Caleb was kind enough to offer me a ride up to Monroe as Dwain and Manel were keen for me to spend another week with them. Whilst Caleb is a good driver, he’s known for his penchant for “loose interpretation” of speed limits. He’s certainly not reckless, but given the speeds involved, he’s not entirely safe either. Well, today was going to be a trip to remember as we were pulled over for speeding. Just a bit. 75mph in 45mph zone is what he was written up for. And let’s just say his “top speed” was a little higher…

I couldn’t be mad at him, obviously, since he was doing me a favour, and he handled himself well with the officer who offered to throw him in jail. I guess he kind of figured that getting caught was something that happened to other people. Really, he knew it was inevitable that it would happen eventually and accepted that it was better sooner than later because it’ll slow him down for a good long while. Although he couldn’t quite help letting all his friends know about the ticket. Hey, I slowed him down at least once, so my conscience is clean!

Anyway, this was certainly not his week. While we had a few good days, watching a bunch of movies at the cinema ($2 matinée tickets rule, although I still maintain their mall cinema is a “glorified TV screen”) and despite the fact he’s slowed down hugely since getting the ticket, he got into a wreck after not breaking early enough and hydroplaning after a bad night of rain. It wasn’t bad and no one was injured, but the front of the car suffered so he couldn’t take me back down to Baton Rouge as intended…resulting in my first ever trip on the Greyhound bus system. They’re really coaches rather than buses, and while Manel’s stern warnings implied that it was only used by the dregs of society, the 6-hour trip was remarkably pleasant although the last leg (I used three different coaches in total) was rather crowded.