I have a 31 mile loop I do early on weekend mornings that gives me a glimpse of all that the NOLA area has to offer. Make no mistake about it, I hate living here, but in the quiet of an early weekend morning when I have the roads almost to myself, I can appreciate its character.

After about 3 miles of riding through mostly residential areas, I pop up onto the levee path. This morning the fog was thick and patchy.



The path takes me from Old Jefferson to NOLA. There are only about 10 houses outside the levee protection system. Most of them are run down shacks, but this one is really cool. An architect built it and used a lot of materials of historical significance. One day when I was taking a pic of it, the builders wife started talking to me and invited me in to show it to me.




A little further down I come to a place in Audubon park called the Butterfly. The fog had cleared over the path but still clung to the chilly waters of the Big River. On pretty spring afternoons, women from the two nearby universities come here to lay out.



From there I roll around behind the zoo. Sometimes the giraffes are out. I always say "hello giraffes." Dogs, cows and giraffes rate a hello. Past the zoo a multi-use path encircles part of the park. It can make a fascinating study in human stupidity when it's crowded. Although the path is very well marked with one way bicycle symbols marking the bike side, two way pedestrian symbols marking their side and a separation zone, people just don't get it. There can be some very good yoga pants action here. Some that looks like serious hail damage too.




Out onto historic St Charles Avenue past the century old mansions, there is a narrow bike lane that presents some challenges. To stay out of the swing radius of car doors (door zone) sometimes you have to hug the left edge of the lane. While it's never busy when I ride it, some motorists feel a need to buzz pass. I guess they don't get why riders avoid the door zone.





My ride take me down into the CBD, into The Quarter and onto Bourbon Street. During non-Covid times, it can be nasty as hell. It was lightly littered today.




Then I emerge into an impoverished part of the city. If I am running late, sometimes I am treated to the joyous and soulful sound of southern black gospel being sung in this church. I stop to listen when they are singing.




From there I hit the Lafitte Greenway. This is new, and since I knew my stalker Bayou Rover would pop into this thread, I took this pic for him. New Orleans is a very free and diverse, anything goes kind of town. Bayou Rover would fit right in.



Then I pick up a path that parallels Bayou St John. BSJ used to connect the river to Lake Pontchartrain, but it has long been blocked off.



Then I ride along Lake P for several miles before I am back into the residential areas winding my way home. I make it hard for anyone to say "I didn't see him." The constant movement of the high vis socks is very attention getting.



That's it. Back home to cut and edge the lawn.

I like to VISIT Nola.

And Slidell.

Want to make it to the WW2 museum.

I am not a huge museum fan. The WW2 Museum gave me goose bumps and brought tears to my eyes. It is a MUST SEE in NOLA.

Thanks for the trip. I've not been to Nu Awlins in a long while. Had some very good times there.

L.W.

Thanks for the quick tour and the pics, looking forward to seeing more!

Thanks PaulB, I enjoyed the ride.

Too dangerous for me to ride there.

Kinda hard to work on climbing there, eh?

This is a pic of Bourbon Street during the peak of the Covid restrictions.

This is my bike the day I started building it.

No Chalmette? 😁😁😁. And the Versailles Oaks at the De La Ronde plantation?

My two fav places in that area

Cool! Looks like you're making the best out of living there.

Nice bike!

I wouldn't ride a bike over there. The connector roads are a death wish.

I try. The fishing is some of the best on the planet. I need to do more of it.

Was that black man just sitting there throwing his trash down and letting it blow away?

Nice pics. Thanks for sharing. I have heard that the museum is really good. Hope to get there someday.


Jerry

That’s a pretty outfit!

I don't know if he was tossing trash. He was having a great conversation with himself though.

You would not believe how nasty Bourbon Street is on a sweltering hot morning after a night of full-on partying. A toxic sludge of hot beer and hand grenades, mixed with puke and other bodily fluids on 90 degree streets. Then 20X as much litter as is in that pic.

Pretty interesting stuff Paul, thanks for sharing.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

My bud does go pro vids of his bike rides.
Pretty cool.
You should do some of NOLA


Pedal tour of sites or even just your reg blow the crud out loops.

I'll tell you more about the house in the pic. One day the sun was shining directly on it, and the colors really popped. I stopped to snap a pic. As I was doing so a lady was walking down the path. I spoke to her and said the house was my favorite in the city and that it looked fun. She said it was hers and thanked me. She told me her husband designed and built it and asked me if I wanted to see it. Heck yeah. We walk inside and she speaks out to her husband who was sitting on the back porch in his underwear. He got dressed, introduced himself and gave me a tour. There were odd and incongruent architectural features in the house. He pointed them out and told me about them. Stuff from the old Jax brewery, warehouses that Katrina destroyed, treasures the river had deposited in his yard, and on and on. It came together really well and was as cool and happy as it was interesting.

