New Orleans to Minneapolis

Click the map for route details

To get back to Minneapolis from New Orleans, I decided to take an Amtrak train, whose pace seemed more appropriate to ending a long bike trip than a plane's would have been. After over thirty hours in the Amtrak system, I can really only sum it up with one word: pathetic.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Let me explain.

Convenience is Amtrak's biggest selling point. You can ride trains without having to bother with the hassles of airline travel: getting to faraway airports, excessive security measures, long waiting times before boarding, slow check-in, etc. Trains dispense with all of these concerns. Or so they should. Let's see how Amtrak stacks up against airlines.

Location
The train station was only a few blocks from my hotel, right inside downtown New Orleans, which is very convenient.

Amtrak vs. Airlines: 1:0

New Orleans Amtrak station

Luggage
If you have ever taken a bike on a plane, you know that you have to box it up and fit it into a pretty small box, and that can take a little while. On a train, one would think, no boxing should be necessary, you can just roll your bike right into the luggage car, which is how it is in Germany, for example. Not here, though. You still have to box up your bike, and even though the box is bigger than on an airplane, you still have to take off the pedals, turn your handlebars, and remove all your luggage. Minus one for Amtrak for eliminating an advantage.

Amtrak vs. Airlines: 0:0

I put my bike in a box for you

Network
Amtrak's network is ridiculous, that's all there is to it. Take a look at their entire network of passenger routes. This for a country of 300 million people. As a result, trains are few and far between.

Amtrak vs. Airlines: 0:1

How many trains for a million people?

Speed
Another great advantage of trains is that while they travel more slowly than airplanes, the travel from city center to city center and dispense with length check-in procedures, so that they often end up being faster overall than airplanes. Not so for Amtrak on any possible routes along the way from New Orleans to Chicago.

First of all, the trains are incredibly slow, and the track congested. To get into the Chicago station, for example, the train went past the station, then turned around to back into the station. This maneuver alone took over half an hour, for a distance anyone could have walked in less than five minutes.

Chicago, only half an hour to go

And even when the tracks are clear, trains cannot exceed a speed of 80 mph because the tracks are so bad. Any train you could possible build would not be able to go faster than 80 mph because it would simply jump of these poorly built tracks. The following picture shows you the main track that leads from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest.

Amtrak vs. Airlines: 0:2

Gateway to the West: Empire Builder tracks

Convenience
This category is really part of speed, but trains have always been convenient and fun because you can just walk up to them, get in and go. Well, not with Amtrak, not anymore. Check-in lines are pretty much identical to those seen at airport terminals. Why? I have no idea, and I am not sure that anybody does. It's just ridiculous.

Amtrak successfully eliminating its last remaining competitive advantage

Well, at least you can take your luggage on and just get off after you arrive, right? Wrong. Anything that is not "carry-on" needs to be checked. As a result, you wait at a baggage claim when you arrive, just like you do at an airport. Fun. Minus one for Amtrak on both counts.

Amtrak vs. Airlines: -2:2

Why would Amtrak want to emulate air travel?

You see that this comparison is quickly becoming meaningless. I am not sure what Amtrak stands for, but it must have something to do with Amateur. They have successfully eliminated any competitive advantage over airlines they could have, and they have left every possible downside in place. The only possiblity I see to salvage railroad travel in the United States is to build an entirely new system from the ground up, as has been started with the Acela system on the East Coast. The Chicago-Milwaukee-Madison-Minneapolis corridor might be a good place to start.

And so Amtrak is only left with a few upsides that are inherent to train travel, and which are why people still use trains on occasion.

Nostalgia
Train travel still has an air of adventure about it, despite Amtrak's best efforts to eliminate it. Just seeing a train that has not been substantially redesigned for decades triggers something in people that just makes them want to travel. Fernweh.

The City of New Orleans

A hint of busier times

Comfort
In general, trains are more comfortable than airplanes, no doubt. Coach class is not great, but it offers more leg room than business class on airplanes, and overnight trains also offer cabins and "roomettes," along with a dining car, observation deck, and even showers.

Roomy roomette, facing forward

Roomy roomette, facing backward

Sleeping on a train is not easy because the cars are so tall and the tracks so bad that it is a little bit like sleeping on the back of a bull, sometimes it throws you off, but all this is certainly much more comfort than airplanes could ever hope to offer.

Scenery
From a train, you can also watch the countryside crawl by, whereas the view from an airplane is often limited by small windows and clouds. I recognized many areas along the way, we crossed my cycling routes several times, and after crossing the Mississippi River in La Crosse, the train followed the tracks along the Great River, bringing back what are already mere memories.

Highway and rails straddle Lake Pontchartrain

Jackson, capital of Mississippi

Sunrise over Illinois

Beautiful Winona

Conclusion
Train travel in the United States is not meant as a serious means of transportation and cannot become one unless the infrastructure is substantially changed and re-built from the ground up.

