South Coast
July 19th
Decided to stay one more day in
New Orleans, and then ride a little harder to get up to Uncle Tim’s later in the week. We walked around the Quarter checking out the shops and sites. Found a very cool Easy Rider poster signed by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hooper, and Jack Nicholson.
Took a swamp tour north of New Orleans in the afternoon. The bus-ride there was very interesting, as we went past miles and miles of abandoned neighbourhoods and destroyed housing complexes. With all the moisture here, some houses and streets were completely overgrown with already.
The swamp-tour was well worth it. Our guide was a nice guy, local Cajun, and the swamp was awesome and full of alligators. They feed them marshmallows to get them to come to the boat. (no pun intended)
Had Crawfish for dinner, and then watched a DVD Gettysburg.
July 20th
Hit the road at 8:00am and rode on-and-off till 8:00 at night. Rode the 22 mile bridge that crosses lake Ponchartrain. In the middle of it, you cannot see land anywhere. We stopped in Mobile to see the USS Alabama.
We made it to Florida! and stopped at a little burger joint for dinner.
As the sun went down, we ran head-on into a wall of rain. It was still 20 miles to a hotel, so we waited it out at a gas station till it slowed down enough to see.Â
Sam and John…I’m figuring about now with all that time in the saddle plus the humidity, rain and heat, the “Monkey Butt Powder” might be just what the doctor ordered!
Comment by Uncle "C" — July 21, 2007 @ 10:07 amChris,
Comment by john — July 22, 2007 @ 6:49 amYou are so right. Any day we ride more than about 5 hours, we start to get sore. We’ve been looking for sheepskin seat covers some riders are using, but so far we haven’t been able to find them.
An easy day of riding is 200-250miles. By 350, we are about done. We’ve done a 450 day, and in the end, it is the stiff shoulders that make me cry uncle. You can’t really take a break and stand on the pegs like on my dirt bike.
We’re doing mostly back-roads, so moving average speed is 52.1mph according to the GPS, and 39.1 for the trip. Its very dependent upon the road layout. About our longest day riding with the shortest distance was in Missouri, going to Memphis from the Ozarks. Seems like we’d ride for an hour and only be 30 miles closer to Memphis.