Tour de Lis, April 12th, 2008

This sounds like fun, especially on my $25 bike with a basket covered in faded Mardi Gras beads and only the first 7 gears.  It's 35 bucks and you can ride as many 9-mile loops as you want along Lakeshore Drive.  You get free food and snacks en route, plenty of other goodies I'm sure (if my experience doing charity runs is any indication), and you support a good cause.  Anyone with me?

I'm too healthy for my own good, I know.  :-P

http://www.tourdelis.com









P.S.:The race starts at 8 am.

area roadtrips on my agenda

Little Rock, Arkansas:  Central High School, Civil Rights, integration and the first test of Brown vs. Board of Education.  Central High still functions as a high school, so I'd have to plan ahead to schedule a tour.
My first visit to Arkansas to boot.
7 hours, 20 minutes, would have to spend the night

Montgomery, Alabama:  Next stop on my Civil Rights tour.  I don't have to do Birmingham because my mom and I stopped and spent several hours in the Civil Rights Museum en route to New Orleans.
4 hours, 37 minutes

Venice, LA:  All the way down in Plaquemines and farther from New Orleans than Baton Rouge, surprisingly enough.
1 hour, 57 minutes

Lafayette, LA:  For the Cajun experience and the Acadian Cultural Center.  My goal is to visit all of the parishes in Louisiana, eventually.  Given that I lived in Maryland for 24 years and still didn't see every county, it's a daunting prospect and an exciting adventure.  There are 68 parishes in Louisiana (I've only been to 5) and only something like 28 counties in Maryland.
2 hours, 16 minutes

the other national parks in Louisiana:  Poverty Point (northeast), Cane River Creole (also several hours), and Jean Lafitte and the New Orleans Jazz park in the Quarter (both very close)