urban bicycle journeys

It was cold outside. Tootie had a dermatologist’s appointment in Pittsboro NC at 9:15 AM on a Thursday. Why not get a lift from her and bike back to Chapel Hill? With the Bike Friday in the back of our Ford Escape Hybrid we drove the sixteen miles down to Pittsboro.

It was Tootie’s appointment this time but we both have used the same dermatologist. She lives in Carrboro a few blocks from our Chapel Hill condo. The Pittsboro office features her dog walking around the greeting area. While zapping your pre-cancers she might discuss real estate values or the latest gossip of the old neighborhood. I am sure she had all sorts of reasons for having her practice in Pittsboro and the even further away Sanford NC but I have heard her say that patients in Chapel Hill can be know-it-alls, and Out Here they pleasantly just accept her diagnoses!

By the time we arrived at the dermatologist’s it was a still below freezing thirty degrees. I had layered up but forgot my favorite blaze yellow windbreaker. This blue Patagonia would have to do. Dressing for cycling in the cold is a lot like for downhill skiing; you need layers to shed as you warm up.

When driving a car from Chapel Hill from the north, for decades Pittsboro was reachable only by a two lane blacktop through dark woods. Pittsboro seemed exotic back then, before US15-501 was made four lane in the 2000 aughts. Strip malls have followed and now line much of the route.

On Pittsboro’s east side it is more than thirty miles to Raleigh and all the jobs in Research Triangle Park. Until recently Pittsboro was considered Too Far Out for these commuters.

I would be taking a longer route on back roads to bicycle home to Chapel Hill, about twenty-five miles or so. I first cycled the mile to downtown Pittsboro.

There have been various vacuous polls asking Americans where they would like to live; “city, suburb, rural, or small town.” A majority usually say “small town.” Perhaps it is nostalgia for a life like Mayberry RFD; dreaming of a corner store, kids on bicycles, a courthouse square.

Folks are now moving to Pittsboro in droves, maybe with that small town fantasy in mind. New businesses have opened in the downtown. There were two breweries within a block or two of each other.

The Chatham County courthouse sits at the center of the downtown traffic circle. About where the Christmas tree sits in the photo above there used to be a statue, erected in 1907, of a soldier commemorating “Our Confederate Heroes.” It was taken down in 2019 and put it in some Greensboro warehouse.

I cycled out of town, first heading west, then north towards Chapel Hill.

It did not take long to find myself in rural countryside on a highway called Old Graham Road.

Most people moving to “Pittsboro” are really moving to subdivisions NEAR Pittsboro. Out in the woods, a mile or two from anywhere, this subdivision is pretentiously called The Parks at Meadowview.

Interspersed with miles of two lane through the woods there are other subdivisions popping up. The Estates at Chapel Ridge has, or will have, a golf course.

Who thinks up these names? The Estates at Laurel Ridge

Across the highway from Laurel Ridge trees are coming down. This video is five seconds long.

I doubt Chatham County is or was very good farmland. Most of the land is forested.

For generations there was not much out here in Chatham County, just what used to be low cost wooded land. Chapel Hill is a famous college town and has had its share of artists, musicians, renegades and others with alternative lifestyles. In big cities these types would have moved into lofts, slum apartments and warehouses. In Chapel Hill they did not live in Chapel Hill at all. They lived out in the woods, usually here in Chatham County. These woods are slowly being gentrified into subdivisions and mini-estates but there is still a lot of woodsy space. Artsy types used to live off the highway, down some long unpaved road.

If you want to avoid bicycling on the big highway US-15-501 the only way across the Haw River is Chicken Bridge Road. I have cycled on it many times. They replaced the bridge with a wider and fancier model about ten years ago.

Old Graham Road had connected to Chicken Bridge Road which connected to Crawford Dairy Road which connected to Jones Ferry Road.

While cycling I always look at cars and visually classify each one by brand. Is it a Ford or a Chevrolet? It was mildly upsetting that this car on Jones Ferry Road defied my classification. Can any of my readers tell me what model and year?

Jones Ferry Road runs all the way to downtown Carrboro, which is adjacent to Chapel Hill.

My father was the ultimately unsuccessful owner of a car dealership in Virginia Beach called Marshall Rambler. He shut it down in 1967 when I was twelve years old. I still have a soft spot for that brand of car.

Cycling down Jones Ferry Road, on the right I passed one of those artsy driveways. Down that dirt road a few years ago my friend Whit showed me where a guy had collected cars in the woods, exclusively 1960’s Ramblers, maybe a dozen of them. You needed to bushwhack through a few hundred yards of the bramble. These photos are from 2013. I guess these Ramblers are still out here, even more consumed by vegetation.

I was home in time for lunch! Tootie had not expected me back so quickly. Cycling in thirty degree weather can be satisfying, but you get chilled if you linger. Just keep going, I always told myself.