The Confederacy of Cruisers Team
(Hiring Philosophy)
JEFF SHYMAN
Founder/Tour Guide
Arriving in New Orleans in the mid 90’s with a few hundred dollars in his pocket, a young Jeff Shyman arrived as 300 years of immigrants before him, clueless and enraptured by the beauty and culture of the city...and the 24 hour bars.
The city took him in; the families on the porches and steps of the Bywater back then taught him about, celebrating, parading, cooking and living in shotgun houses with no doors or privacy.
Everything he is comes from those early years in this city and he is forever grateful that tNew Orleans took him in.
LYCIA FERGUSON
Co-Founder
Like the madame at a 1915 Storyville Brothel, Lycia keeps everyone in line with kindness, a role she was born for.
A brief attempt to leave the city failed, and, as this city allows, she rose from bar customer to bar tender to bar manager before taking the reigns at reigning in Confederacy of Cruisers.
If you see her less, it is because she is going to school as an Emergency Medical Technician...after rescuing us, she is going to go off to do some real rescuing in disaster services throughout the world.
LARA DESMOND
Cocktail Tour Guide
Like a sazerac, she doesn’t have to be big to pack a punch, just mixed right, but light on the bitter.
Bartender, cocktail inventor, long distance bike rider, pinata artist, friend to all, and the person who one day said “shouldn’t we have a tour like the culinary tour...but for booze?” That last part may be all you need to know about her.
ASHLEY DEGEYTER
Cocktail & Culinary Tour Guide
The Cajun Sno Ball Queen of the New Orleans and mother of identical twin toddlers, so obviously she has a lot of free time on her hands to lead food and drink tours, too.
Don’t worry, her trusty wooden spoon she carries to keep y’all in line on the ride line are never used on her family, and hardly ever on customers.
KEITH HURTT​
Creole Tour Guide
"My family arrived in New Orleans in 1843 having successfully fled the strudel outbreak, then sweeping through Bavaria. After dabbling in philosphy, taxidermy, and the occult sciences, we eventually settled dow to plumbing and dairy work. Having developed a dread for cows, I studied history at the University of New Orleans Law and LSU and chorale music at Molly's Irish Pub. And I once shot a man in Reno just to watch him die." -KH
DEREK WOOD
9th Ward & Creole Tour Guide
In 2012, with what he thought would be a once-in-a-while kind of thing, Derek Wood emailed Confederacy of Cruisers looking to pick up a little extra work and have some fun. Since sending that fateful message, everything in Derek's life has turned upside down. Be it leaving "stable" full-time employment, a breakup or two, evictions, lost friendships, fights, surely a run-in or two with the law, nothing has not happened to Derek since sending that email back in 2012. Yet the one constant, a bedrock even, is Confederacy of Cruisers. It is the one relationship that Derek, for mostly better, cannot seem to shake. When not leading bicycle tours, Derek wants to fish in Louisiana's verdant wetlands. Additionally, he is working on his PhD in American history at Tulane University, but still prefers bike tours.