Crawfish Caper, Day 2

Transitions and Mud Bugs
Friday, May 07, 2010
Copyright(c) 2010, Jim Beachy


No alarm clock is set for this morning. It’s just 260 miles to Vicksburg, about a four-hour ride, so I plan to sleep in. That plan fails when I wake up at 6:30 local time because I suppose my body clock thinks it’s already 7:30 and refuses to let me go back to sleep. I putter around and finally roll out at about 9:00 AM, another beautiful southern spring day in my windscreen.

Yesterday I listened to music almost the whole day, interspersed with the big-truck CB chatter. I don’t usually talk a lot on CB when riding alone but occasionally a trucker will strike up a conversation that lasts for many miles. This drives Kitty crazy: When playing music, the incoming CB transmission will mute the music passage, and then the music resumes as soon as the CB reception is over. Then when I respond, the same thing happens, and sometimes Kitty can’t tell if I’m talking to her or talking on CB. So her headset is filled with a confusing barrage of music, incoming CB transmissions, and my outgoing CB transmissions. I’ve learned not to mix music and CB when riding two-up! But Solo Guy has none of these constraints, and yesterday I happily listened all day to music and CB chatter.

But this morning, for no particular reason, I just want silence, so I turn off the CB and the radio and listen to the wind whispering around my big Tulsa windshield and my aerodynamic Shoei helmet. The morning is suffused by a pleasant, heavy, sweet smell that seems to emanate from a white-flowered shrub that grows along the Interstate banks. This pleasant aroma accompanies me all the way to Vicksburg while the medial strip and roadsides are sometimes covered in carpets of purple or white flowers.

I reflect on the crawfish feast planned for tonight. The last time I had crawfish I ordered them very hot then got back to the hotel and realized I had to remove my contacts. After repeated hand washings I finally dared to touch my eye and it was instant fire, unrelenting, that lasted about three minutes before subsiding. I then had to repeat this for the other eye! I wonder how that will work this evening. I always pack my eyeglasses but it’s very hard to get them on under the helmet, so I virtually always wear contacts while riding.

And thinking of crawfish reminds me that they are often called “mud bugs” in the South, and this in turn reminds me of one of our two-up motorcycle trips, coming home from the Alamo Run in San Antonio, where we explored the southern coast and bayous of Louisiana. We took a little bayou cruise with Cajun Man, whose real name is Ron Guidry, having retired from a career in Special Ops Armed Forces and the Louisiana State Highway Patrol. He gave us a tape and a CD of his music, and it has had a lasting impact on my understanding of the Cajun culture. His songs speak of trapping muskrats, paddling a pirogue on the bayou late at night, eating jambalaya and crawfish pie, working hard and playing hard, and methods of hunting rabbits that are, as he explains, “illegal in all parts of the world with the exception of extreme southern Louisiana, where, if you are hungry, anything is legal.” One of his captivating songs describes a plain down-home restaurant where all they have on the menu is “crawfish – crawdads – mud bugs and other things.” He describes high-class people wearing suits and diamond rings sitting in this joint eating “crawfish – crawdads – mud bugs and other things.” I wonder how Toney’s, tonight’s restaurant, might compare to this dive!

Solo Guy has no preconceived notion of whether his world should be silent or raucous. Both work at different times. So I break my cone of wind-whispered silence and cycle twice through the rough-cut Cajun music of Cajun Man. In a strange way I now feel more prepared to eat crawfish tonight. I doubt that Vicksburg is much like extreme southern Louisiana in many regards but I hope the mud bugs are the same!In the 261 miles to the hotel in Vicksburg, I make one 7-minute fuel stop and average 70.4 miles per hour according to the GPS. I arrive at about 1:00 PM and see several Gold Wings in the parking lot. I presume most of the group is out for a ride somewhere.

I’m greeted by my old friend Rick “Skippy” Melling, and suddenly Solo Guy is in an awkward state of transition. Solo Guy practices few social graces and actually needs even fewer, and suddenly I’m struggling to switch environments and become Normal Guy, who actually talks and listens to people! Soon enough dozens of Gold Wings show up from their day trip and I’m talking to friends, some of whom I haven’t seen in years, and meeting new people as well. Gordo and Gibby and Roger and Marlene and Woodie and Gloria and Charlie and Bobbye and many others – it’s good to see all of them again. Almost everyone asks about Kitty, and in a text message exchange she mentions that maybe next year we can do a longer ride and she could come too.


Of course someone quickly points out that it was Gordo who sucked the diesel fuel out of my Gold Wing’s tank on that hillside a mile out of Leakey, Texas. Yes, I will forever be known as Diesel Boi to this crowd after that misadventure! And in my garage, on my Wall of Shame, I still have the gas can they made me ignominiously carry home with me from Texas!All the bikes and one car, maybe 40 or more, form up at 6:00 PM for the short ride to Toney’s Restaurant. It’s not a dive – the dining room looks nice. But the back room, where we are taken, now this is a no-frills crawfish-eating place! They do have a menu but most of us opt for all-you-can-eat mud bugs. The loud crowd numbers, to my count, about 55 people. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten crawfish and I find I’ve lost the knack.

Gordo shows me how to twist the tail away from the body, and then lacerate the back end of the tail with a thumbnail to easily extract the meat. “So you can do more than suck diesel fuel out of a tank!” I tell him.

“I’ll have to update my resume when I get home.”

I eat four heaping plates plus one non-heaping plate of these steaming succulent mud bugs, and then I’m done. I can eat no more. Wow, I wish we had these things in Virginia! I decide it is worth riding a thousand miles to eat them!

Back at the hotel, everyone chats and mingles in the parking lot. Roger Riley distributes necklaces with little crawfish attached. My transition to Normal Guy seems to have gone well. It’s good to see my old friends, some of whom have shared thousands of miles of riding with me.

I haven’t removed my contact lenses, so when I get to my room I carefully wash my hands several times and try to clean under the fingernails to remove all traces of the cooking spices. When I remove the lenses, there’s only a minor burning for a second. I must be getting better at this!Tomorrow there’s a planned ride activity, from which I will peel off sometime, or maybe wait until we arrive back at the hotel, and slide on over Gulfport to spend a bit of time with our son and family, who now live there. Being within 200 miles of Gulfport, I just can’t let the opportunity pass.

They tell me the ride leaves at 9:00 AM sharp, although nobody seems to know where we’re going. That pretty much works for me. I plan to be ready.