motel (which was also a marina) appeared to be abandoned.

• We thought our bad luck streak had ended with our dinner choice: Cajun Charlie's. It had crazy crap on the wall. I had a trio of fried duck appetizers. There was a Wall of Fame even better than the one from last night**. Everything was going great, especially when we saw the standing stuffed alligator (not unlike the one from Hook...you know, the one who (SPOILER ALERT!!!) eats Dustin Hoffman at the end). And we were pumped when the waitress agreed to take our picture with the gator. But, as we learned throughout the day, things were just meant to go wrong. She cut the gator's head off in the pic. Rat farts.

See how happy we were...then we saw the piss-poor crop job

**shout out to my brother Tom and friend Michal who both correctly identified our mystery picture from yesterday...some country singer named Tracy Lawrence, who I'm going to assume is black sheep of the Joey, Matt, and Andy Lawrence family

Today's mystery Wall of Fame member

But tomorrow's another day. And the guys are likely to log 100+ miles tomorrow. Wish us luck!

Support Vehicle Music:

Radiohead - The Bends
Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Pershing
The Roots - How I Got Over
Surfer Blood - Astro Coast
Robert Randolph & the Family Band - Unclassified
Frightened Rabbit - The Midnight Organ Fight
Boogie Nights* - music from the original motion picture

*today's blog entry's title, in addition to referencing the rough weather conditions down South, is borrowed from the best of Dirk Diggler's songs. Unfortunately, it's nowhere to be found on YouTube, so Dirk Diggler's 2nd greatest song will have to do: