Tammany Trace

Believe it or not, I'm becoming an acolyte to the church of the active lifestyle. I've been seen sporting some new running shoes. My wife is finding sweatpants in the clothes basket. I reclaimed my disc golf discs from retirement as potted plant bases, and returned them to active duty at the Highland Road disc golf course. The blue Ab-Lounger found its way back into the house after a summer collecting spiders in the outside shed.

It was in this spirit that I accepted my brother-in-law's invitation to ride bikes on the Tammany Trace. The Tammany Trace is a rails-to-trails conversion on the north shore of Lake Pontratrain--31 miles of car-free pavement that connects Covington and Abita Springs to Slidell.

I had a cruiser type bike with plastic pedals, while my brother and his wife took turns shunning their old persnickety mountain bike in favor of their new bike, a Christmas gift. We started in the middle of the trail at Mandeville Trailhead (which had a little Saturday morning arts and crafts market going on) and headed north toward Abita Springs and Covington. The scenery was mostly pine trees with people's backyards just beyond them. But what the scenery lacked, the blue sky and mild weather made up for. We were going fast enough to pass the joggers and some of more leisurely bikers, while the hard-core lycra bikers shot past us as if the hellhounds of Lance Armstrong were chasing them.

We did the 11.5 miles in an hour. We retraced our path back to the Abita Brew Pub, where I ate a hearty portabello sandwich. We wandered around Abita Springs to let the food settle. The public park there was still reeling from Hurricane Katrina, nearly two and half years later, with trees blocking what looked to be a former nature walk, and the Abita Springs gazebo still under construction. But Abita Springs still has a lot of charm. In another life, it would be a good place for Mike Waugh's World Music Cafe.

Our pace back to Mandeville was a bit more leisurely, and we made the whole trip in four hours.

Bikes are available for rent at the Mandeville Trailhead. I'll definitely be returning this spring to check out the other half of the trail going toward Slidell.