SnoBall Search Mid-Month Rides!

New Orleans Critical Mass is organizing fun, casual, mid-month rides to highlight some really awesome things in our city. This summer, it's Snoballs.

Snoballs, if you don't know, are popular summertime treats made with saved ice, favored syrups, and sometimes condensed milk or ice cream if you want to get fancy with it.


If you've never had one before, here's a good description from Mr. Edward Branley:
The sno-ball is truly a New Orleans creation. The main reason for this is a machine called a "Hansen's Sno-Bliz." This is the machine that turns blocks of ice into sno-balls. Most sno-cones are made of crushed ice; a Sno-Bliz machine shaves a block of ice, giving it an extremely fine texture. The classic sno-ball machine (now manufactured by four or five companies in the area) works like a deli meat slicer. I've never seen anything like a sno-ball in any part of the country, although Lani Teshima-Miller's description of "shaved ice" in Hawaii is the closest thing I've heard. A sno-ball isn't an Italian ice, nor is it a crushed ice abomination.

Once the ice is shaved, it's collected into a cup, paper cone, bowl, plate, or even a container akin to the things that you get at a Chinese take-out place. Then syrup is poured over the ice, making one of nature's most perfect foods. Some people continue the process, adding cherries, ice cream, ice milk, condensed milk, or other toppings.

We're hosting 2 rides to bring cyclists to the city's fine Snoball establishments.

On Friday August 20th, we're going Uptown starting at 5pm at the parking lot located at Magazine and Constantinople.

On Friday September 17th, we're headed Downtown starting at 3pm at Piety and the Levee in the Bywater (near Piety Street Snoballs).

Here's the route for next week's ride and a number of snoball stands we've located. If we missed your favorite, leave us a comment so we can add it to the ride.

View Sno Ball search in a larger map

Thanks, new orleans, for an awesome Wetlands Ride.

Hey!  come out 13th August for our first Snoball search ride!  I don't know how it's all going to work out, but i know we will be riding and eating snoballs in uptown and metairie for a little bit.  It might look something like this:



or not. meet in the parkinglot on magazine and constantinople.

Critical Mass!  last week was awesome, despite a few hang ups, and a very long ride.  I don't know when it ended, but only after we had taken two breaks, at the Spot in the East, and on the Lake as the sun set over pass Manchac.

I was worried about all the overpasses, but besides for one breakdown, everyone was able to hump it up over the rises.   The almonaster bridge worked well as a traffic-free passage into new orleans east, an alternative to the Deathly Danziger bridge.  even though the simple passage north from the bridge was blocked by a train, we were able to mount the Jourdan road overpasses and get onto chef / hwy 90. From there, though, I made a hasty turn onto Dale.  This would not have been a problem except that I failed to turn left at crowder--which was goofy considering we stopped right there at crowder for 30 minutes on a break--that would have cut a mile or more off the route.  as a consequence, we crossed the interstate at Read, which is more stressful.



 In the interest of time and disorientation, we ended up going over at a place with no marsh.  oh, but there is so much potential planting area there.  The marsh at burke st was planted during a couple of days in 2007 and 2008.  how much more marsh could we plant in a month of work?  Coastal Restoration has to come out of our imaginations and into reality.



 We left the levee at twilight, and took the haynes ave bridges in the dark.  We couldn't go morrison road, because of construction, so that added a bridge to the route.   We had one dude on a clunker throw a chain---his wheel was seriously out of true, but cory was there to help take his brake off.

We also had a detour onto Press instead of franklin, but because they've redone pontchartrain park, it was unexpectedly nice--Press runs into gentilly, and we took that new bike lane to franklin from there.  That might be a shortcut, but i doubt it because press is curvy, and curvy the other way, away from our target of getting back downtown.    We could have also scooted over to Alvar or Louisa, but these routes are either heavily trafficked or shoddily paved.

Sorry about the confusion about the Franklin overpass.  you can access it from underneath the bridge, i think that's what people might have been doing?  But it's a great route from the river to the lake.

thanks cory for running the support crew the whole time.   If anyone has any photos, please send them to
criticalmassnolainfo@gmail.com

1) If you are interested in passing out flyers, please email me and i will send you the slips.

2) We also have business cards!  great for slipping under people's brake cable housings!  i laid out $5 for them.  So if anyone wants to buy me a snoball...

3) I think we have run out of spoke cards, so if anyone wants to step up and make new ones, they are about $10 to run off.

See you next week!

scott