urban bicycle journeys

Fayetteville, North Carolina? A lovely clear warm winter day was predicted with highs in the upper sixties. I wanted to take a day trip; to drive to an interesting place and then bicycle around.

Tootie and I have two cars, more than we generally need; a 2021 Ford Escape Hybrid and a 2004 Honda Accord V6. In both Chapel Hill NC and New Orleans LA we do our shopping by bicycle. The Honda sits parked sometimes for weeks on the street alongside our downtown Chapel Hill condo building. Now that we have a grandson fifteen miles away in Durham NC we have more reason to drive. (Although I also do bicycle to Durham as well!)

Note the dent on the driver’s door. Two years ago while parked in front of Bridget’s house in Hillsborough NC someone backed into us. They left a note, apologizing and offering to pay. We never contacted them or fixed it. What’s the point? One time this fall after sitting for two months the Honda would not start and we had to call AAA for a jump. Otherwise this car, with 195,000 miles, usually starts right up. It has a history with our family. Tootie inherited it ten years ago when her mother Mary in Winston-Salem NC died in 2014. Tootie’s brother John had originally bought the Honda used in rural South Carolina in about 2005. Sometime before 2010 John sold it to his father Bailey. Bailey had always owned General Motors cars and this was his first Honda. Tootie remembers saying “Dad; this is such a good car that it will be the last car you ever own.” Indeed it was. After Bailey died Mary adopted it as her car until she also passed away.

For almost ten years now our Honda has had a sticker of a self-portrait by our late son Henry; his alter ego Jeb the Web.

This car was the deluxe model with leather interior and the air conditioner still works. The CD player does not work but Tootie’s mother’s CD collection is still in the console. Mary loved a crooner; Julio Iglesias, Rod Stewart, Frank Sinatra, Tom Jones. The rear headliner was sagging about five years ago when we secured it with push pins. That workaround still holds.

The basketball rivalry between the University of North Carolina and Duke University is a big deal here. Tootie’s father Bailey had proudly been on the Duke varsity golf team in the late 1940’s and the Duke sticker on our Honda windshield sometimes gets questioned around Chapel Hill. We have one friend Susan (Soup) who says she will not ride in this car.

On this sunny Tuesday Tootie was using the Ford to drive to her work at our office in Durham and to visit young Frankie. If I drove anywhere it would have to be in the Honda.

It took a couple of minutes to fold my Bike Friday into the trunk and I set off driving towards Fayetteville NC, seventy miles to the south.

The Honda can feel a little scary because Tootie and I have become so accustomed to “smart” features on our newer Ford. The Ford sets off alarms when backing up and steers itself into the lane when on the highway. The Honda remains old school. You have to drive it.

I drove an hour and a half down to Fayetteville and parked at a war memorial on the edge of downtown. I pulled my Bike Friday out of the trunk and assembled it.

I have rarely been to Fayetteville NC and in thirty-six years living in Chapel Hill I have never met anyone from Fayetteville, even though with a population of 208,000 it is North Carolina’s sixth largest city.

The World is becoming smaller and bigger at the same time. Tootie and I live part of the year eight hundred miles away in New Orleans LA. In Chapel Hill NC our friends and our friend’s children have moved long distances but frequently to the same places; San Francisco CA, Los Angeles CA, Portland OR, Denver CO, Santa Fe NM, New York City. My sister Jane lives in my father’s hometown of Norfolk VA, next to our hometown of Virginia Beach. My other sister Betsy lives in Princeton NJ and my brother Alex in Portugal. We have lots of contacts with Charlotte NC and Greensboro NC. Tootie has extended family in her hometown of Winston-Salem NC. I constantly meet people who want to move to Asheville NC. We visit North Carolina mountain resorts and beaches. Everybody likes Wilmington NC.

I never meet anyone who talks about Fayetteville.

Fayetteville is the home of Fort Liberty, known before 2023 as Fort Bragg. (Having a major U.S. Army installation of 52,000 named after a Confederate insurrectionist finally had seemed inappropriate.) I was parked at the Airborne & Special Operations Museum and the North Carolina Veterans Park. These monuments looked new. Compared to Chapel Hill it felt strange, like another universe.

Onward to bicycle Fayetteville! I first cycled uphill into west side residential areas. I looked back. Fayetteville is an old city, founded in 1783.

I don’t know what I was expecting but suburban Fayetteville looked really normal. Despite my preconceptions of this being flaming Red America, in the driveway of an attractive mid-century modern house in a prosperous neighborhood of frequently larger houses sat a Prius adorned with liberal bumper stickers!

Other houses had elaborate Christmas displays.

I deliberately lost myself on residential streets, cycling away from heavy traffic. This house seemed to fulfill some cliché.

OCD alert; this house had an absolutely perfect lawn. In the clean concrete driveway sat two almost identical SUV’s, both Cadillacs, both the same color.

I am a big supporter of public transit, although in Chapel Hill I have hardly ever taken a bus, even though they are free. I love Amtrak and wish it well despite its many flaws. Americans need to stop driving cars so much but our governments are disfunctional. Perhaps one solution would be to give cities money with fewer strings attached. In my bicycle travels around America I have frequently noticed that small to medium sized cities have a limited public bus system but each a lovely new behemoth of a city bus station. The one in Fayetteville is not atypical. Was this in the fine print of some Federal grant?

I cycled back to the center of town. Fayetteville has done a good job in making its downtown relevant in our modern economy. Everyone knows most retail is Not Coming Back. Their main drag Hay Street is intentionally narrowed to give the street more intimacy. There was a substantial amount of foot traffic on this unusually warm and inviting winter day. One of the things I like about North Carolina, in comparison to my home state of Virginia, is that North Carolina does indeed have history, just not too much! In a central intersection of Fayetteville sits the city’s signature Market House, from 1838.

The 1920’s must have been insane for architects and contractors in America. The Hotel Prince Charles has been remodeled and repurposed several times. It is now clear that a this large old hotel is too big for downtown Fayetteville and it has been converted to apartments.

Fayetteville’s tallest building is also from that era.

Next door to the Prince Charles is a new minor league baseball park.

Time for lunch! Two or three downtown restaurants had people eating at them. A seat at the bar of Gaston Brewing seemed appropriate. It’s five o’clock somewhere. Their kitchen was dealing with a large holiday office party in the back and the bartender told me my food might take a while.

A delay was fine. I love to sit alone at an empty bar or coffee house and read my Kindle. Not having to converse with anyone is usually a relief. Still, the young bartender could not stop herself from being friendly and I enjoyed hearing about her work.

She did not call herself an artist but that clearly was her inclination. She works as a bartender, gymnastics coach, and deejay. She has travelled all around the Mid-Atlantic working in a world I did not know existed; themed deejay parties. (Taylor Swift night!) She looks for side gigs in singing her own songs. She said she plays several instruments.

Chicken quesadilla with fresh salsa was surprisingly delicious.

I cycled onward. The east side of Fayetteville is not as prosperous but has some of Fayetteville’s oldest residential areas.

I eventually cycled back into downtown and my car to drive back to Chapel Hill. A coffee for the road would be great. Coffee Scene is on the ground floor of the Hotel Prince Charles building. I ordered an oat milk latte with one pack sugar, to go.

Because I hail from Virginia Beach I know that military bases beget suburban sprawl. Commercial development follows NC-87 for a full twenty miles on its route north from Fayetteville towards Sanford. This was about halfway.

I was back in Chapel Hill in time for dinner.