IF NEW ORLEANS WERE A BICYCLE, it would be the one I'm riding now: a machine of ancient vintage, deeply neglected, all but broken, but still beloved. Mail-ordered 20 years and thousands of virtually unmaintained miles ago, my ride is a primitive mountain bike made of something like recycled iron skillets. In repose, it radiates an elegant decrepitude. Occasionally, though, while in motion, it suffers from trembling jags that would impress a Canal Street drunk. Still, it served me well when I lived down here, and it knows the territory, so I felt we should make the trip together.

Another trait my bike shares with New Orleans is unpredictable violence. As I strained at the pedal wrench while dismantling the thing for travel crating, the bicycle bucked the tool in the manner of a matador flicking away his cape to lance a charging bull. I punched the rusty chainring with all my might, gouging a deep and well-greased wound shaped like Florida into my middle finger. Like a baby inhaling before it turns loose a good cry, the wound was dark and still. For a moment. I wrapped a sock around my hand and stepped out to the emergency room.

But I find that as I pedal along, my bike's gears slipping endearingly, I'm grateful for the wound. The raspberry leakage spreading on my cycling glove makes me feel the tiniest bit less guilty about the fact that this long and winding ride won't take me near anything resembling a climb.

I'm a couple dozen miles past Geismar when the levee path slips away from the river road just south of the town of Convent. No longer traveling parallel with the thoroughfare, I naively expect a modicum of peace, as well as a decrease in exhaust fumes. But I soon catch a whiff of woodsmoke and look down to see where a householder has set a sofa, among other things, aflame. I was hoping to see some wildlife. Moments later, I see an egret. Then a fox! The same brilliant orange of the garbage fire, he streaks across the path.

A mile or two later, I hear a clacking noise, the sound of a quick release flapping as my bike prepares to throw a wheel.

I'm busy mechanicking when someone bellows, "Goddammit, Tiger, get your ass over here!"

Tiger?

It's an awesome animal, flanks sleek and rippled like an Arab charger's, head like an anvil, teeth that could hold railroad tracks in place. Broad paws send up explosions of dust as it gallops toward me.

I look down the levee to see a guy in a camouflage jacket holding a slack leash and frowning at the brindle-coat pit bull growing ever larger in my field of vision. I hunker behind my bike and hastily formulate a plan: I'll club the dog with the leaden frame. But as the beast gets closer, the bludgeoning strategy seems less appealing, so I mount up and start pedaling madly. For about half a mile, Tiger and I sprint downriver, our tongues lolling and lungs heaving in unison. For a beat I toy with the idea of tossing my carrot-cake-flavored energy bar at him, but Tiger doesn't look like a vegetarian. And he's gaining. Just as I'm trying to decide which extremity to feed him first, the dog runs out of juice. He scowls at me in my rearview. If he had a fist, he'd be shaking it.

A little while later, with dusk descending and an aerosol mist sifting down from the clouds, I turn off the path near Convent and bump and jounce through weedy hummocks down to a plantation turned bed-and-breakfast, where I've booked a room for the night. I've covered almost 70 miles, and I'm drained and spangled with briar scratches and the leggy remains of crushed mosquitoes. I grab dinner up the road at an amazing restaurant where two large soft-shell crabs go for an unheard-of $11 and three bucks gets you a Budweiser served in a goblet big enough for half a dozen goldfish. I totter back to the inn and sleep like a hammer.

I'm up early the next morning and go in to breakfast at seven o'clock. I meet the proprietress, whose name I don't catch, and the housekeeper, who's introduced as Miss Pat. I explain that I'm headed down to New Orleans. Miss Pat mentions that she lived there all her life—until the storm, which forced her up this way. With eggs congealing on the plates, we fall into a ritual shaking of heads and uttering of platitudes in the solemn, overwhelmed manner people lapse into when discussing horrors too big to say anything meaningful about.

"It sure was an awful thing," the innkeeper says.

"An awful thing," I concur.

"Yep," says the innkeeper.

"Yep," says Miss Pat.