We were hiking a new section of the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along the Eno River today when we came upon an old rail line, which I realized was the Norfolk Southern line that, for a while, looked like it might turn into a rails-to-trails project running from Person County south to downtown Durham. Downtown Durham and rails-to-trails projects reminded me of the American Tobacco Trail, the northern end of which begins downtown, near the American Tobacco Complex. The ATT reminded me of a gaping gap I’d been wondering about lately, which reminded me to call Dale McKeel when I got home. Which I did.
Category Archives: Greenway
New River Trail: 57 miles of bike trail less than 3 hours away
The physical therapist hesitated, then issued his edict. “Maybe. If it’s a short hike. And if the trail doesn’t have a lot of rocks.” He hesitated again, “I dunno … .”
“What a bike ride?” I asked.
It was Marcy’s first meeting with a PT to deal with a nagging case of planter fasciitis. She’d been hobbled off and on by the annoying muscle irritation; her most recent flair-up courtesy of a walk-to-run program. We were at Cary Orthopaedic’s Performance Therapy unit — because past experience revealed they were just as interested as we were in getting us moving again as soon as possible. PT Kevin Raymond was on board with that, he just wanted to make sure Marcy didn’t go out too fast.
A greenway ride into the future
Friday’s Cross Triangle Greenway bike ride showed just how far the Triangle’s greenway system has come — and how far it has to go.
The ride was the first of what promises to be an annual event. The ride — a 39-mile excursion from the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh to the entertainment Mecca of downtown Durham (American Tobacco Complex, Durham Bulls Athletic Park, Durham Performing Arts Center, the jail) was intended to show how a dream of 40 years — of being able to ride a bike on greenway from Raleigh to the heart of Durham — is ever-so-close to being reality. About 75 percent of Friday’s ride was off-road: starting on the Reedy Creek Greenway in Raleigh, winding through Umstead State Park (save for an odd “short-cut” that had us mixing it up with lunchtime traffic on Harrison Avenue and Weston Parkway) down Cary’s Black Creek and White Oak Creek greenways and on to the American Tobacco Trail for the 22-mile (plus or minus) ride into downtown Durham.
Cross the Triangle: A greenway adventure
Wanna do something more fun than work tomorrow? Wanna do something … epic?
Like ride your bike from Raleigh to Durham, mostly on greenways?
Friday at noon, 40 bikers/greenway enthusiasts will set forth from the N.C. Museum of Art on a 39-mile bike ride that will wind up five hours later in downtown Durham, at the American Tobacco Complex/Durham Bulls Athletic Park. It’s part of an effort to boost support and awareness of greenway development, support for riding greenways not just from Raleigh to Durham, but from the Triangle to Key West, Fla., or to the Canadian border. The latter is the goal of event sponsor the East Coast Greenway Alliance, which is putting together a mostly paved, off-road bike path that will run more than 3,000 miles along the East Coast. The event is also sponsored by the local Cross Triangle Greenway group. http://www.crosstrianglegreenway.org/
Raleigh greenway’s march to 100 miles: A progress report
I had just said hello to Vic Lebsock when the inevitable happened: A woman walked up and wanted to know the status of a greenway planned through her neighborhood, a greenway years from construction, she knew, but she just had to know the latest. Lebsock excused himself and dutifully walked the woman over to an aerial map of her Lake Johnson neighborhood for “the latest.”