Wednesday February 18, 2015

What to give up for lent? Riding in temperatures below 5 degrees! Oops broke that one already. Another cold day of riding, average temperature was 7.9 degrees. On checking the weather forecast last night, I thought I might wear my knee warmers, nope this morning it was 2 degrees again, on with the winter cycling gear again. It did warm up by 2:00 pm and it was sunny all day.

It was a long ride but a lovely route, even with the headwind. We entered Louisiana today.

We cycled the Tammany Trace commonly known as the Trace, which is a 31 mile rail trail, created in the 1990’s.

It was so nice to be away from traffic again, it was quiet and flat, and the trees broke the wind for the most part.

We crossed a river on a lift bridge and chatted to a ranger who was waiting for a boat to come through. She asked me to sign a form which indicated to the Parish how many non-residents were cycling the Trace and consequently received more funding. There were about 25 names above mine.

At around the 70 ks mark, I was getting tired, even though it was a flat ride, we still had the headwind to contend with.

I thought we had a 101 km ride to do, but we arrived at the trail-head in Covington at 94.6 ks. Ralf took us on a detour which had us on Hwy 190, very busy but obviously cut off about 6ks.

We were at a warmshowers again tonight. Patrick suggests on his profile that we should help him out at the bike shop for the warm shower and accommodation. We changed a tire for him to “pay” for the accommodation. Although we don’t mind assisting with preparing dinner, doing the dishes and cleaning up after ourselves, this is the first time we have been asked to help out in a bike shop. The accommodation was a space on the floor in the bike shop. We had a shower to use and a little kitchenette. We didn’t get to know Patrick very well as he closed the shop at 5:30 and left us to our own devices. At least we weren’t camping outside. Another cold night of below zero.

Covington is a very nice town with lots of boutique shops and a very nice grocery store, a lovely selection of cheeses and olives as tasters before you buy.

Patrick said we could have a couple of beers that were in the fridge, a local brew. Ralf’s comment was, \”some things shouldn\’t be mixed like  fruit \’n\’ beer\” – it was Covington Strawberry beer, I agreed with him, blugh.