Day 96, November 5th 2007 (New Orleans,LA to Biloxi,MS)

I woke up early and at the same time as Anna was walking out to go to work. She told me to eat whatever I pleased in the kitchen and showed me where things were as quickly as she could. Cereal sounded great for the morning and so I helped myself to a bowl before I headed out of the city of New Orleans. It was nice to have been able to have someone to stay with to show me around the city and now I was going to try and navigate myself out of it. I was told that most of the destruction of Hurricane Katrina would be visible as I headed out of the city. Besides the interstate there was one other road to get myself out of the city and so I started to head out on that road. The traffic seemed very minimal and I think since the interstate and this road ran so closely together that is why no one was on the road. There weren't very many houses on the road as I headed out of the city and if there were any houses it seemed that they were new houses that had just been built up. It's hard to say what the destruction of the hurricane did to the area since I had never seen the area before the hurricane, but it seemed like quite a bit had been wiped out of this area. The road was a 4 lane divided road and I was practically the only one on the road. For a good 30 miles it was me and the road and the only traffic I saw was going in the other direction, if I saw any at all. It was a new feeling to me and it was just the thing that I needed after I had been riding through so much bad traffic for so long. I went along this great road and I was able to see some of my first views of the Gulf of Mexico. There weren't any beautiful beaches in this area, but there was a lot of tall grass leading into the ocean. It was great to have taken myself from one coast to another and to be able to see another ocean in what had seemed like forever. I didn't even think about it before I took off on my trip, but there was one problem about going along the Gulf of Mexico after a hurricane had swept through the area. I came to a bridge that was under construction and there was a smaller bridge next to it that was closed for a ship to go through. It was about noon and the people were telling me that the bridge was going to be closed until 3 pm. I didn't understand how it would take 3 hours to allow one ship through and then be able to close the bridge for others to pass over, but having never run into this problem I had no idea how long these things would take. So I saw a little restaurant about one block back that I had passed and I was going to go sit in there for about 3 hours before i passed over the bridge. As I turned my bike around to start pedalling, I went over a pothole and my rear tire went flat right away. So instead of making my way back, I first spent a good half hour to fix my flat. I was surprised that when I finished my fix on my tire that the bridge had let the boat pass through and the bridge was now open for people to pass over. I wasn't happy about the flat tire, but seeing as how I was now able to pass over the bridge much earlier I was very happy. Now I might be able to put in some more miles for the day then what I had been looking at if I had to wait three hours for the bridge. So I passed over the bridge and I was in Mississippi. As I went along the road and dealt with more cars and more rude drivers, it seemed very apparent to me that the only reason I hadn't seen any cars earlier was because the bridge was closed. Now I was on the other side of the bridge and cars were moving in both directions. There wasn't a shoulder for me to ride on for the remainder of the day and this made a lot of drivers very angry. I wasn't too happy about the entire deal as well. After riding for a good 30 miles through some wooded areas the scenery opened up to the beautiful ocean with some great white sand beaches. I tried to take in as much as I could of what were some of the most beautiful beaches I had seen since I had left on my trip and I couldn't help but continue and look in my rear view mirror at these crazy drivers. I had no shoulder to ride on and instead of the drivers going around me, they waited and waited. When they had a good 15 cars piled up behind them then they would go around me and then I had 15 very angry cars that would pass by me. With the ocean waves on one side and the honking of horns on the other, I didn't feel at home at all. I didn't think any thing was going to change as I continued to ride through the south and I was really starting to get pretty frustrated with the situation I was in. I had finally made it to some beautiful country, but with all of the chaos on the road I wasn't able to enjoy it as much as I would have liked. I made it to a town called Biloxi,MS and the sun was going down so I pulled over to find a place to stay. There seemed to be casinos at about every corner of the city and finding a place to set up camp seemed almost impossible, so I started to look for a cheap motel. It didn't take long to find a cheap motel and then my next concern was going to be dinner. I chatted with the guy at the motel to ask where the nearest grocery store was to pick up a few things and he let me know that if I was looking for a place to eat dinner he had a great place for me to stop. He told me that all I had to do was go into one of the casinos that I wanted to and then sign up in their player's club. As soon as I signed up to be in their player's club I would be able to have a free buffet. It sounded too good to be true, but I figured it was at least worth a shot. So I went to the casino that was located nearest to the motel and I singed up in their player's club. Sure enough, they gave me a ticket to go through their buffet for free. Looking at the sign of the buffet I could see that the buffet was usually about 20 dollars, but I was in store for a free ride. There was fresh seafood galore. We were on the coast and everything was as fresh as possible. Lobster, crab, shrimp, oysters, and some excellent prime rib. It was the best free buffet I have eaten at. For desert there were options of cake, pie, pudding, and everything else that my little heart desired. It was an exceptional way to finish the evening. I was able to leave the casino on a very happy and full stomach and then rest on a mattress in the hotel room. I was going to try and find this deal as much as possible from this point forward. If I saw a casino I was going to have to see if they extended the same deal to me from hereon out.

Daily mileage: 86.8 miles
Average speed: 13.6 mph
Total mileage: 5,989.5 miles