urban bicycle journeys

I have always been fascinated by railroads. Back in the seventh and eighth grade, rather than studying (I was a terrible student) or even poring over something like baseball statistics I obsessively read train schedules. My dad supportively found me an old copy of the two inch thick Official Railway Guide which listed all the freight and passenger rail schedules in America. In Virginia Beach there were no substantial railroad tracks within bicycling distance so these train thoughts were confined to my head. My focus eventually moved on but I maintained a soft spot for trains.

As an adult I mildly follow railroad stuff but am NOT a fanatic. Many grown men (they are always men) take train-loving to a much higher level. In the 2003 movie The Station Agent, the to-be-famous in Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage catalogues trains going by, Railway Guide at hand. People actually do this stuff, although I do not personally know any of them. You don’t have to watch this entire two minute clip as nothing much happens. I guess that is the point.

In New Orleans there are train tracks all over. It was an only an eight minute bicycle ride at 6:58 AM on my folding Bike Friday from our condo in New Orleans’ Lower Garden District to Union Station, which opened in 1954 just when rail travel was starting to precipitously decline.

I was there for a day trip on the new Amtrak train that has been given the name Mardi Gras, running twice a day the hundred forty miles from New Orleans along the Mississippi Gulf Coast to Mobile AL.

The run has been an unexpected success, many days selling out, passing through a region sharing many cultural ties. For example, all of the cities along the way do celebrate Mardi Gras. This train does not allow bicycles except those that can folded and carried on as luggage. Amtrak let me wheel the bicycle right alongside so I only had to schlep the folded bike a short distance up steep stairs through a narrow door onto the train. I have ridden Amtrak trains all over America and I cannot remember one where the atmosphere was this festive. At seven thirty in the morning in economy class everyone seemed to have a smile on her face.

Rather than go all the way to Mobile, my plan was to get off in Biloxi MS, bicycle the thirty miles back to the Amtrak station in Bay St. Louis MS, stopping for lunch somewhere along the way. I would catch a train that same afternoon back to New Orleans. This map shows the bike ride.

Many of these Gulf Coast Amtrak stops are just signs along the tracks with no actual train station. The system seems to work fine as long as it was not raining.

I got off in Biloxi and set off cycling westward through a succession of beach towns (Gulfport, Long Beach, Pass Christian) towards Bay St. Louis. A distinguishing feature of the fifty mile long Mississippi Gulf Coast is that the beach faces scenic US-90. It would be easy for the state of Mississippi to get its act together and have one continuous bike path along the Gulf shore. That is not to be. One can bicycle along many sections with a wide smooth beachfront bicycle / pedestrian trail, but it stops and starts and there are empty sections where a bicyclist has to find his own way. Below is one of the nicer sections.

It sometimes gets messier but still passable.

In certain sections I bicycled a few blocks inland along residential streets.

Much of this coast was destroyed by Hurricane Camille in 1969 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. There are many sections that have not been fully rebuilt.

Harbor View Cafe in Long Beach MS was clearly the place to be for lunch on a Thursday.

I sat at the bar. Two women who were having cocktails while waiting for takeout made jokes and we chatted briefly. One older, one younger, they were sad they had to go back to work. After they left I just continued reading my Kindle, an Emily Hahn book about 1930’s China. The menu had lots of Louisiana offerings like seafood gumbo but I chose one of its featured and perhaps exotic for here Philly-style steak sandwiches.

I eventually got back on the bike. I was not all that far away now from Bay St. Louis but I still had several hours to kill, so I stopped at the very nice bookstore Cat Island Coffeehouse in Pass Christian.

Once again on the bicycle the long bridge over Bay St. Louis has an inviting bike path the entire way.

I hung around the town of Bay St. Louis for quite a while, waiting for the 6:42 PM departure. Their town is clearly thriving, with a row of waterfront restaurants. A small truck was parked in front of one of them with a TRUMP WON flag waving annoyingly. That was the only political thing I had seen or heard all day so I take it as an anomaly.

It was still a beautiful day. Carol Vegas Park near the Amtrak station provided a cool respite to do some more reading. This residential area seemed the picture of mythical Americana, except the adults were driving noisy golf carts and the kids were racing around on battery powered scooters.

The train showed up right on time, picking up me and three or four others for the hour and a half ride back to New Orleans. That is longer than it takes by car, mostly because congested tracks require all passenger trains to very slowly creep the last five or six miles into Union Station.