urban bicycle journeys

I biked from Chapel Hill to Raleigh and back last Sunday.    Much of the ride goes through Cary.   People in Chapel Hill give Cary a lot of grief; they deride it as faceless suburbia.   Indeed, there are miles and miles of subdivisions with names like The Villages at Prestonwood.  But I defy anyone to find a commercial area in Chapel Hill, or indeed the Raleigh/Durham area, as multicultural as the intersection of East Chatham Street and Maynard Road in eastern Cary.

The Taqueria Rancho Grande was packed at eleven on a Sunday morning.    I stayed for over an hour, reading the Sunday New York Times and eating huevos rancheros.    There were lots of people streaming in and out, but I never saw another Anglo other than myself.

Around the corner from Taqueria Rancho Grande, which is across the street from Patel Brothers Indian Grocery, the rest of these places are all in one strip shopping center,  lined up in a row.   Lots of cultures are represented.