(January 2nd)
Day 8 - DeRidder LA to Kountze TX

Sunken Treasure!

 

Charles Ashley: Deep Sea Diver and Bon Vivant

 

 

Remember how yesterday I regretted not taking up that friendly offer to have breakfast with the family from St. Joseph's? And how I then regretted not saying "Yes! To Life" as I'd agreed with myself a long time ago to do each time?

Turns out the universe was deeply interested in giving me a do-over on that cowardly decision.

I departed DeRidder this morning around 7:30 or so knowing I had at least 4 or 5 hours of rain-riding ahead of me. And, though it wasn't raining at the exact moment I left, I was no more that 200 yards out of town when the rain started. But, no big deal as I was prepared (I'd already donned my rain outfit for the day) AND it was a relatively warm day (mid '60s or so). So...I just kept on pedaling. Until...

Roughly 6 miles out of town, a beat up old Dodge pickup passes me going very slowly and pulls off to the side of the road well ahead of me. As I ride closer, I can see he rolls down his window. As I pull even with the driver, he asks me if I'm OK and do I need a ride? Hoping not to offend him I politely say I'm good and that I'm prepared for this kind of weather. But I thank him for the offer and prepare to go back to pedaling.

But then he says that was too bad because he didn't get the chance to meet new people and get to know them very often and he really was just looking for company on the road for a bit.And now you are thinking what I, immediately, began thinking: "This is a second chance! You messed it up yesterday by saying 'no,' so today you can't POSSIBLY be so stupid as to make the exact same mistake two days in a row!"

And yet, I almost was that stupid. Why you ask? Because there was one "rule of my trip" that I'd held inviolate from the time I started planning until that very moment. And it was the one rule I'd started with that I hadn't broken within the first week. I'd broken the "You will camp every night" rule on Day 1. I'd broken the "You'll cook your own dinners on your backpacking stove every night" rule...also on Day 1. I'd broken the "Stick to your pre-planned schedule at all costs" rule on Day 4. But there was one rule...one rule to rule them all and in the darkness bind them...which remained un-violated. Pristine. And THAT rule was simply this: Though Shalt Ride Your Bike EVERY SINGLE MILE to San Diego.

I mean, what is the point of going on a Bike Tour if you AREN'T RIDING YOUR BIKE!? So, suffice to say that if I hadn't had my experience yesterday outside St. Joseph's, I would have not have said "yes" to Mr. Charles Ashley this morning. Because if I hadn't had yesterday's realization that Bike Touring is about people far more than it is about riding, schedules, plans, etc., I'd have never met Charles.

And boy am I glad I agreed to load my rig into the back of Charles' pickup truck! It turns out that Charles...in his late 70s...has traveled all over the world as one of the few freelance deepsea divers in this country. A raconteur of rare ability, Charles not only entertained me with harrowing tales of near-death diving accidents, boats salvaged that no one else thought were salvageable and the not-so-veiled tensions between divers and barge captains he told me about the one thing that never floats too far from any true deepsea diver's heart:

Sunken Treasure!

Not a Spanish Galleon. Or a Pirate Ship. No...Charles' tale was all about Nazi's, Jews fleeing the Third Reich early in WWII, remote areas of Central American jungle, crashed planes and gold bullion. Lots and lots of gold bullion.

I sat in the Silsbee, TX McDonald's with Charles hanging on every word of his tale. Turns out that a few people know "kind of/sort of" where the plane crashed into a remote jungle river while carrying a cargo bay full of gold bullion and other treasure, but that he's one of the few left alive. He'd have recovered it himself long ago, but the particular facts concerning the incredibly swift current of the river make it impossible to recover without having a few hundred thousand dollars to get hold of the right equipment. Like a magnetometer to pinpoint the exact location of bullion to start with.

So if anyone reading this has a few hundred grand they'd care to invest in a wild treasure hunt that could net them many millions of dollars in return...I know a guy :)

Epilogue: I'm sure it is no coincidence that the Audiobook I listened to on Day 1 and Day 2 of my journey was called "Pirate Hunters" and was about two deepsea divers who partnered together to find one of the most famous pirate ship wrecks to ever be found in the Caribbean. Or that in April I got SCUBA certified so that when Charles started talking about decompression, or dive tables or many of the other dive terms he peppered his tales with, I had some background to make sense of it all. Isn't it amazing how all these little threads in one's life come together down the road when you least expect it?