The Path Less Travelled

Update:  After "riding" this road on Google Earth, I realized that I might have been overreacting just a bit.  The road itself looks to be in great condition.  There are also several (very) small towns scattered along the way.  I just joined a motorcycle roadside assistance group (free towing) and I can  fill up just outside of Port Arthur.  Really, this road doesn't look that much different than many of the ones I've travelled in Texas.  Guess we'll see

Original Post:
Sometimes you just can’t know the right answer until you fully commit.  Case in point, I really want to take Highway 82 through southern Louisiana

But, from everything I read, this may not be a good idea.  Its about a hundred mile stretch of nothing.  No towns (maybe a couple of gas stations).  All in all a really shitty place to break down or have an accident.  I’m not sure of the road conditions either.  Hell, I’m not even sure if the road is open.

All the data I can find is pretty old.

If I were a Quentin Tarantino vampire movie, I would take place somewhere along this road.

But I really want this route.  It hugs the coast and goes right through the swamp.  Deer and alligators are fairly common…which is really cool.  I just don’t feel good about it.

If I were riding with others, if I were armed (no legal way for me to carry anything in LA), if there was even one freakin’ town between Port Arthur and Abbeville, I would consider it.

I thought about scouting it out when I drive the truck and trailer to Miami but that takes some of the adventure out of the route.

Motorcycle safety instructor to me a couple of years ago: “Sometimes the only way to know where the fucking line is, is to jump across it.”  This was after I almost dropped a bike on wet pavement.

This trip is already risky.  J is worried, my folks are worried, hell I even think my son has some anxiety about it.  Do I really need to push things by taking a route that might be more dangerous?

Probably not.  I created another version of the route that uses I-10.  If nothing else, I could make up some time between Baton Rouge and Abbeville.  I could still grab 90 through Cajun Lousiana. 

I hate the way Robert Frost always scans across the decades to call me a pussy.  Thus, I leave you one of my favorite poems:

The Road Not Taken

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,    
And sorry I could not travel both  
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could   
To where it bent in the undergrowth;              

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,     
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there      
Had worn them really about the same,           

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.      
Oh, I kept the first for another day!       
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,   
I doubted if I should ever come back.           

I shall be telling this with a sigh    
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—   
I took the one less traveled by,   
And that has made all the difference.

--Robert Frost--1920 

I hear you Bobby, but sometimes, the road less traveled will kick your ass.