urban bicycle journeys

My cardiologist advised that until we fix a malfunctioning valve I should refrain from extremely strenuous exercise. He said I could continue to bicycle but not vigorously. I certainly was not going to just sit at home. I needed somewhere FLAT to explore by bicycle so I drove over to Rocky Mount NC.

Why cycle the city of Rocky Mount NC, population 55,000?

1. For someone trying to bicycle without exercising, Rocky Mount is perfect. Its name is counterintuitive as Rocky Mount, like most of the Down East region of North Carolina, is as flat as a pancake. I did cycle up Rocky Mount’s one small hill. (More on that later)

2. Rocky Mount’s older areas have an extensive grid of wide streets with minimal car traffic, perfect for urban cycle noodling.

3. Rocky Mount, on the I-95 corridor, is easy to drive to; only eighty-six miles and an hour and a half by car drive directly east from our home in Chapel Hill NC.

My Bike Friday is in the shop getting a re-do, and I have been riding a modded-up 1975 Schwinn Paramount which I loaded into the back of our Ford Escape Hybrid. It is summer and any daytime cycling has to be done early. I left home at 6:30 AM and parked on the street in downtown Rocky Mount NC at 8:00 AM. It was already getting hot outside. It goes without saying that parking downtown is free.

“The Center of it All”

Parts of Rocky Mount can look depressing. Rocky Mount NC has always been a factory town, originally built around textiles and tobacco. In the current economy it is not doing all that badly, including a pharmaceutical plant that employs over three thousand. Rocky Mount is not that far from the booming Raleigh/Durham area. Even though Rocky Mount’s population of 55,000 has been stable Rocky Mount’s main downtown strip of storefronts appear 95% empty. I guess all the energy and growth in Rocky Mount is in its suburbia, areas that are difficult to bicycle.

I only report on what I see. I do know that empty downtowns have been a national issue for over sixty years. More recently the buy-it-on-Amazon economy makes street level retail even more irrelevant. You can have only so many coffee shops, restaurants, and hair salons. I have bicycled through downtowns all over America and these empty buildings in Rocky Mount seem the new normal.

Someone has installed bike racks and benches.

No car traffic.

Around these empty storefronts there were hardly any people! I bicycled around downtown Rocky Mount on three separate weekdays and hardly ever saw a person. It was as if a neutron bomb had gone off. Nevertheless the shrubs are trimmed and the sidewalks are clean. It all felt very safe but empty. Everything seemed ready for someone to move here but there were hardly any cars on the street.

Independent coffee houses have become the beating heart of many smaller downtowns all over America. At 9:30 AM I found life in a white brick corner building; Larema Coffee House, practically the only retail business open in all of downtown.

In a city that’s 64% Black, the clientele at Larema Coffee House was pleasantly diverse, unlike the typical crowds back at Chapel Hill and Carrboro coffee houses. I sat with my oat milk latte, one pack sugar.

It was a nice touch that each table was decorated with fresh wildflowers.

At home I have been repeatedly making avocado toast which becomes my blank canvas on which to express food creativity. Larema in downtown Rocky Mount NC offers a seven dollar “Avocado Toast” that might be the best I have ever had in a restaurant. Larema resisted temptation to make the dish too large; a small but thick slice of quality whole wheat bread covered in seasoned mashed avocado and decorated with colorful shapes of quality cherry tomatoes, radishes and parsley. Poppy seeds!

Unlike much of America here it was served on actual an actual china plate with real knifes and forks.

I sat quite a while in Larema Coffee House with my current Kindle read; Wind in the Reeds; a memoir by New Orleans-born actor Wendell Pierce.

I started cycling again. Rocky Mount NC is a railroad town and its downtown Main Street straddles the north / south CSX rail line running from Washington DC to Richmond VA to Florida.

Because of that rail line Rocky Mount NC has four Amtrak trains a day to Richmond VA, Washington DC, and New York City, plus Raleigh and Charlotte, and southbounds to Florida, leaving from Rocky Mount’s almost magnificent restored circa 1893 station. I am certain if a train was arriving there would be people around but when I bicycled alongside it was, like most of the downtown, quiet and vacant.

Despite the empty storefronts, Rocky Mount has several hundred bank employees downtown at an operations center for PNC Bank. There were lots of cars in the parking lot but I could see no people walking around. All over America people drive to work, go out to lunch at suburban restaurants, then drive home.

Another hopeful sign; across from Larema Coffee House is Edgecombe Community College. Next to that is brand new apartment construction. I was cycling in July, school was likely out of session.

For an hour or two I noodled by bicycle through the grid of residential streets near downtown. By my jaded eye, these bicycle signs are unnecessary as almost all of the streets in central Rocky Mount are safe to bicycle; there were just not that many cars.

A neighborhood south of downtown called Oakwood has early to mid-20th century houses. Some blocks included mostly run-down houses, with car repair all over the front yard. Other areas were more put-together.

This house is particularly fetching. When was it built; 1920?

Nearby this house was boarded up but someone is mowing the grass.

Northeast of downtown it is easy to bicycle to the much more upscale neighborhood of West Haven. Women were walking their dogs.

A mile and a half northwest from downtown is Rocky Mount Mills, a brick former textile mill which now houses condos and restaurants. It sits at the rapids of the Tar River which provided power for the region’s first textile mill, operating as early as 1818 with enslaved workers.

The nearby wooden mill cottages are nicely fixed up.

Behind the mill is the woods of Battle Park where rapids of the Tar River sit alongside the only significant hill in the city of Rocky Mount. There is a lovely paved bike path.

The textile mill was built before the city. Many suggest that when they gave Rocky Mount NC its name in about 1818 they meant to say Rocky MOUND. That rocky mound overlooking the Tar River falls is hardly a hundred feet high but would have looked significant in an otherwise flat coastal plain.

I cycled back to my car parked downtown a couple of miles away. It was too hot to cycle anymore that day.