TRAVEL

Letting the good times roll at Louisiana's Cycle Zydeco

By Pam LeBlanc
Austin American-Statesman (TNS)

Imagine a bike ride where speed doesn't matter and every pedal stroke carries you closer to another helping of Louisiana music, food or drink.

A bike sits parked outside Fred’s Lounge in Mamou, La., during the Cycle Zydeco bike tour April 27. The words behind it (which translate: “Let the good times roll”) capture the spirit of the tour.

I lived that dream at Cycle Zydeco, a 200-mile rolling Cajun culture festival. Po'boys, étouffée and jambalaya fueled four days of bicycling, punctuated by the sounds of rubboards, fiddles and accordions.

This was no endurance event to be feared. Mileage hovered between 40 and 65 absolutely flat miles per day, and no one hurried as we spun past crawfish ponds and cow pastures in the heart of Cajun Country.

"The priorities are dancing, eating and drinking, and (the participants) just happen to ride a bike," says Scott Schilling, 43, president of Transportation Recreation Alternatives in Louisiana, which took over the event, now in its 14th year, in 2012.

“The priorities are dancing, eating and drinking, and (the participants) just happen to ride a bike,” an organizer said.

This year's ride drew 316 party-loving cyclists, mostly in their 50s and 60s, many from the Midwest; organizers hope to grow it to 1,000. About half camped along the way; the rest booked hotels and used a shuttle service provided by ride organizers to get to the start each morning.

Here's how my experience went down.

Wednesday: "Into Cajun Country"

My friend Gretchen Sanders and I pass a dead alligator on the highway during the seven-hour drive from Austin, Texas, to Lafayette, La., where we unload our bicycles and queue up for pit-roasted pork at a kick-off party. As we pig out, Grammy-winning zydeco musician Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band fill Blackham Coliseum with the steamy sounds of Louisiana music.

A zydeco band plays at Fred, a little bar famous for music.

"It's our music, the music I grew up on," says Todd Ortego, a 56-year-old disc jockey at radio station KBON in nearby Eunice who has come to watch the fun.

As Chubby belts out a rendition of "Who Stole the Hot Sauce?" Ortego explains a little about the Cajun, zydeco and swamp pop sounds we'll hear this week. Sometimes, it's still sung in French. Usually, it features the whirling sounds of fiddles and accordions, and often, you can hear traces of Irish jigs, rhythm and blues and even rock 'n' roll in it.

As the show winds down, some folks roll out sleeping bags inside the coliseum, and others pop tents outside. We've seen the forecast, though, and it calls for plenty of rain, so we head to a nearby hotel.

Thursday: "Hey, Tom Sawyer, want to boil some crawfish?"

Distance: 38 miles

Chubby's here bright and early, this time astride a shiny red beach cruiser. A police escort fires up its sirens, the musician climbs astride his bike and the whole parade rolls away with a cheer at 9 a.m.

In less than an hour, we reach our first stop, Parish Brewing Co., where cyclists sample a little beer and I stuff a few Zydeco Bars, a Louisiana-made energy bar with an accordion on the wrapper, into my pocket.

We ride another hour or so, then pull off at Belle Ecorce Farms, where someone uncorks bottle after bottle of white wine and we dip crackers into crocks of goat cheese. That's when Gretch lets out a squeal. She has found a days-old dairy goat with tiny rosebud ears, and I swear it smiles and bleats as we cradle it in our arms.

A few more miles, and we roll into St. Martinville, the heart of French Louisiana. There, we feast on crawfish étouffée, listen to more music and rest in the shade of Evangeline Oak, the subject of a romantic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Then it's back on our bikes. We roll past an old sugar refinery, then into Breaux Bridge, the self-proclaimed Crawfish Capital of the World. Cyclists are putting up tents and making their way to the shower truck, but Gretch and I are distracted by Mark Thibodeaux, 54, and Greg Latiolais, 66, of B&L Boiled Crawfish, who are preparing to cook up 300 pounds of crawfish for the group.

We're innocent bystanders until suddenly we're enlisted to help. Soon, we're slitting open sacks of crawfish and pouring them into boiling water, dumping in jars of okra and stirring the vat with giant paddles.

We wrap up the night with a visit to Pont Breaux's, formerly known as Mulate's, a famous Cajun restaurant where we meet a busload of tourists all the way from France and nibble hush puppies and grilled shrimp while couples swirl around the wooden dance floor.

