I decided to get back on the bike, it was still too early to eat and the coffee was still coursing through my veins. According to the map there was another cafe 10 miles down the road. However when I got there, an hour later, it turned out to be a canoe rental business only open in the summer.
There was no end to the deluge in sight. Hungry and wet, I pedalled on to keep warm. The next possible refreshment/shelter stop was in the town of Oberlin 15 miles away, it would take at least an hour to get there.
Another pick up had pulled over ahead. I tried not to wonder if it's occupants were going to offer me a lift, twice in one day would be too much to hope for. It also crossed my mind they might be waiting there to rob me.
As I approached it became clear that they had a flat tyre. I stopped to see if they needed any help.
"Do unto others as you would be done" I thought.
The man under the battered old pick-up had it all in hand.
"Tell him we'll give him a ride once I've fixed this up", he hollered to the woman who was waiting, shivering in the rain.
"I thought I should stop and pick you up," he said as he climbed from underneath the vehicle, "but we already passed you so I didn't.
"Then this happens straight away. Must be God punishing me" he smiled.
He was short and slightly built white guy in his fifties. He had the tanned leathery skin of one who has spent his life outside; scruffy clothes; shoulder length hair and a foot-long pointy grey beard. He had a big open smile and gentle look in his eyes.
I liked him straight away.
He spoke with a strong southern accent but in an alert, animated manner which is unusual in this part of the world. Many everyday southerners speak slowly and sometimes with a slight slur to their words.
It gives the impression, rightly or wrongly, that things are taking a while to be processed. Some come across as being relaxed and easy going, others as not really all there maybe.
However appearances can be very deceptive and at this stage I believe this trait is as much a reflection of the pace of life as anything else.
I climbed into the pick up and we got on our way.
"Don't mind the guns, we ain't robbers." he explained " If we see a deer at the side of the road we'll shoot it and eat it."
Looking around I saw a rifle on the floor across the cab, now held in place by my calves, and unspent shotgun cartridges on the dashboard. I assured them I was getting used to weapons now after 6 weeks in the country.
Jonny and his wife Sarah lived just up the road. They were on their way into town to buy beer and cigarettes.
They offered me a cigarette and when I declined they asked me if they could smoke. It has been my experience so far that smokers in the US consider the feelings of non-smokers even when in their own domain. Maybe it's just the kind of people I am lucky enough to meet. Personally I don't mind if people smoke around me but many would appreciate this courtesy I'm sure.
Jonny told me he was a world traveller, who had put his roaming life on hold to take care of his elderly father. He had hitch-hiked from Louisiana to Alaska twice in his life, although he might not be let into Canada anymore thanks to a marijuana conviction.
He had also served in the military during the Vietnam war but had been stationed in Thailand. He had never been shot at nor had he shot anyone. However he did not escape South East Asia unscathed: like plenty of his peers he came back home a shadow of his former self.
Being young men looking to enjoy themselves in an exotic land they had started out on the weed, top quality Thai Stick at that. Soon enough they moved onto opium. After a while they pretty much gave up eating, living instead on the freely available Dexedrine energy pills.
Eventually the opium was replaced by heroin and before they knew what had happened a number of America's finest were addicted to the hardest of hard drugs.
Jonny said he was 160 lbs when he arrived in Thailand and left weighing less than 90. Luckily he came back to the rural Deep South where these substances just didn't exist, it probably saved his life.
Nowadays Jon gets work operating heavy machinery when he can, it has taken him all over the US. He has also developed a fascination with history, religion and amateur archeology- searching in the mud for artifacts of bygone times.
He was a complicated fellow who had already lived a crazy life, that much was clear to see.
We stopped outside town to pick up the case of beer. Then went to park under a nearby bridge, they wanted to have a drink and a chat. Open alcohol containers are banned within many city limits.
The muddy Calsecieu River meanders between curving sand banks as it winds it's way towards the Gulf of Mexico. Though unimpressive here, a few miles downstream it is wide enough to take ocean going craft.
When Jonny was a boy there were no sand banks on the river. Forty years later they are 20ft wide in places. Deforestation is to blame apparently, clearing the land upstream has led to soil erosion. Without the trees the sand and silt is washed away during floods and deposited in the river where the flow slows as the valley widens.
The forests in western Louisiana are diverse hardwood, wetland forests. Striking flowering trees like Southern Magnolia and Bay stand alongside Holly, Oak, Beech, Cypresses and too many others to list. It is home to hundreds of specialised birds and animals.
According to Jon, logging is still big business and more hardwood forest is being lost everyday. Some goes for quality hardwood products but most just goes as chippings to the state's paper mills.
It was exactly the same story as I'd seen, with my own eyes, in the unique temperate rain forests of Southern Tasmania. Surely we can make enough paper from recycling and renewable forests to avoid destroying these natural treasures.
How can we expect the struggling economies of the developing world to slow their harvesting of primary forest while the wealthiest nations continue the folly?
I ran through my planned route with my hosts. They wanted to warn me I would be passing through some black areas, I explained I very much welcome encounters with all the American people.
Jonny said I needed to understand that society is still very divided in Louisiana, he said black and white people may work together in the day but they live separately at night and won't be found mixing in the little country bars for example.
I told him what Edward had said about being scared to be in a white area after dark.
He said it wasn't necessary to be that worried anymore. Louisiana had certainly been a stronghold for 'The Clan' but now they operated only in great secrecy because the FBI was after them.
They threw their beer cans on the floor and told me to do the same. They come and collect the beer cans regularly to exchange for money. Although I was reluctant to do so, I did believe them, there weren't many old cans there at all. Plus I got the impression they didn't have 2 pennies to rub together.
Jon and Sarah left me at a fried chicken restaurant in Oberlin, Louisiana with a can of beer in my rucksack and plenty to mull over in my mind.
Logging, segregation, The Clan...it didn't sound like my kind of place at all and I still had 30 miles to ride on my first full day in the state.
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