Leaving Bay St Louis just after sunrise we made great time on Highway 90 towards New Orleans. The front wheel, with one broken spoke, behaved impeccably and we cruised through the bayou to Louisiana, our fourth State on this tour.

An early lunch at a gas station allowed us to refuel with some fried chicken. Susan is not really a fried chicken person but she is married to a fried chicken person and, as they say, ‘caring is sharing’. I might have just made that saying up but it says it all – its not every guy that would share his fried chicken!

We soon hit the suburbs of New Orleans with busy traffic and no hard shoulder. The inner city of New Orleans, however, is quite pleasant with cycle lanes throughout the city. The locals are actually quite pleasant to cyclists. So far, on our tour, our brief passage through Alabama was the tops for cycling in terms of considerate motorists. Louisiana is good but we have a long way to go before we can pass judgment. Florida, however, was pretty pants and Marianna, Florida, you can hang your heads in cycle shame.

55 miles later we arrived at our hotel.

Now the balloons were not for us. Coincidentally, our arrival was the same day as the official opening day of this hotel and Susan found out there was a bit of a drinks reception with canapés at 4pm and guests were invited. To be honest, I think the bellboy just invited her but I’m the guy that shares his fried chicken and so she looks after me and I got an invite too. So listen guys if you want the secret to a happy caring relationship the answer is fried chicken. I know its hard to share that greasy spicy tasty morsel of food but if you do just watch the face of the woman you care about light up.

So after getting the bike folded and stored in our room we put on our best slightly smelly clothes and really pretty smelly training shoes and went to our canapé party. But that’s a story for the next blog as it’s now 3 days later and there’s still too many bars with beer, music and food calling for me. What a wonderful city.

As the New Orleans motto says ‘laissez les bon temps rouler’ (let the good times roll).

• Uncategorized