A Cane View, and Getting Rocks Off

Yesterday afternoon we headed for the casino for a few hours via the back roads. We stayed off of Highway 90, better known as "bloody 90" because of all the accidents.

Cane fields on both sides of the road for as far as you could see were being worked. It's cutting season here and the gin is open for a certain length of time; the cane has to be cut and hauled before it closes for the season and everyone that works in the cane fields are working 7 days a week.

The wagons lumber along hauling cane that is stacked to the lip of the wagon enclosure and as it makes it's wobbly way down the road pulled by a tractor, cane stalks caught by the wind sail through the air and pile up beside the highways. Semi trucks are pulling trailors loaded with it and tractors are lined up beside the rows with an occasional worker beside them who throws up his arm in greeting as we slowly drive these backroads.

Some of the fields have already been cut and burned and others already have the winter crop standing a foot tall. It's a never ending cycle here for the cane farmers and it's the biggest cash crop here in south west Louisiana. Bigger then the oil industry, which I find amazing since this is the hub for the Gulf Coast for oil.

Those wagons I mentioned before? Be very careful should you encounter one on the highway. Each year a fatality is attributed to them so I give them all the room they need to maneuver.

It is now almost 0600 hrs and it's time for me to lace up and mount up.

Reading that last sentence, I might want to expand on that. I'm lacing up my shoes and mounting my bike for my morning laps around the neighborhood.

A little story here. I have a sister living in Ohio barely. I say "Ohio barely" because she lives just across the river from WV and actually does all her shopping in WV along with doctors visits, etc.

She has started a walking program. She lives in the country on 35 acres so she decided to demarcate an area that she would walk and she knows how many laps she must do to get in the miles that are her goal.

To keep track of the laps, she lays 4 rocks on the hood of her car and each time she passes she removes a rock.

In conversation the other night, while she was doing her walk, she said "Well, I guess I'll talk to ya  later. I have to get my rocks off so I can go to bed"......a few seconds later, we got it. Ending our phone conversation on laughter, she finished her walk and got her rocks off and I started my walk rockless.