Update #5 - Jan 25th, 2002
Baldwin, LA - 789 miles

The ride from Gautier, MS to Baldwin, LA went okay. The weather was a lot better than I expected. For the past couple of days, the temperature was in the seventies. Today, a cold front came through so the high temperature is only in the upper fifties with strong crosswinds.

The only tricky place for me was to get through the New Orleans area but I made it okay. The only small thing that I had to deal with was a flat front tire right at the Mississippi River crossing in downtown New Orleans but I got it fixed before the ferry came. I had a friend in New Orleans so I had a place to stay for the night.

I was hoping to stay and volunteer at the UMCOR Saeger-Brown Center (United Methodist Disaster Response) for maybe a week or two but for some reason or another they didn't receive my email message telling them that I was coming back. When I got to the center this afternoon, I found out that they had a full-house. A lot of groups from the North have come down. They were so full that I'm not even able to spend the night.

Today, I'm going on to at least Jeanerette or New Iberia. I'm looking at riding to the SE part of Texas now. In about a month, I'll probably be making my way back to the Florida Panhandle before turning northwards.