NO Adventure

It seems like sometimes it’s hard to find a place to take out your road bike in New Orleans. Except for the paved track on the top of the river levee, there isn’t a really great paved place to put some serious miles on your bike. There used to be an awesome bike path on the lake in Jefferson Parish from West End all the way to St. Charles Parish called “Linear Park,” but the Army Corps of Engineers has fucked that up beyond all recognition. They are “strengthening” the levees and have chopped up all the trees and bike paths. No word on when they will be finished and what it will look like when they do.

Shucks. This will really bum them out.

On the northshore, there is the Tammany Trace, where you might want to pedal through the woods on this reclaimed “rails to trails” park(grab a beer at the Abita Brewery too).

But if you really want to get serious about road biking, check out the Baton Rouge Velodrome – it’s free and open to the public(check the hours, of course).

The Velo in BR is one of less than 20 velodromes in the US. Velodromes feature steeply banked oval tracks that match the bicycle’s natural lean when moving through curves.

The park is currently under construction at the time of this posting, but it looks like BREC(Baton Rouge’s parks department) is pumping some serious cash into this place to make it an awesome renovated park complete with:

Skate Park, BMX Track, Rock Climbing Tower, Community Playground, Walk/Skate/Bike Trails, Court Games(Tennis and Volleyball), and Open Turf Spaces.

Uh, New Orleans? Hello? Why don’t we build some cool stuff like this?