Blogs from North Carolina, United States, North America - page 108

Alright, so I didn’t bike to Chapel Hill. When my girlfriend Jennifer unexpectedly came into town for the weekend, I changed my plans and decided to load my bike on the back of her car and hitch a ride for the fifteen miles from Durham to Chapel Hill. Even after a day of rest my knees and thighs were still killing me, so I figured another day off of the bike couldn’t hurt, especially with the mountains of North Carolina looming ahead of me on my way up to Asheville. We arrived at the Chapel Hill Meeting in tome for their weekly forum, at which I had been asked to speak about what had led me to make my bike trip. I found myself speaking to twenty or so Friends, and I knew going in that ... read more

Every once in a while you meet someone who inspires you through their simple act of living. Today I had the blessing to meet two such persons- Mary and Dick Leuba, my hosts in Raleigh, North Carolina. My ride through downtown Raleigh was predictably frustrating and circuitous as I tried to navigate through an unknown city center at rush hour. After two fire trucks and an ambulance had passed me on narrow one-way streets, a tour of the inner-city expressway and a desperate search for the next exit, I finally found myself riding up to a bungalow replete with solar panels and twelve inch tall yellow, hand-painted street numbers on the front door. I had just finished up a glorious 72 mile ride up from Fayeteville, North Carolina, powered by my girlfriend Jennifer’s delicious homemade powerbars. ... read more

The smell of factory farms permeates the humid air. Instead of bringing relief, the wind brings the rench of offal & overcrowded animals. I'd like to bring every person who orders the Colonel's original recipe here to rural Carolina to get a whiff of industrialized agriculture. I still eat meat, albeit sparingly, but at least I know where my meat comes from, and the often horrid conditions of its brief life before it lands on my dinner plate. At least the deer tied to the trunk of a passing car had a relatively pleasant life before bleeding to death from a bullet wound. From what I can see & smell, the chickens, pigs and turkeys in these parts lead a decidedly unpleasant life encircled by stainless steel & concrete, crowded into pens with hundreds of other ... read more

As I rode south of Scotland Neck, North Carolina, I began seeing a new structure among the barns of many farms. Standing two stories tall and measuring perhaps 20x20 feet with no windows and a single door, I kept wondering to myself what they were. Many of these buildings were sided in wood, but some of them were covered in sheet metal. All of them though looked as though they hadn't been used in years. Doors and siding were falling off, and in some cases the roofs were rusting through. I finally stopped and asked about them, and I was informed that the unusual buildings were tobacco drying sheds. In that context it made sense why they stood in disuse, for I had yet to see a single field planted with tobacco. In fact, I had ... read more

Route 666 & the Home of the Gatling Gun I started out my journey in Suffolk, Virginia, with plans to cross the North Carolina border on my way to the Quaker Meeting in Woodland. I spent some time looking at my maps, trying to figure out a route that would keep me off of Route 58, a rural, 4-lane divided highway filled with trucks. I patched together a path that took me through cotton and peanut fields along paved roads devoid of painted lines and traffic. I saw more horses along my route than cars, and enjoyed the peaceful solitude of farmland that had been worked for hundreds of years. As I rode past quiet white farmhouses I imagined what a vivid shock the invasion of blue-coated soldiers into this countryside must have been a century ... read more