Interestingly, railway situations in the United States and Germany are somewhat reversed. In the U.S. it is all about freight trains of enormous length that haul incredible loads over very long distances, but they are slow. This works because so much is hauled that the speed is less important, much as in shipping on the oceans. This does not work well for passengers, though. In Germany, the network is optimized for passenger travel, trains are much shorter, faster, and smoother than here. This means that cargo trains are also smaller and transport is more expensive.

What Amtrak sells, then, is not transportation, but adventure. It is an extremely amateurishly operated organization that somehow manages to maintain some of the flair of exploration. Perhaps the sense of adventure is precisely a result of the lack of routine professionalism. Everything is exciting, nothing makes much sense. Take, for example, the emergency windows.

Is pulling the emergency window towards you a good idea?

So I will only take Amtrak again if I have a lot of time on my hands and happen to be going between two places that are served by Amtrak, which is highly unlikely, considering how limited the network is. Most developing countries have better train systems than the United States, which is sad but true. Maybe I'll go ride the trains there.

And yet, I had a good time.

Mississippi River Crossings
I was hoping to make it to thirty crossings on my trip, and, with the help of the Empire Builder, I did. Here is the last daylight crossing of the trip, the Mississippi by La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Mississippi River Crossing 30

Donaldsonville to New Orleans

Click the map for route details

Today the last leg, fittingly almost entirely along the Great River. I arrived in New Orleans, tired from the long journey and became distracted by the city, fatigue, then the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. As a result, I never wrote about today until just now, when I am already safely back in Minneapolis. I apologize for the delay.

Bridges
The land here is now completely flat, and the few bridges that span the Mississippi rise majestically above the river and present the highest elevations for miles around. The Mississippi River Trail follows the west bank of the river until Edgard, where a ferry crosses into Reserve. Somehow I managed to miss the ferry; it was either poor signage or I was not paying attention. My guess is the former. As a result, I crossed the river not on a ferry, but on the third of the bridges below. It was a major highway, but with a very wide shoulder.

First Mississippi River bridge

Second Mississippi River bridge

Third Mississippi River bridge

Industry
An open shipping channel for even the largest ocean-going ships, plenty of cooling water, cheap land: great for heavy industry. Indeed, the Great River here is dominated by heavy industry, oil, energy, chemicals, and shipping. The day began with a ride past a chemical plant that created a long road of clouds that went on for miles. All I had to do was follow it to reach the next plant.

Something in the air this morning

Here, where once the white gold cotton dominated an entire society, oil now reigns supreme. Some cotton fields still remain, but even they are likely to be replaced by corn soon. What are you wearing?

Black gold replacing the white

The scale of the oil storage tanks here is mind-boggling and almost impossible to capture from the ground with my little camera. Each tank is about the size of a football field, and they are clustered in dozens. Huge pipelines continually cross the River Road, over and under, and serve to unload oil tankers into the tanks. The smell of petrochemicals is always in the air, often accented by sulfur, and the distinct smell of epoxies spices things up from time to time. Nothing like a ride through the fresh air of the open country.

It is not all oil, though. I also rode past a nuclear power plant (which was shut down completely during Hurricane Katrina), and various chemical plants. And the entire ground seems to be completely filled with gas pipelines, which pop up from time to time. Impressive, these bowels of our great civilization—they are what keeps us going.

Nuclear power plants require lots of cooling water

The human element at Dow Chemical Company

The other side of the river was then more dominated by edibles, a separation that I definitely appreciate, even if it may only be symbolic. Here on the east bank, enormous Bunge grain silos line the river. Trains and barges come in from the North, dumping the grains of the greater Midwest into these silos, from where they are in turn dumped into large ships that will carry them all over the world, to the dismay of all the non-subsidized farmers out there.

Bunge: where all grain roads converge

It is quite the reverse of what happens at the oil terminals, where the ships are unloaded. I would imagine that the owners of these ships do not want to sail their ships empty, but what do they do? Perhaps they unload their oil near New Orleans, then move up-river to take on grains to bring back home. I am sure that is completely safe if you just hose down the inside of the ships' tanks a bit.

America's grain for the World

The World's oil for America

Queuing on the Great River to deliver oil or take on grain

Communities
Among all this super-sized industry, the old communities along the way almost get lost. They are, as farther north, typically not much to write home about, although from time to time something catches the eye.

St. John the Baptist catholic church, 1770

This area is also noticeably within the sphere of influence of the Big Easy. Huge and tasteless new mansions are being built, most likely on oil wealth, and always in clusters with high-flying names. You can find them anywhere around America's cities, no need to put up a picture. Another, more subtle change occurs in the people I see. Whereas before today even the young were mostly friendly, they have now turned gangsta, too cool and dangerous for most things, and certainly lycra-clad bikers. And, as in any self-respecting city, even here there are drivers who will take the time to angrily yell at you to "Ride on the f'ing sidewalk!" That gets me every time. Would you ride on this sidewalk, which is exactly where the fat lady suggested I ride?

Why not ride on the sidewalk?

Finally, there is still some of the antebellum flair left. The Oak Alley Plantation, for example, was built from 1837-39 by Jacques T. Roman in a Greek revival architectural style and the 28 oak trees in front of it are supposed to be at least 100 years older than the house.

