Day Forty Two: Sprint a Century to New Orleans
Distance: 97 mi.
Song of the Day: Imaad Wasif — Halcyon
6:30AM: Wrench at Lizzie’s iron clad grip on her sleeping bag face cover, I’m antsy to ride but can't manage to budge the bride and therefore can't pack up tent. Fling open tent flap instead; step out to dewy campground lawns, early riser dog walkers soon begin to stroll the dachshunds and terriers I’m indebted to for lunging at raccoons edging closer to our tent the night before. I pack as much as I can, lay out a few breakfast bars and hedonistically take another shower. Lizzie will get the hard wakeup soon if there’s to be a crying chance of hitting New Orleans tonight.
Lizzie rises and despite her grog packing is now a synchronic breezy chore for the two ofus. We leave the grounds before there are attendants in sight and cycle down misty roads over a wooden bridge as a single gator bobs alone in the canal’s dark soupy midstream.
8:30AM: Chop thru a windy approach to Ocean Spring’s magnificent Bridge, pours us onto the gulf near casinos and unexpectedly dense traffic. Cut into highway 90, a thin four-laner through the gulf coast, it’s a legal bike route but motorists are pissed. “EVER HEARD OF A SIDEWALK,” and more many guff vulgarities are shouted at us.
Ten miles in we dodge inland into a Smoothie King at a local town — who doesn’t love an 1,600 calorie breakfast? — order The Hulk this time:
9:30AM: Blow through our allotted 20 minute break and spend more like 40; Lizzie asks for coffee but I tell her No, there’s not time. Buy some energy chews with caffeine, chew them and stretch the gams. We’re not keen to be honked at and flipped off by Route 90 hooligans just yet, so we try some back routes; progress decently on a slender road near beach town railroad tracks, but surprisingly trafficked and require many detours and crossings of the tracks to follow.
11AM: Move from Long Beach into Pass Christian already starting to flag as intermittent winds nag at us; we pass a strapping elderly biker carbon-clad on a mid-week joy ride. He swings around and copilots us to the bridge crossing Bay St Louis, offers tips on the bridges and describing his ‘sagged’ tour across the country in the 1990's.
Kyle: “Tell me about the best meal you had on your cross country trip.”
Man: “I can’t remember the best. But I’ll tell you about the worst!”
He parts ways with a vaguely racist warning about the “horrible people” in New Orleans. Shrug and keep riding.
2:30PM: After a hard push to the 50 mile mark we slump into a gas station in 97 degree heat, quickly realize our preplanned cajun lunch destination in Slidell would tack an additional 10 miles onto the route, unacceptable. Route 90 it shall be for the remaining 47 miles to New Orleans, disregarding local advice about the cramped bridges awaiting us.
Tired and cramped, we bicker over trivial details of our fuel up: why was the titanium spoon packed incorrectly, how would the remaining water be divided, who had cash on hand and Do we need another expensive gatorade. We eventually settle on chocolate milk, a ham sandwich, two $0.50 packs of salty n’ sweet trail mix, 1.2 bananas (mine lobbed off after a bite and rolled irretrievably into the mud.) The food and drink cool our bickering and we resume with clearer heads.
Louisiana border is upon us unexpectedly, the St Tammany ‘parish’ harkens back to its heritage from the famous purchase of Orleans Territory in 1804. The properties lining the bayou resemble stilted sovereign nations, each sporting a private pier with smattering of boats and jetskis, massive wooden houses with storm-guard metal windows, power generators, even a lift to pull up heavy equipment or supplies. Still looks laughable as the tremendous bayou bellows behind the houses: “YOU’RE IN MY HANDS!”
Twenty five miles out from New Orleans, as everything melts between the hot sun and hot asphalt, I see the vermilion-red break lights of a black SUV swerve to the shoulder five hundred feet ahead of me; odd, it takes off again. Approach with squinting eyes what appears to be nuclear roadkill — A-HA! — two glistening Lemon Lime gatorades have been tossed to sweat icily on the oozing asphalt. I sip one, the orange plastic top still dangling on its side as I cool off and hail Lizzie wearing an oversized grin. Drink them immediately then hoof another ten miles over the monstrous bridge approaching New Orleans.
5:30PM: City limits deliver intense traffic riding but a view into another world, as we spin past Buddhist shrines and Vietnamese shipyards, finally into borderline slum towns, nothing hostile to our New Yorker eyes. (drivers are a little aggressive but everyone seems friendly enough.) Thirty minutes later we’re exiting 90 into the heart of the city, the shelter from plush Live Oak trees rejuvenates, Spanish moss swaying in a soft breeze. After a few two-mile bike lane stretches with occasional red light we’re suddenly approaching the Garden District, and suddenly chatting with Oliver on Kerlerec Street, just above the place Avrohom and Shelley are renting.
100 miles done. The party starts immediately. Come on, what were you expecting to happen once we reached New Orleans?!
