Bike Beat

Parks and conservation areas aren’t created out of thin air. They happen because 1) a particular person or group sees the beauty and natural promise of an area, and…

I never had a dog when I was growing up. For years, we left Chapel Hill to spend summers in the U.K. where my father taught at a university, and a dog was too much of a complication.

Over our pandemic year I’ve been lucky enough to mountain bike with a group of five or so friends on a regular basis.

I didn’t ride BMX bikes when I was a kid, but plenty of kids I knew did.  There was even a (sort of) hit BMX movie in 1986, “Rad,” which included a very young Lori Loughlin and plenty of awesome biking sequences.

For many of us, it’s been a very hard year. Now it’s December, we all are ready to move on, and we still are facing a tough few months. In this community especially, we have many who serve on the front line at UNC Hospitals and other clinics.

Besides bicycling, I also love hiking the amazing woods and trails in our area. Since I was a kid in the 1970s we’ve lost some trails but gained significantly more.

Like any small business, bicycle shops have had to grow and change over the last 40 years in response to increasing competition as our retail economy shifted dramatically. In the Chapel Hill-Carrboro and surrounding area of 1980, there was no Amazon, no Best Buy, no Target, no REI.

I was about 10 years old in 1977 when I got my first “real” bicycle, a 10-speed racer made in Europe by Puch, a now long-defunct brand.

Yes, there were some few extraordinarily lucky riders out there who might have gotten a new Santa Cruz full suspension carbon mountain bike or a camper van with a custom bicycle rack and an outdoor hot shower. But what about the rest of us?

Chapel Hill and the University of North Carolina are linked historically, economically and physically. Chapel Hill’s fire trucks are not only painted Carolina blue but our town was created at the founding of UNC to quite simply “serve the University”.

Chapel Hill and Carrboro have much to offer, but it isn’t always easy to find the best suggestions for bicycling. Everyone has his or her own favorite rides, so below are a few of my own. I’d suggest making sure you have Google Maps on your phone — it has a bicycling function that clearly shows greenways and bike lanes.

THE BIKE BEAT By Adam Searing One of the great joys of being a parent for me has been riding with my kids over the years. Our children create the…

THE BIKE BEAT By Adam Searing The Chapel Hill-Carrboro area has one of the largest communities of cyclists who ride mountain bikes in the state. Why? We are blessed with…