the image below shows what our group looked like as we prepared to push off from New Orleans.
You may notice a motorcycle in the image. That bike was not part of our group. It just happened to be parked right there in the lot. We got out right at 8 AM, and fortunately a local biker provided us with a friendly route out of the city. Some trails, some roads, but lightly travelled for the most part. Here is something we hate to see when out biking:
In this case we had advance knowledge, again because of the local biker connection. There is about a 20 mile stretch of US 90 that has been closed to traffic for years. There are 4 or 5 bridges that need to be rebuilt, but they don’t have the money to do it. The problem is heavy truck traffic. Bicycles are allowed, but there are huge concrete barriers to prevent motor vehicles. Once you lift your bike around the barrier there is 20 miles of paved surface with no other traffic. The down side is that the pavement isn’t maintained, so it can be quite uneven.
This definitely is hurricane country. Hundreds of houses are built high off the ground like this:
It is also pretty clear that some of the hurricanes in the past 20 years wiped out everything that had been standing because all of these houses are really quite new.
This is named the Gulf Coast tour, and I expect to see a lot of the Gulf of Mexico in the next few weeks, but it took us 60 miles of riding today before I could get this picture:
Most of the day was spent pedaling through swamp and forest. Not very scenic, but sometimes that has to be done to get where you’re going.
Overall a pretty good day. Temperatures in the high 70’s - low 80’s. The wind kept it from feeling too hot, but if I had my choice, I’d rather sweat than fight the wind all day.