Good deal.
Used to be a time folks could stop and knock and tell current residents they grew up or had fam way back that lived there and theyd be happy to let you in for a tour.

Did it with old fam as a kid.

Some neat places.

Went by my old uncles house last month. Its run down, whole neighborhood.

Sometimes its not good to go back

Long trip. Thanks for sharing.

DF

I am very technologically challenged. I'd like to video a couple loops around the Audubon Park path. Not just for the yoga pants, but for how remarkably unaware and unpredictable the users can be. People, like the girl in the pic, can't comprehend that the lane separation markings mean the same thing they do on roadways. They are "keep off" markings. They are designed to keep flailing arms and handlebars a safe distance apart. Just a baffling array of non-stop stupid.

But more to your point, I really do get a diverse and fascinating sampling of the city on this ride. I pass one building that has some kind of plants growing out of the brick walls. I can't keep a well nurtured house plant alive, and those damn plants grow in bricks.

You’re how old and dress like that?

I lived in PCola for a bit. Had a good friend at Tulane and would go over for the weekend pretty often. NO is an amazing town a weekend at a time but, no way in hell I’d live there. A sweltering morass of people and aerosolized feces.
It’s more than putrid, I just don’t know the word for it.

Cool photos though. Thanks for posting.

Thanks for the pics Paul. I hope you have a "piece" in that rear pack.

This is my vision of Paul riding his bike:

I go to the business district 3-4 times/year and spend a few nights on business. I love getting up early in the morning and running around the quarter and then over into the warehouse district. Everyone is out cleaning the streets, trucks are supplying restaurants, garbage trucks are running. It's a different way to wake up.

All I can say about that is that I'd be glad that happened on a downhill.

It's a completely different city first thing in the morning for sure. Much more my pace.

The first time my wife heard me use the word putrifaction, it was describing what you did. She didn't think it was a real word. It is and it doesn't do the hot rotten toxic stew justice.

There ain't enough $$$$$$ in TEXAS to get me to live in that S hit hole!!

Paul, you're killin me. Waiting on the spring thaw here in western PA. I live in a mixed farming/residential area that is still asleep on most Saturday and Sunday mornings. I have a 25 mile loop on roads with great sight lines and very little traffic. Some mornings I might only see 20 or so vehicles counting both directions throughout the 25 miles. I've never been run off the road and everyone gives me a safe space. The worst thing to ever happen is a dog off leash now and then but have never been attacked.

Oh and for those who poke fun at riding shorts, you see most bicyclists are so well endowed that they need to keep things intact whilst on the little seat.

Used to hit NOLA in the big truck. Like most cities, it fascinated and
disgusted.

One really cool thing, was early morning deliveries.
Park a semi on the curb, and sit there watching the sun come up
and the city wake.

We’ve always enjoyed ourselves when we’ve gone to Louisiana and while New Orleans has a rich history and great food there’s no way I could live in NO. I couldn’t live comfortably in any big city but in New Orleans I’ve never felt so far away from home. Even spending months on end backpacking and riding the rails from one corner of Europe to the other I felt closer to home than I did in New Orleans. 😬

I enjoyed fresh OJ, Coffee and beignets at Cafe du Monde in the mornings but after that I was headed out of the city. We usually stayed in Thibodaux, LA since we were there for our son to attend the Manning Passing Academy. We used Thibodaux as home base for our excursions. We’d stay a night in Biloxi or Pensacola but Thibodaux was a comfortable distance from the city which is what we prefer anyway.

I’ll take a different approach Paul and thank you for the pictures and little bike tour. Stay safe out there.

PS....do you carry when you ride?

NO is about as close as one can get to colonial Africa in the US 😬

Very cool pictures. Coincidentally, I just ordered a Lynskey the other day.

Lynskey bikes are built here in the city I live in. They were Litespeed before selling and waiting 3 years(NCC) and starting Lynskey.

We used to go there some in the early to mid-nineties during March. Seems they had a parade in the Quarter every evening and they were tossing candy and necklaces and condoms off the floats (my oldest who was about 4 at the time loved it). Lotta history and good food. We’d get a bigass frozen daiquiri and just walk around. I remember going to a big open space/park by the zoo and there was a marker there that said they used to have duels out there. Even went to the SHOT Show there. I like it for a few days or so, then I’m ready to bounce.

Very cool. Interesting account of your 31 mile weekend morning loop, and thanks for all the pix to bring it to life. Probably be May before I get my bike out due to this weather phenomenon known as winter. Here on the south side of the great lakes we have this international weather sharing agreement with southern Canada but when spring really does arrive the bike will be ready. Those pictures got me thinking spring, tomorrow's gonna be March, which ain't spring yet around here but it's one month closer.

How did the fish fare through the latest Vortex, Paul?

