Week 122: to Jackson: zigzagging our way around the city - Racpat RTW 2015-2017 - CycleBlaze

July 26, 2017

Week 122: to Jackson: zigzagging our way around the city

We head out early again, even though today is again fairly short we like to ride during the cooler morning hours. Our route zigzags us around the city of Baton Rouge. We take one major road that heads west towards the city, then turn north again on another road. Until it dead-ends and we turn west again.

Finally we arrive at Hooper Road where Patrick worked on two projects before he left to travel. Hooper Springs is a 48 unit low-income senior housing project that Patrick was involved during design and construction. Right next to it is Cypress Springs, almost 150 units in three large building that he helped design. We left on this trip before construction started, so Patrick was interested in seeing how it turned out. The buildings look very nice, the detailing and care that went into the design clearly paid-off. The landscaping is beautiful and it seems the grounds are being maintained well. We ride around a little, take some photos and move on.

Plank Road takes us along the airport and finally gets us clear of the city. We make one more westerly jog through the small town of Zachary where we find a post office so Rachel can mail her card to Jo in Australia. He wants letters to read when he cycles the outback in another month.

Our goal for today is a well-known “warmshowers” host near Jackson LA. She lives along route 86, about 10 kilometers south of town, and near the Adventure Cycling Association Southern Tier route. This gives her lots of visiting cyclists. They are even listed as a campspot on the ACA cycle maps.

The house she and her husband built is full of reclaimed lumber from old houses they used to tear down. It is set in a beautiful woodland garden with a large pond. Because of the volume of cyclists they receive they have a covered deck, a shed with a bunk bed and toilet and an outdoor shower with warm water. She does insist on cooking a meal for her guests. In the evening we join her inside and enjoy a nice chili with cornbread and some IPA’s other cyclists left behind. It is fun to connect with likeminded souls in different parts of the country or world. And for us being back in the USA under a week, it’s nice to be able to have a conversation, no more language barriers.

We have pitched our inner tent on the covered deck. The Hilleberg Staika tent we have is a bit unusual in that you pitch the rainfly first and then clip-in the inner tent. We really like this because you can keep you inner tent dry if you need to pitch or take down in the rain. A disadvantage is that the inner tent is not really made to accept the tent poles, so only pitching the inner tent is a bit awkward. Hilleberg provides a “kit” to do this though; it works but could be improved upon. Anyway, with as hot as it is we need all the ventilation we can get so we only pitch the inner tent and put a box fan at the door to blow a breeze through. It works; we sleep well, our first night back in the tent since Ecuador.

Cypress and Hooper Roads! A project Patrick had worked on at HSA.
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Hooper Springs Senior Apartments.
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Cypress Springs Senior Appartments
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Turned out pretty nice!
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Amen!
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At Perry's cyclist haven.
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Bicycle art.
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Perry built a little house for visiting cyclists. There is hot water, shelter and food. All we need.
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Today's ride: 62 km (39 miles)
Total: 35,914 km (22,303 miles)

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