Day 37 - Opelousas, LA to St Francisville, LA

67.5 miles today
1,979.8 total trip miles
12.6 mph average
1,082’ climbing
FF - 6
MP - my sister Mary & her family.  Mary & I didn’t really spend much time together as kids since she was younger by 5 years.  As an adult she is very decisive & somewhat hard to convince she’s wrong about anything.  We get along great even though I am the same.  She now enjoys her accounting business, helping mom with a variety of things & most of all her children & grandchildren.

Today had an interesting start.  The tour has a chef that travels with us across the country & most days she provides us with breakfast & dinner.  Lunch we buy for ourselves on the road somewhere.  An exception to the rule is that usually when we are staying in a hotel we have the hotel breakfast.  Last night we stayed in a hotel that doesn’t provide breakfast, but somehow the message didn’t get to the chef.  So at 7 AM there was no breakfast.  Bubba is creative & today his solution was to have everyone go to a nearby Waffle House & he paid for everyone.  Some riders were worried it would take too long so they just got on the road & bought something when they could find it.  The Waffle House had little warning, but they kept their night time staff in & I had a full breakfast & was still on the road before 8 AM.  Part of the concern for some folks was because the weather forecast said heavy rain storms after noon, but I’m happy to report that I didn’t get wet at all.

My knee was even better than yesterday, but I’m not at full strength yet.  I really slept well last night after the 90 mile day & I had little doubt I could do 67.5 miles today.  The roads were in better condition, there still weren’t many hills & I had a good ride.  It was a little more effort than normal because I have to be aware of the knee, but without that issue my fatigue would have been negligible.  Tomorrow we have a day off & I’m hoping that will help my recovery even more.

We had an interesting ride through some swamp land on a private road that used to be the main highway through the swamp.  Didn’t see any alligators, but we were in the right neighborhood.

We also reached a true milestone - we crossed the Mississippi River.  Somehow I’ve always thought of that river being in the middle of the country, but we have about 2,000 miles done & “only” 1,000 miles to go.

You can see a couple of our riders climbing the bridge & the minivan with the bike on top is our mechanic.  Some days he is busy all day helping with flat tires, bike adjustments & other repairs, but lately he just drives from one SAG stop to another waiting for something to break.

Here is my Cruzbike at the top of the bridge over the mighty Mississippi.

Since I started with a food theme for this post, I will end with another food related item.  Our chef never repeats a meal in the 52 day ride & she works hard to include cuisine from the area where we are.  Tonight at dinner there were about 6 different types of sausage available including deer, rabbit, shrimp, chicken, pork, beef & alligator. See WDYLT for my review.

WDYLT - ILT alligator sausage is really quite good. (Yes, it tastes like chicken)