Bike riders are the vegans of the road.

No problem at all. It stacked them up in deep water and made them easy to catch.

Your area sounds like where my camp is. There are very few autos. Bikes are so common on weekend mornings and riders so friendly that a great harmony exists between cyclists and motorists. Any kind of problem is very rare.

I have 2 Lynskeys and a Litespeed. I visited the Litespeed factory. It was pretty cool. There is another Litespeed on my radar. One to keep at the camp.

Which one did you get? They normally run a 20-30% off sale each spring. I want to build a Lynskey gravel bike or order a Litespeed Gravel bike. I am going to sit back and wait though.

As many have mentioned, NOLA isn't a great place to live, but we don't have to complain about winter. We don't have a boating or a cycling season.

Thanx for wearing a shirt where you can be seen.
On our local twisty/hilly roads the dumba$$ riders wear all black and rid early dark, or late dark and are VERY hard to see.
Yes I ride to, but not as far on smoothies on a MTN bike.

GR300 with a couple upgrades and 20% off. It ended up being one of the least expensive gravel bikes I was looking at.

Thanks for the ride Paul. I got to visit New Orleans in January 2010. My oldest Son did a 5 month externship at the Marriot on Canal St. and I went down to help him move back. He took me around to a bunch of hole in the wall places to eat. The food was fantastic! I'd like to return some day just for the food.

That's the one I want to build. They had some GR300 external cable frames on closeout last year with a higher polish finish and blue graphics I could have grabbed for $1300. I hesitated like a dumbazz. If this is your first Ti bike, I think you are going to love it.

Man, the food really is good. Sometimes I joke that I ride to eat, and it's not far from the truth.

Bytch has me on ignore . Biden votin’ clam

My wife and I went to NOLA on our honeymoon. Great place for stay for a few days. Really enjoyed the plantations, swamp tour, the food, and the WWII museum. From what I can remember, we watched some A’s playoff baseball game at a bar a little off the beaten path. Not sure why I didn’t remember it...

lololol. Gotta have the wings and loaded fries. Club Decatur.

What is a gravel bike? Fat tire?

It's a drop bar road bike with relaxed geometry and wider tires. Pretty good for the area near my camp where miles of gravel forest service roads are connected by stretches of tarmac.

A gravel bike is essentially a road bike with more aggressive tires. The tires are lower pressure, have more sidewall and treads that allow them to go over broken pavement, dirt, gravel, etc.

You'd

be wearing long johns out here

Lets see them Lycra shorts..............

The days when I can’t put in a ten mile loop to work , I really miss it. Amazing how much better it makes you feel the rest of the day.

Down memory lane.
Thanks Paul.

......... That sounds like what I need. I'm not much of a bike expert but my road bike has those skinny high pressure tires and the frame is actually a little big for me. I'd love a road bike with more conventional tires.

Paul how long does ti take you to ride the 31 miles? I used to ride allot and it's amazing just how much more you can see than from a car window. I rode on gravel county roads allot and rode right up on deer all the time.

On this particular ride, I don't make good time. There are a lot of stops and traffic lights. My flat land rolling average with no wind is about 17. When I ride out in CO, I frequently ride up on deer and sometimes come upon elk and moose.

Agreed

I can see that your bill looks like some of my old bar tabs......my wife doesn’t drink either. 😁

Your bride must've been hammered after drinking those 10 gin and tonics.

Well, there's LOTS of money in TX....

I was talking to my wife about places I woudn't want to live. Her thought, with enough money, one could live pretty well just about anywhere...

She may have a point.

Like Paul, I'd not be wanting to be paying New Orleans property taxes, would rather live in Metairie (Jefferson Parish). My daughter and her family live in Old Metarie. And, the little ole ladies there are very particular about Old Metairie, vs. Metairie. BIG difference...
At least in their minds... :

There are some areas that are pretty nice, million dollar homes up and down the streets.

But NO is very area specific, more so than Metairie. You gotta stay in your lane, because lanes can change quickly, as in a block or two. Locals know, touristas beware.

DF

I’m not familiar with New Orleans but why is Bourbon St. so nasty?

Every city in the country has a party corridor but it seems like New Orleans almost takes pride in being a disaster.

When I was there MANY years ago there was legal street drinking, you could buy a beer in a cup on the street right out of the keg and a whole lot of places with live sex shows. Might be a reason lol. I honestly have no idea if it's still like that now though.

That would make sense.

Tons of great food around NO but, most of the food in town and the touristy areas is mediocre to poor. At least in my experience. Talk to some locals and get away from town and the food got exponentially better.

I haven’t visited since Katrina though. I’m sure it’s changed greatly.

That's my take. 90% of the trash is drink containers

Yep.

Stale beer and puke adds to the aroma. But most of what you see are plastic cups and such.

DF

Great news, Paul. Thanks.