Friday: "Swamp thing"

Distance: 42 miles

We head out on our bikes by 8:30 a.m. Soon, we're streaking toward the Atchafalaya Basin, America's largest wetland. Our agenda calls for a swamp tour, and we're hoping to see some alligators.

At McGee's Landing, we pedal up the levee and join the crowd of cyclists piling onto boats for a 30-minute tour. The million-acre swamp looks like it's filled with tea. We see lots of cypress trees and draping Spanish moss as we putter through the mist, and the guide spews Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes nearly nonstop, but not a single gator shows its head.

Back at the landing, we sample beignets, pass on the Bloody Marys and hop back on our bikes. We whiz past a Piggly Wiggly and a bunch more crawfish ponds, and pull into Bayou Teche Brewery, where we take teeny tiny samples of passion fruit-infused wheat beer. Delicious.

Down the road in Arnaudville, where 40% of the population speaks French and an étouffée festival takes place every May, we park our bikes in front of the Little Big Cup cafe. We eat gumbo on the back porch as rain pounds like bullets on the metal roof. When the rain eases we strike out again, heading for the small town of Sunset, the newly declared Rubboard Capital of the World. There, I'm mesmerized by the accordion played by one of the members of the Back O' Town Playboys.

The skies darken again, and it starts spitting as we ride over a highway overpass and merge onto a frontage road. We're soaked by the time we arrive in Opelousas, Zydeco Capital of the World and birthplace of Clifton Chenier. The town's Yambilee Building, where the defunct Yam Festival once took place, will serve as our headquarters for the night.

Saturday: "Hot Damn, we made it to Fred's"

Distance: 50 miles

An hour in, we stop at T-Boy's Slaughter House, where we sample boudin and cracklings and watch T-Boy himself whip up some sausage.

We don't dally, because we're on our way to Fred's Lounge in Mamou, which is only open from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. Saturdays. A couple hundred bicycles are parked outside the unassuming little bar when we arrive. We swing open the door and are immediately hit with a sort of liquid Louisiana — it's hot and dark, and people are swilling drinks, most notably little bottles of a cinnamon-flavored Schnapps called Hot Damn. And the music — some guy is bending over an accordion, squeezing it to within an inch of its life.

When we finally break back out into the sunshine, our ears are still ringing. Across the street, we sit down with bowls of homemade jambalaya served up by the Mamou Athletic Booster Club.

It's 13 more miles to Eunice, home to the Cajun Music Hall of Fame. Along the way, we pass an array of road kill — nutria and armadillos, snakes, turtles and frogs. Per Cycle Zydeco tradition, many of the carcasses are adorned with Mardi Gras beads tossed there by passing bikers.

In Eunice, we clean up and grab platefuls of chicken and sausage sauce piquant and sweet potatoes before heading to the Liberty Theater. Zydeco legend D.L. Menard, who wrote the widely covered zydeco hit "The Back Door," is celebrating his 83rd birthday tonight, and he's the featured guest on the "Rendez-vous de Cajuns" radio show that's being broadcast. The Cajun French accents are so thick, it's hard to understand everything that's said, but the music draws couples young and old to the floor in front of the stage.

When the show ends, we're still humming, so we move down to Ruby's, where we practically wear the soles off our shoes spinning around the dance floor.

Sunday: Rain or Boudin?

Distance: 0 miles

It's pouring when we wake up. A few hardy souls hop on their bikes, but we're worried about slick streets and the forecast, which shows a 90% to 100% chance of rain, so instead, we pile onto a shuttle bus headed back to our truck in Lafayette.

When we get back to Lafayette, we get in our car and take a much speedier ride to Scott, to catch the Boudin Festival, where we'd originally planned to ride. As it turns out, the rain isn't so bad, and we feel a little sad that we didn't pedal this last leg of our journey.

We take a few hours to salute the local sausage, traditionally made here with a mixture of pork and rice. There's more music, too, of course. Horace Trahan and the Ossun Express are pounding away on the stage when the power blows, so they do what they have to do — they hop off the stage and into the crowd, where they play, enthusiastically and fantastically unamplified.

It's a rousing finale to our leg-powered, two-wheel trip through Cajun Country. And we're already plotting a way to do it again.

If you go

■ The 2016 edition of Cycle Zydeco will take place from March 30-April 3. Registration, when it opens, will cost about $440 and include most meals, camping, shuttles and SAG (support and gear) support. Hotels are optional. For more information, go to cyclezydeco.com.