Longer Levee

It seems like a very long time ago that the first section of levee was paved and turned into a bike path. Actually, it was a long time ago. Once Orleans Parish finally finished its little piece, it measured about thirteen miles one-way from Audubon Park to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish. It wasn't long before a regular ride started. Then a few years later another section was paved, taking the path all the way out to Ormond, extending the distance to about 20 miles. At that point the Tuesday/Thursday levee rides were already well-established and the little early-morning group started going all the way out to Ormond on, I think, Thursdays, but sticking to the original shorter ride on Tuesdays. Eventually the group started doing the full distance out to Ormond on both days, and that's the way it stayed even as the remainder of the levee out to the Spillway was paved. Occasionally when there was time, usually on weekends or holidays, I'd ride all the way out to the Spillway, a distance of about 25 miles from home and about the same from Audubon Park. It's a nice place to ride when you don't want to deal with traffic and especially if you want a steady or even contemplative ride. Sometimes I'd add the Spillway road over to the other side of the Spillway. Beyond that point, however, the levee top wasn't paved until you got a few more miles upriver, where, over the years, bits and pieces of paved levee were periodically added. I rarely continued upriver on River Road to get to those sections. Then a couple of years ago the extended opening of the Spillway washed out a few sections of the Spillway road, which was then closed. You could still ride most of it, but there were usually sections of hike-a-bike, especially if it had been raining. So that's kind of where it stood for a couple of years. During that time when the Spillway road was closed the work on the bike path upriver continued and that section from the upriver end of the Spillway to the older section of bike path was finally paved. It would still be a while, however, before the Spillway road was fixed.  Well, that finally happened about a month ago, and since then people have been riding the new section all the way to where it currently ends just before the Gramercy bridge. I'd been wanting to do the full levee ride myself for some time, and had figured it would be almost 90 miles out-and-back from the park.

So I decided to do the ride last Sunday. I sent out a few emails to people I thought might join me, but with the holidays and all the only one to respond positively was Mark Monistere. I suppose the fact that the forecast was for rain all morning didn't help. Anyway, and predictably, it rained for much of the morning but by 11:00 it was looking much better so I headed out around 11:30, picking up Mark around Jefferson Playground. I was set on keeping the pace easy, so we rode all the way out side-by-side at around 17 mph mostly, with a very light headwind. I was happy to find that the entire route was paved, and except for the mile or two across the Spillway it was entirely on bike path. After a quick stop at a gas station near Gramercy we headed back down the river with a light tailwind, more or less. Mark was starting to suffer the effects of lack of sleep and the prior day's strength work by then, but I was feeling pretty good other than my neck and upper back, which is pretty much normal nowadays. I dropped Mark off back at the playground and, looking at my odometer, figured I should take the long way home through Audubon Park in order to get the ride up over 90 miles. Along the way I ran into Townsend fixing a messy tubeless tire flat on the bike path just before the park. So anyway, it is now quite feasible to do a Century ride (my original intent, actually) from, say, City Park to Audubon Park and from there out and back on the bike path. I never really believed I'd live to see the day when there was a continuous 45 miles of bike path from Audubon Park. 

So hats off to Bill Keller and Caroline Helwick who were the ones who really got the ball rolling back in the late 80s and early 90s. Bill was also instrumental in getting the Tammany Trace rails-to-trails project started. If you ride the levee bike path in Jefferson Parish you may notice a few signs naming that section after him. Caroline got involved after her husband was killed in 1987 on Lakeshore Drive when he was hit from behind by a speeding car. I was out there doing one of our Tuesday/Thursday training races when that happened just west of the Elysian Fields traffic circle. A couple of riders were already on their way to the levee board police station to report a speeding car just before it happened. Candy and I attended some of the initial meetings at Caroline's house that resulted in the establishment of the New Orleans Regional Bicycle Awareness Committee that helped push through the legislation to make the bike path happen. It's been a 40-year effort -- so far.