urban bicycle journeys

While Chapel Hill is considered part of the Triangle of Chapel Hill / Durham / Raleigh;  Greensboro, population about 300,000 and the third largest city in North Carolina is not that far away to the west, especially from Chapel Hill.   It is forty-six miles from my Chapel Hill condo to downtown Greensboro and there…

I wanted to bicycle (for once) on a road or trail that I had never cycled on before but was also near where I live.  This is the eighth part in a series of bicycle rides that are done alone without touching anything, not going to a store, not talking to or getting near anyone.…

Of course I had never read, or even previously heard of, Albert Camus’ 1947 novel “The Plague.”    The book has now been mentioned several times in recent publications.  It describes a French town during a plague.   A New Yorker reader named Kyra Morris pointed out one scene where two principal characters of the…

There was not much competition for a parking space for our white Prius at Crabtree Valley Mall, likely the largest mall in the Raleigh/Durham area, six miles from downtown Raleigh.   I pulled out the Surly Long Haul Trucker out of the back.   Crabtree Valley Mall sits on Crabtree Creek and the Crabtree Creek…