Some Like it Hot
The date was July 6, 2019. Melissa and I had been venturing out farther and farther from home on the bike and enjoying the experience more and more. By this point, we had gotten into a groove of riding together and I was feeling more confident riding 2-up on the Honda VTX 1300. I only mention the make and model of the bike in case there are other bikers reading this. For those who don’t recognize this bike, it’s a stocky bike, with a decent size engine and fairly comfortable. At the time of purchase, it had been the bike of my dreams, well, almost. I actually wanted the Honda VTX 1800, but I found this one and I was hooked. Feeling confident in our experience, we invited our friends Steve and Jolie to come along with us on a Saturday ride. It should be noted that I blame Steve for putting the “motorcycle fever” on me to begin with when he purchased a 2006 Honda VTX 1300 himself.
I asked and Steve quickly agreed. I didn’t know it at the time, but Steve and Jolie are always sitting on GO! So they thought nothing of the ambitious early meetup, and in fact, due to a work thing, they were actually at the meeting place before we got there. We fueled up and hit the road, finding I-55 South from McComb, MS and the fact that I was unaccustomed to riding with others, I was in knots, not knowing if I was going too fast or too slow, and at every stop, I hinted, trying to find out where I stood as the trip leader. Today, after several trips with Steve and Jolie, I know that it doesn’t matter, fast or slow, they just love to be included and are the absolute most laid back easy going couple ever!
We were lucky in that we found ourselves going through Baton Rouge in the coolness of the July morning before traffic got heavy on I-12. We kept a pace of 70 or 75 miles per hour through “Red Stick” and crossed the Mississippi River following I-10 toward the bridge crossing the Atchafalaya Basin.
The Atchafalaya Bridge is 18 miles long and covers one of the most beautiful places on the planet if you ask me, and though I’ve ridden across it many times in a 4 wheeled vehicle, this was my first trip across it on a bike. The difference between a car ride and on a motorcycle they say is that the view from inside the compartment of a car is more like watching TV as opposed to being in the movie, from the point of view of the bike seat. I’m not sure who “they” are, but crossing that bridge, I saw it, smelled it, and “they” were correct. I saw mighty cypress trees, dark murky water, made that way from silt washed in over hundreds of years and thousands of rains. There were boats, birds and dilapidated old fishing camps and I could just imagine how many alligators and water moccasins were out there.
Traffic was still light considering that over 30,000 vehicles cross that bridge every day. We made good time to Lafayette, then on down to New Iberia to our destination, Avery Island, and specifically, the world-renowned Tabasco Factory. The morning was beginning to get warm as we found a nice shady area to park the bikes and I noticed that there were already at least a hundred people visiting that day.
Understand that my point-of-view will be always be based on the ride more than the destination, but as I have said many times, “riding a motorcycle has allowed me to experience many places that I would not have gotten into a car and driven to see.” It’s not that I’m closed-minded about leaving home to go to a park, a museum, or in this case, a hot sauce factory, I enjoy these experiences very much, but I just don’t think about going to these places. We live in a rural area and a pretty good drive is required to visit these places. But on a bike, well, I don’t own one to sit in the driveway to look at. I own a bike to ride and if my rides place me in the vicinity of something interesting, then I’ll make a stop. After doing this for a while, Melissa and I decided that we can do both, so we venture out towards a destination, but enjoy the ride in the process.
Regarding the Tabasco factory, I highly recommend this trip. First of all, the tour is at your own pace which allows you to take as little or as much time as you wish. The McIlhenny family business that has been in existence for over 150 years is an amazing operation. The tour takes you through some of the histories and then the evolution of the production of the famous hot sauce, though the original recipe and basic process remain the same. Tabasco peppers grown in South Louisiana, are ground to a mash, then stored in salt-covered, re-purposed oak whiskey barrels, for a minimum of 3 years, then strained and blended with vinegar and bottled for distribution. This is done to a tune of 700,000 bottles per day. I thought the stored barrels of the mash was the most interesting part of the tour. There, you see rows of barrels of the Tabasco mash. I noticed that to the left, there were rows of barrels covered in spider webs and the stainless steel bands holding the barrels together were tarnished from the weather and sweat from the fermentation process. These barrels had almost reached the end of the three-year aging process. Then to the right, there were barrels, clean and fresh looking with a label dating only a few days prior to our visit. And in between, were rows of barrels dated one and two years prior.
Outside, the “Jungle Gardens” tour is a peaceful trip through the grounds surrounding the factory which includes the diverse wildlife of the wetlands. The centerpiece of the gardens is a shrine, complete with a 900-year-old statue of Buddha that was a gift to founder E. A. McIlhenny by friends from New York in 1936.
On your visit, don’t forget to try the restaurant there which features some very good Cajun fare, and of course, lots of Tabasco Sauce as well as Bloody Marys with, you guessed it, Tabasco Sauce. As many commercial operations go, there is the obligatory gift shop.
As fascinating as the tour was, the road called, so we stopped for one last picture and started back to Mississippi. By now, normal July heat had set in, causing us to shuck some of the layers that we started with early that morning. We navigated our way through Lafayette’s bad streets and congested traffic toward the interstate. It occurred to me that though Steve and I had briefly discussed non-interstate routes for the trip home, we never decided on anything, so I-10 it was. For over 100 miles, we endured the Eastbound traffic, stopping only once, and that was on the upward slope of the Mississippi River Bridge. It is a harrowing feeling there, 175 feet above the Mississippi River, white-knuckling the front brake and the clutch, holding the bike, feeling the heat, smelling the exhaust fumes.
Moving again, the traffic thinned a little and we hauled it across to I-55, and then took the first exit for fuel, water, and a much-needed break. A man at the gas station asked, “Y’all liking this 100-degree weather?”
I will say now as I look back that I’m glad for the experience to have taken that leg of the journey the way we did, but in the future, when possible, I’ll choose the secondary roads, for safety, for scenery, and for occasional shade. I will also say that when interstate travel by motorcycle is required, the stockier, faster and more responsive Harley Davidson Ultra is substantially more comfortable.
At the gas station, Steve suggested that we get off of the interstate at Amite, get a steak, and continue on to Mississippi via La-16 to Franklinton, Louisiana. We stopped in Amite at the Boston Restaurant in self-defense to cool off and though it hadn’t really been that long since our lunch at Avery Island, we ordered and absorbed the coolness of the air conditioner and the warmth of our friendship. The temperatures had cooled some and the last section of our trip was much more comfortable.
We stopped for gas in Tylertown, MS and said our goodbyes, grateful for the day, tired from the ride, but looking forward to the next time. We parted ways on Highway 98 as we turned for home while Steve and Jolie continued to Marion County.