BENGARLAND!com

January 14, 2007

Riding out of New Orleans was great for the first 15 miles. I stopped at Whole Foods Market to stock up on trail mix, and when I got to the river there was a bike trail on top of the levee. It went all the way out of town and then some. And when it ended, the road that cut north to Hwy 61 also had a bike path.

Unfortunately, after leaving the New Orleans area and riding the highway the route got boring. On the northbound side of the highway lay swamp for miles and miles, and on the southbound side it wasn’t much better. The trip took longer than I had expected and I didn’t arrive to Baton Rouge until 6 pm.

Cristina welcomed me into her home, showed me to my bedroom for the night, and gave me a towel to shower with. I took a nice hot shower that was much-needed since the temperature today was around 80 deg F during most of the day. After I cleaned up, we went to drop off her god son and at dinner at an italian restaurant.

I ordered the largest salad on the menu and couldn’t even finish it no matter how hard I tried. Cristina was nice enough to pick up the bill, too. We went back to her place, met her (very talkative) neighbor, and then I crashed out to get some Zzzzzs.