Day 0 -- meets, greets and test rides

i actually arrived in new orleans yesterday.  wanted to spend the day relaxing and getting one last good meal under my belt before the ride started.  walked through town and headed into the french quarter for dinner at a local hang called sylvain, on chartres.  great pulled pork, collards and grits.  washed it down with a local beer from bayou teche.  as the sun was setting, i headed over to cafe du monde for beignets and cafe au lait to go.  i took both and made my way to the river walk, both to catch the last glimpses of sunlight and to gaze upon the river that would be our companion for the next three weeks.  very tranquil.  i came back by way of the hustle and bustle of bourbon street.  i thought about catching some jazz, but it was a mash up of bad covers of the doobie brothers and other old 70's and 80's hits that don't show up on my itunes playlist, so i passed.

jackson brewery just across the tracks for the riverwalk

this morning, i took a walk through the north side of the french quarter as i headed out for an early breakfast.  what a change for ten hours earlier.  no beer, beads, bare naked ladies or bouncers on bourbon.  what the overnight rains didn't wash away, the hoses from the shopkeepers finished off the job of removing the detritus and remnants of last night's revelries.

the air was cool in the more residential part of the vieux carre and a light breeze cut through the humidity that would only intensify as the day wore on.  the fresh smell of the flowers in the hanging baskets and window boxes was in stark contrast to the fragrances of the night before. i made my way over to jackson square for breakfast at stanley, another local joint that is actually even better for lunch.  but, for this morning, cajun eggs benedict would do fine.

jackson square in the bright morning sun

after breakfast, i took another walk over to the river.  came upon this replica of a classic mississippi river boat.

a much more leisurely way to travel along the mississippi

finally got to the airport hilton, our hq for this trip, around noontime.  checking-in for a long-distance ride is mostly about making sure your bike actually makes it to the hotel.  my story was the same as most of the other riders.  ups or fedex said the bike got there, but no one at the hotel could find it.  it was not only the same angst-ridden story for many of the riders in our group today, but also the same story for many of the aids rides we went on over the years.  no one can find the bikes, yet they always seemed to show up.  well, almost.  today, one of the riders discovered that his bike truly wasn't there.  fedex is promising it'll get here tomorrow.  so he'll miss the first of our group photos some 10 miles up river tomorrow morning.  but we've come up with a better story than him simply not having his bike with him.  instead, since he told us he couldn't be in the picture, we decided he's actually in a witness protection program, can't have pictures taken of him for fear of retribution from nefarious souls, and that the missing bike is merely a ruse.  

day zero is filled with both orientation lectures and meetings with your bike mechanic.  reassembling the bike so it fits the way you had it before you disassembled and shipped it  to new orleans is crucial if you're going to be comfortable all the way through 1700+ miles.  andy, a former ad exec from st. louis who chucked it all for a better life (and climate) in tuscan, arizona, is our trusty wrench for this trip.  and he did a great job getting my bike just the way i wanted it.  after andy's handiwork, i took it out for a test spin up along the bike path on the levee, heading back towards new orleans.  the shot below doesn't do justice to the height above the river.

each day's ride will begin with an early group breakfast around 6 or 6:30 am.  the day may include stops for sightseeing, but will end by 6:00 in the evening.  each afternoon before dinner, there'll be time for us to clean down our bikes, meet with mechanics to make any needed adjustments and have a ride wrap to both go over anything that happened on the road that day as well as to hear about tomorrow's route, including alerts on road hazards, dangerous intersections and the ever-present reminder to hydrate.  

heading south on the mississippi river levee

so who's actually riding in this group?  18 riders, all male and four support staff (two male, two female).  we'll pick up a couple of additional riders in both memphis and st. louis.  this is one of the of smallest groups that abb (america by bike) has had on this route.  and the transcon routes average over 50 people!

i'm not the youngest and i'm certainly not the oldest.  turns out, most of the guys on this ride are retirees which, when you think about it, makes total sense.  who else can just take off this many days?  there are two of us from the northeast (the other guy's from massachusetts).  some from the midwest, while most are from either colorado or washington state.

and, it also turns out that only two of us, me and retired american airlines pilot from the dallas area, are first-timers.  the rest of the group have either ridden this route before or have ridden other 'america by bike' tours.  i'd say close to a dozen of them had ridden one of the various transcon routes.  furthermore, they've done it together many times in the past and keep coming back, mostly as groups.  they all refer to this as their addiction.  one group calls themselves 'the fossils.'  they used to call themselves 'the fast fossils' but age has modulated their bravado.  some have taken their camaraderie overseas.  a group of these guys rode a 900-mile loop through much of europe.

while most of these guys are doing this just for fun, one rider, the retired pilot, is riding for a cancer charity.  he lost his wife last year to cancer and is riding for the cancer center in texas that treated her.  so now, he's got 17 other riders adding moral support in to help the cause.