Overview of First Bike Tour!

It’s absolutely necessary when planning a long-distance tour to try out gear and camping close to home before hitting the road.  Two friends and I set out from New Orleans on what was my first ever bicycle tour, a 58-miler to Buccaneer State Park in Mississippi for an overnight camp and next-day return. I just finished entering the route into Google Maps and generated an elevation profile. Once I stopped laughing, I decided it should be shared.

Click to enlarge.

Note especially the Minimum, Average, and Maximum elevations for the entirety of the 58 mile ride.

Minimum:  -1 meters below sea level
Average:  1 meter above sea level
Maximum:  5 meters above sea level

Ah, such great preparation for the western mountains…

The tour was great. No mechanical failures, lots of food-related humor. We realized that while doing strenuous activity like this, life reduces to the necessities of food, water, shelter, and sleep. Food especially. I’ll never have anything as delicious as the $0.50 hard-boiled egg I bought from a Mississippi gas station at mile 18 on the way home. By that time, lack of food from the previous day had collided with a paltry two-packet oatmeal breakfast to force my brain to think only of whole milk, pizza with extra cheese, and candy bars. At that same gas station, I consumed a pint of whole milk, a Snickers candy bar, and a Twix Peanut Butter bar, in addition to the hard-boiled egg. I did so while speaking with a local guy who had, with his wife, rode out Hurricane Katrina on the roof of his house, watching the building disintegrate beneath him from the force of roof-high waves. We crossed a bridge shortly after leaving the gas station. Upriver to the left, toward the Gulf, a huge sailboat lay on its side on the bank.

The low elevations of the region have far more serious consequences than making it difficult for cyclists to build up hill-climbing tolerance.