Day 0 - June 19 - Preparing in New Orleans

I arrived in New Orleans a few hours after Tropical Storm Arthur passed through the area.  It is the first named storm of the season and spurred three tornadoes in the area as well as dropping massive amounts of rain - about 3 inches in the city, 7 inches in the suburbs and up to 15 inches towards the northwest.  With temperatures in the low 90s (35C or so) and very high humidity, the heat index is about 110degF (44C).  Thunderstorms linger in the region and tomorrow will likely see them in the afternoon as the heat builds. 

I brought my Surly Long Haul Trucker bicycle with me on the plane and it was reassembled at a bike shop in the city.   I taught an undergraduate urban field course here in the mid 1970s when I was at the University of Illinois and published an article on gentrification in  New Orleans in 1979 (when I was an urban geographer).  There are a few more skyscrapers than 50 years ago and the French Quarter seems to have become a bit more Las Vegas-like in a down-market kind of way.  But in many ways, the city has not changed much, certainly not as much as other US cities.  It's just too hot and humid to do much exploration. 

My planned route is overlaid on this map of 'hardest places' from the New York Times from about 10 years ago.   I will bisect the least wealthy-least healthy area of the South - and except for a few islands like Champaign, IL, Chicago and Milwaukee, I will be in counties won by Donald Trump in 2024.

After picking up the re-assembled bike at the shop today, I did a test ride around the city for about 11 miles in the middle of the afternoon.  I was soaked with sweat in the heat and humidity.  The city streets are in bad shape though many have marked bike lanes that seemed to be well observed by car drivers,

I have always been impressed by the visibility of cemeteries in New Orleans since in-ground burial is not possible due to the high water table.  Much of the city is below sea level and in-ground burial would result in coffins appearing on the surface after rain events like yesterdays.

Today is Juneteenth and there were celebrations in neighborhood streets that I traversed.  On the other side of that divide, it seems that this Colonel will not be re-mounted as he was pulled down in July 2020 at the time of the George Floyd protests.   His plinth still stands.   ("War between the states" is the Civil War).

A few streetcars still operate in the city; because of the holiday today, they were on a Saturday schedule and quite infrequent.  The one that I took to the bike store was thankfully air-conditioned.  At $1.25 a ride, New Orleans public transport costs must be among the lowest in the country.

Tomorrow I plan to get going early (not my forte) to try to reduce the exposure to the heat and humidity.  If all goes well, I'll make it to Gulfport MS, the western end of the "Redneck Rivera"