urban bicycle journeys

There are not many negative aspects to living in Carrboro, but one is that it lacks beautiful historic buildings.    We crow about our mill houses, but, please.  I have always wanted to live in an urban historic neighborhood, in a tightly spaced bunch of old houses, within walking distance to a downtown.   This kind of place hardly exists anywhere in the state of North Carolina, much less Carrboro.   But, at least physically, it does exist 110 miles away in Lynchburg.

On this Sunday morning I parked the car in front of a Target store, near a Walmart and a Sam’s Club and a Dick’s Sporting Goods, across the highway from Jerry Fallwell’s Liberty University.   Liberty is in a suburban location,  wedged between two highways, but adjacent to the breakfast spot of Red America.

I spent at least the next four hours cycling around this very hilly city, including Liberty University   I cannot confirm much about the housing choices of  Christian social conservatives, but  I speculate that most of the senior professors and managers at Lynchburg’s one growth industry prefer to live in the suburbs and exurbs.    Lynchburg is a faded industrial  city, reeking of history.  It needs someone to adopt it.  Sorry, but that will not be me.   Living here would be creepy.

Just since my last visit two years ago, one can sense some urban progress.  I had an excellent Sunday lunch of wood fired pizza at the almost rowdy bar of a brewpub housed in a nineteenth century brick former warehouse, at the bike path that runs along the Appomattox River.      Closer to downtown, there are blocks and blocks of barely used buildings, both commercial and residential.  They are in various styles and materials, and some date back to the seventeen hundreds.  Because of the hills, it somehow evokes San Francisco.

Housing here seems cheap.   This place, on a lovely tree lined street of similar homes, was built in 1858, comprises about five thousand square feet, and was just reduced to $ 238,00.00.

This place built in 1853 advertises twenty nine hundred square feet, with relatively new wiring and plumbing.   The pictures of the kitchen on the web look almost trendy.  $ 289,00.00

More houses in Lynchburg: