If you see someone with a kayak headed toward the river, he’s probably a tourist staying at the Baer House Inn.

He won’t be your ordinary visitor who has come to experience Southern history and culture — he’ll probably be in training for Adventure Sport Racing, a relatively new sport that might last a day or 10. It includes running, mountain biking, kayaking, rafting, canoeing or riding horses, elephants, or camels. He might need ropes for climbing and propelling.

You’re not going to find most of those challenges, or obstacles, here, but Doug Cousineau, 48, owner of the Baer House, says its a great place for training because of the hills and the river. Cousineau races on three teams — one from Russia, another from Asia and a third in the Louisiana area. Such races, he said, are held all over the world.

“At the beginning of the race you don’t know exactly what you’re going to do, but you are handed maps,” he said. “The gun goes off and you may have to study the maps for an hour before you even cross the starting line. You don’t know what you’re going to be doing, how you’re going to do it — all you know is you’re going to cover about 450 miles.”

Racers will fly into the place of beginning  — Boze, Mont., for example — and start the next morning. They have a week to finish the course. Participants must be certified to handle some of the obstacles, but Cousineau says the activities are always mixed and, in addition to physical activities, include map and compass work.

“You might start by running, then get to your bikes, then ride for a while then kayak, run some more, swim — go on to the finish line,” he said. Team members or the sponsoring organization move your equipment such as snow skates, skis, saddles — anything that will be needed.

Cousineau did a 10-day race last year in the deserts of Utah and Colorado, and he said participants generally don’t stop to rest, getting only about six hours of sleep during the entire race.

“This is what I do for fun,” he laughed.

The rest of the time, he’s the host at his inn on Grove Street, only a block from the Old Court House.

It was an ill wind that brought him here, leaving New Orleans on Aug. 28, 2005, “literally with the storm in my rear view mirror.” He had boarded up his house, but he lost everything to Hurricane Katrina. He lived on Lake Pontchartrain and worked for United Airlines, commuting to the airport in Kenner. He stayed at the airport until the last plane left, then headed north and west, passing through Vicksburg after a 14-hour trip from the Crescent City. He was pulling a boat, and that first night he stayed in it at the rest stop across the river in Delta.

Cousineau went back and forth a few times to New Orleans, met some local people and decided Vicksburg would be a good place to live. He was devastated, he said, and wanted to get away from the Gulf of Mexico.

“It was the best thing that could have happened to me,” he said. He left corporate America and decided to go off on his own “and do what I wanted to do when I retired. I just jumped ahead 20 years.”

Here he met Betty Bullard, who introduced him to Tom Pharr and Chris Brinkley — and he decided to buy the Baer House and run it as a bed and breakfast inn. Being the proprietor, or host, was a new role for him, though he had stayed in such establishments all over the world. In his work for United Airlines, he would usually stay only a few days in a hotel, then find a locally-owned and operated inn where he could meet the people, learn about the culture and the language. He had decided that is what he wanted to do at retirement.

Working with the airlines was good training for his current position, for he knew that customer satisfaction was most important. “Taking care of people and not just meeting, but exceeding, their expectations is how we got our business in the airline industry,” he said, and the same applies to the guests who come to his inn. There’s so much going on here, he said, that it is easy to beat their expectations.

Cousineau was impressed with the attitude and encouragement of Pharr and Brinkley, who operate another B&B, Anchuca. They told him about the business and encouraged him to make Vicksburg his home, never considering his venture to be competition but stressing that they would work together to make Vicksburg a better place.

“That’s what I wanted to hear,” Cousineau said. “What stood out was that when I first came to the community how accepting people are.”

People working together — “That’s what I wanted to hear. It is so refreshing to see the city moving forward.”

The Baer House, built in 1870 by Lazarus and Leona Baer, is an Eastlake Victorian style home — the best example of that architecture in the state. It was constructed using the walls of an 1849 structure on the site which had been gutted by siege shells in 1863. One can still see where windows had once been, bricked over in later years.

Baer was one of the owners of the famous downtown clothing store, Baer Brothers; Mrs. Baer, from Covingon, La., was a sister to Louis Bloom, who gave the fountain on Monroe Street to the city. The Baers lived in the house until 1925, then it was bought by D.H. Williams. It was later owned by architect Skippy Tuminello and was used as law offices before Sonny and Carolyn Brewer bought it, restored it, and lived in it before selling to Cousineau.

Cousineau’s wife, Margie, is also a triathlete, but because of some health problems spends most of her time near a treatment center in Dallas. Cousineau usually cooks breakfast for his guests, serving whatever they wish, though his own recipe for French toast (he prefers Italian bread) is a favorite. It has a caramelized base and he lets it sit all night in a mixture of milk and eggs before baking it. He calls it “Creme’breulle,” and a local touch is the pecans sprinkled on it — he picks them up in his backyard.

A stay at the Inn is unique in several ways: children and pets are welcome. He also has weddings and receptions, and he is assisted by his housekeeper, Catherine.

He grew up in Medford, Ore., and went to Lewis and Clark College in Portland, then did more schooling in Alaska. He was interested in biology but ended up with a petroleum degree, took courses in business “and important things like boat building and cabin building.”

Sports, however, is his big love. As a youth he played football, but he wasn’t built for that sport. He didn’t participate in much until he entered college, where he did a lot of skiing, rowing and fencing. In Alaska, he was on a road racing team and won the state championship, went on to nationals and trained with the U.S. Olympic Team in Colorado Springs. He also trained with the U.S. ski team, then traveled with them and began participating in long-distance racing. He placed third among 10,000 skiers in Austria in the Maricialonga, a really big race. He coached the U.S. kayak team and has taught biking and safety workshops. He’s now bringing visitors to Vicksburg for workshops and coaching and training.

So, if you see Doug Cousineau running or biking or headed to the river with a kayak, he’s just having a good time — in his early retirement.

Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.