Bridges, Bayous, Crawfish or…(The good, the bad and the ugly)

Day 19. 4/24/22. 74mi. AIS7:43. 560 elev. 9.6mph

New Orleans, LA to Long Beach, MS

My day started horribly wrong. In the wee hours of the morning, I woke up with the feeling I was going to throw up! Yep, in fact, I got to the bathroom and after a minute or so, I was violently ill!! Several times during the night this happened. I was cleaned out. It was awful. I had 3 drinks in 4 hrs and nothing out of my ordinary..2 beers and a G&T. But our dinner I had liked so much was really rich and the combination did not serve me well. Needless to say at 5:30am I was not a bundle of morning energy. We had a really long day ahead of us and I was going to have to “suck it up”. So we got our bikes loaded and head out the door of the hotel. I get hit by the warm, humid air and the smell of the city and it immediately makes me gag…. what’s a girl to do? I hurled into the potted plants (3 different ones). Mind you, my body was empty so there wasn’t much coming up…just gagging. Oh lord…how was I going to ride 74 miles today? Off we go through last night’s party streets. Crews were already cleaning up for one more day. The air felt good to me. Stopped at Starbucks for coffee and breakfast…but not this girl. Nothing going into me yet except sips of water.

Our first obstacle was a 1 mile long bridge we had been warned about. No shoulder and 2 lanes going our way. Fortunately for us it was 8:20am on a Sunday. We took control of our lane and easily made it over. We crossed several bridges today, most of them were fairly short connecting little barrier islands in the Mississippi Sound. We crossed into Mississippi at Pearlington.

We stopped at a roadside bar in Pearlington just after we crossed a bridge. Turtle Landing Bar and Grill was having a Sunday afternoon Crawfish Boil. For $5 you got a big platter of crawfish with a piece of corn and a potato. Up to this point I started to eat a little food. All things bland…apple, fig newton, banana, cantaloupe slice, Curt’s nausea pill, then come the crawfish! It was locals, a biker group, and us! Can I mention that there’s a lot of smokers in the south and especially at this place! I had to ask the lady scooping crawfish for a demonstration on how to eat them. She gave us the introduction and we were good to go. They were delicious…you can’t eat too fast…and very juicy (messy). My stomach tolerated just fine.

We still had 30 miles to go but I wasn’t moving very fast today. I would ride about 5 miles and break. Jim hung with me at my slow pace. I didn’t stop long but it was a slog…all.day.long. It took forever to get to Long Beach. Once we got to the beach side we had bike paths or took side streets off Hwy 90 and that was pleasant. All the houses on stilts. Nice communities in Mississippi.

Well I made it! It was close to 6pm. Wiped out and exhausted. It was a test of my determination. I really did want to quit but not having that choice I had to literally gut it out. Thanks to the kindness of Curt and Jim I made it. I wasn’t the best of company but I wasn’t totally unpleasant either. We hit the hotel and I was horizontal for about 12 hrs. So good…finally

The shoulder off Hwy 90 was much improved over Louisiana and suddenly the barrow pits were clean! We didn’t have a favorable impression of Louisiana, roads and trash, very narrow bridges. So far Mississippi is a big step up! Much need rest day Monday. Hallelujah