Battle on the Bayou IV
Before the Gun: BOB IV The Shed: BBQ, Blues and COLD beer! For those of you who aren't familiar, the Battle on the Bayou is one of the premier paddle watercraft races in the Southeastern United States. This year's event featured over 230 paddlers in 15 categories, each with the common goal of finishing the 9.5 mile race. The course is a section of Old Fort Bayou and begins at Gulf Hills Hotel in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and ends at The Shed-a popular BBQ and blues joint. The Shed terminus offers great incentive to finish as there is, in addition to the fantastic food, all the free cold beer you want. The ladies and gentlemen who paddle this race are an eclectic mix of fun-loving outdoors people with a broad range of ages, skill-levels, watercraft, and motives for being here. I've found that the paddle-crowd is very similar to the fly-fishing crowd: friendly, talkative gear-heads that talk in a language of inside jargon that others outside the domain woul