Oak Alley Plantation

The Mississippi River by the Oak Alley Plantation

New Orleans
And then—finally—the Big Easy. All the way into New Orleans, the river trail runs atop the levee that protects the city from the Mississippi River. For all the hype about the awesome levees, I have to say that I am not impressed. These are no bigger than any of the dikes you might find along the Weser or Elber rivers in northern Germany. I suppose they get the job done, the threat from the river is apparently not the worst anyway. During Hurricane Katrina, these dikes held up just fine, it was those around Lake Pontchartrain that failed.

Ho-hum

The first thing I did upon entering New Orleans was to get lost. Actually, I did this before entering New Orleans because I did not have complete maps and thought myself one riverbend farther down the river than I was. Not to worry, though, a nice tour through the gut-wrenching outskirts that every major American city seems to have. Nothing like mortal fear or being killed dead to revitalize body and mind to finish up a long ride.

Once I found my way back to the levee, I continued on to Audubon Park, a very nice park in the southwest of the city, adjacent to Tulane and Loyola.

Audubon Park, New Orleans

Then, on my way through the beautiful neighborhood east of the universities and on through much, much poorer quarters towards the eastern parts of the city, it finally happened. The roads of New Orleans had that one pothole too many, and 2276 miles into the trip I broke a spoke in my rear wheel and the tire went flat. Rather than fixing it then and there, I walked the last two miles of my journey. On foot. I am not too proud to admit that while I had biked over a thousand times as far, two miles of walking was all it took to give me a blister. What a finish, just like the legendary (and fictional) race between the two steamers that would determine who would dominate river commerce for years to come. The Illinois, of the established company, won the race, but because their refueling station had been sabotaged, they had to burn the ship's wood to power it, which led to many leaks, and just as the steamer tied up at the dock, wining the race, it sank. But as for me: no matter, the race was finished successfully.

Final destination: Hotel Le Cirque

I can definitely recommend the Hotel Le Cirque, which is very centrally located between Garden District and French Quarter, nice, and not at all expensive. Best of all, it provided the most appropriate of all possible final destinations for my trip by offering me a room with a view eye to eye with a larger-than-life General Robert E. Lee.

Eye to eye with General Robert E. Lee, almost

From the hotel, I ventured into the French Quarter of New Orleans, but did not have the time, energy, or sole to explore even this part of the city in depth. That shall require a dedicated trip. I did manage to eat some gumbo. After the gumbo, I had some jambalaya. After the jambalaya, I had some red beans and rice. Unfortunately, I was then too full to try any seafood, you cannot have it all.

While I did not spend much time in the French Quarter, New Orleans's main tourist attraction, I think I got a good impression of it. It is one of those rarities in America: a naturally grown, urban neighborhood that is over a hundred years old. Many of the old buildings are beautiful, but as in most places in this country, cars have invaded and completely taken over even this truly historic district. They do not just pollute aesthetically, they are loud, stinky, and impede pedestrians, who in their presence are confined to narrow sidewalks, mere afterthoughts to the infrastructure. This can ruin just about any neighborhood, as it does in the French Quarter.

In addition, as the main tourist attraction, the French Quarter is a money-maker, and money is best made off belligerent drunkards, as the people of New Orleans well know. Bars and nightclubs, interspersed with gift shops that sell cheap Chinese garbage, are the dominant businesses, and annoying frat boys the patrons. And thus the French Quarter's glory is easily lost among those who do not care, even to those who do.

The French Quarter of New Orleans in a nutshell

Mississippi River Crossings
One final river crossing today, dizzyingly high above the Mississippi over an otherwise flat land. To the left, the barges and silos that feed the world.

Mississippi River Crossing 29

Road Kill Tally
The final results are in. The racoons have shown everyone how to do it, although their complete dominance naturally leads many to suspect foul play. I do not know anything about that, I just count 'em. Congratulations to the racoons.

Who's your daddy?

1. Raccoon: 90
2. Opossum: 65
3. Snake: 36
4. Frog: 31
5. Armadillo: 27
6. Skunk: 26
7. Squirrel: 21
8. Deer: 19
9. Cat: 17
10. Turtle: 15
11. Groundhog: 13
12. Bunnywabbit: 10
13. Mouse: 7
14. Fox: 3
15. Lizard: 3
16. Dog: 3
17. Mole: 2
18. Porcupine: 1
19. Chipmunk: 1
20. Boar: 1

• Bird: 126

Done
So there it is. The Mississippi from top to bottom, 2278 miles in 23 days. Compare that to the 2204 miles the Tour de France did in 21 days. I did not see them haul around all their stuff, ride in the wind all day, or sleep in tents, let alone ride on nothing but Little Debbies, double cheeseburgers, and chocolate milk.

I thank all of you who have been following along these past three weeks. You have been, in a way, my constant companions on this trip. Solitude is fun for a while, but shared solitude even better. I will also report on the Amtrak ride back to Minneapolis, but this concludes the main trip. There is much I meant to mention that escaped my tired mind at the end of many a long day, and I may post more in the future, but if you have had only one percent of the fun reading this that I have had riding it, the mission has been accomplished.