urban bicycle journeys

My son Jack and daughter-in-law-to-be Mary Hannah are getting married on October 28; in less than two weeks! Because of my history of accidents, Tootie was concerned that I not hurt myself anytime before the ceremony. She seems to be less worried about me personally than me showing up to the ceremony in a wheelchair or a head cast!

If I went cycling somewhere safer would make Tootie less stressed back at home? “Rural areas are safer to cycle” is a misnomer, because the rural areas that most of my readers know are rural areas near major cities. Two lane country roads that are within twenty or thirty miles of a major metro area are among the most dangerous roads on which to bicycle. Those close-in rural roads serve the thousands of car drivers who choose to live in the country and then go to work elsewhere. To see truly rural areas one needs to go “further out.”

Littleton NC is out there; eighteen miles west of the town of Roanoke Rapids NC and seventy-five miles northeast of Durham NC; a hundred miles south of Richmond VA. I drove up there one morning and used Littleton as a base to bicycle a couple of big loops south of town.

Where to park? Downtown parking in Littleton NC is not much of an issue; there were no signs saying anything about it. There is a book out now: Paved Paradise, How Parking Explains The World. I am sure I agree with most of its premises. Parking in most parts of America is too free and too abundant. Nevertheless, out here in Littleton NC it feels like God intended, or what happens in a movie; you just park anywhere you want, for as long as you want. I drove to a random spot and pulled my Bike Friday out.

Before heading out into the wooded countryside I noodled around town by bicycle.

Mid-century modernist post office.

This house appears to be from that same 50-60’s era.

Here is a likely prewar gas station converted to a seafood market

Supermarket chain Piggly Wiggly’s apparent market strategy is to locate at towns so remote that competitors are not interested. This one had a “hot dog bar.”

In my bicycle travels it seems that the towns most at risk of fading away are the towns most distant from major cities. Remote towns with thriving retail usually have a tap on money from somewhere else. The most usual source of such outside cash is a college or university. Here in Littleton it is the vacationers and second home owners at Lake Gaston, a thirty mile long man-made lake a few miles away straddling the North Carolina / Virginia border. Those people’s money seems to filtering into Littleton. New businesses in Littleton are opening up.

Someone is building a brewery!

I am a fan of small privately owned museums covering obscure issues. The Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery AL is stunning even if you do not like Hank Williams music, showing one person’s eccentric passion about that artist. I once had a privately run nineteenth century bicycle museum that I had bicycled by in rural France open up just for me. Here in Littleton NC I cycled by two such museums. I confess I attended neither; the first, the Roanoke Valley Veteran’s Museum, was closed at the time.

I also saw that the “Cryptozoology Paranormal Museum” had moved from one side of town to the other. Online it suggests this Littleton museum portrays someone’s observations of creatures like Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster.

I came here to put in some miles on the bicycle! The lake and its presumed traffic is north of town. I cycled south. There indeed was no one out here. Frequently twenty minutes would pass before I saw a car passing in either direction. Woods would go on for miles at a time.

People do indeed live in the area, however. Houses are stuck here and there, seemingly at random.

I cycled a loop around these rural areas for about two hours before returning to Littleton for a late lunch. There were only two restaurants (is it valid to call Hardee’s a restaurant?) open on a Wednesday in Littleton NC; one, the chain Hardee’s and the other; Casa Mia’s, which was downtown.

Casa Mia’s was full of people who seemed friendly with each other. This included a group of about fifteen middle aged women eating together at a long table, including one African-American, the only non-white person I saw at that restaurant, in a town and county that is about 50% Black. The food here was good. I later regretted not getting one of the less than ten dollar pasta lunch specials; just because they looked so good. The $7.95 Italian sub I chose was totally acceptable, maybe delicious even.

The staff of Casa Mia was otherwise more diverse than I would have expected, but everyone seemed to be part off this lovefest of Southern politeness. Two of the female servers talked with a heavy New York accent. Many of the other staff spoke with a different vaguely foreign accent. I had friends who took Arabic in graduate school so I know what the language sounds like. I can state reasonably confidently that the apparent owners of this “Italian” restaurant were speaking Arabic among themselves. This day was just a few days after Israel was attacked by Hamas, and feelings in America about Israel and the Palestinians were at a fever pitch. No one seemed to make any connection about that here in Littleton.

The restaurant covered several adjoining rooms. In a brightly lit room on the far right there were at least two tables of middle aged women playing cards.

I got back on the bicycle and did another loop through the countryside, again south of town.

At one point I just stopped to chill on the side of the road, do a little reading in the silence, sitting on the guard rail.

As I arrived back into Littleton I passed St. Albans Episcopal Church. I found it fetching. While I am not religious, I still have a soft spot for the Episcopal church.

Arriving back in Littleton I loaded the bicycle into the Ford Escape Hybrid and drove the hour and a half back to Chapel Hill.