On the plus side, Charlotte has the all-in-one National Whitewater Center.
I wrote the following for the Charlotte Observer, where it appeared Aug. 20, 2013. It appears here with links. A report on Raleigh’s ranking ran in this spot on Tuesday, Aug. 20.
According to the American College of Sports Medicine, Charlotte wheezes in at No. 36 in the recent fittest ranking of the nation’s 50 largest metro areas. (Raleigh trotted in far better at No. 15.)
The American Fitness Index, introduced in 2007, ranks cities in 30 categories ranging from acres of parkland and number of farmers markets, to number of smokers and people with heart disease, to the percentage of residents with health insurance.
On the newest ranking, released in May, Charlotte was cited as lacking in 19 of the 30 categories. Compared to the nation as a whole, it’s got an excessive number of smokers and obese residents, a higher number of residents with diabetes and heart disease and not enough primary health care providers.
It’s also lacking in playgrounds, dog parks, ball fields, rec centers, swimming pools and tennis courts, according to the index.
On the plus side, it has more farmers markets and acres of parkland per capita and fewer people who die from diabetes. The area evaluated was the Charlotte-Gastonia-Rock Hill Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The findings didn’t surprise Hall Rubin, who moved to the area three years ago. Rubin previously lived in the Triangle, where he founded and headed a 400-member Meetup group that hiked, biked and paddled three or four times a week.
“There are opportunities in Charlotte,” says the semi-retired Rubin, “but you really have to look for them.”
For instance, he says, “There are a few long, linear greenways in Charlotte, but they aren’t connected. You have to put your bike on the car and drive to them.”
Ken Tippette, the manager of the Bicycle Program for Charlotte’s Department of Transportation says it’s no surprise Charlotte took a hit in the ranking for having a low percentage of residents who bike or walk to work. Years of planning have conspired against residents making short commutes by bike or foot.
But Tippette says efforts are underway to change the situation.
The city is planning the Cross-Charlotte Trail, a nonmotorized passage that would run 26 miles, from Pineville on the south side of town to UNC Charlotte.
The $35 million project is expected to take 10 years to complete. He adds that the city has come a long way in a decade: In 2003, Charlotte had 1 mile of marked bike lane; today it has 75 miles and another 44 miles of greenways.
And the city’s new B-Cycle program that lets people rent and ride bicycles parked in uptown Charlotte and other sites just turned a year old. Nearly 500 annual memberships exceeded the program’s expectations by 40 percent, and the more than 11,000 one-day riders surpassed expectations by a whopping 1,600 percent, program officials said. The bikes have made 32,000 trips in a year.
And, there’s the Carolina Thread Trail, an effort to build a trail network in 15 counties linking 2.3 million people.
Charlotte’s presence in the heart of tobacco country also weighed against the region. Nearly 19 percent of residents smoke, about 6 percent above the national average.read more
Memorial Day offers no shortage of ways to celebrate the free, active life in North Carolina. In Asheville, the Mountain Sports Festival kicks off Friday and runs through Sunday, while the National Whitewater Center in Charlotte starts the day running on Sunday and never slows up.read more
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.
Today’s 90-Second Escape: Fat Tire Frolickread more
A statistic I found interesting yesterday on my visit to the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte: of the 540,000 people who walked through the gates of this 400-acre outdoor playground last year, only 150,000 bought passes enabling them to play on/with the equipment.
So, I asked, the center’s marketing guy, Stephen Youngblade, what are the other 390,000 up to if they aren’t taking a whitewater raft trip, or climbing the 46-foot outdoor Spire, or standup paddleboarding? Do they come for the $6 cheeseburgers?
Youngblade explained that while they don’t keep numbers on this segment of the operation, many of those — 200,000, perhaps? — come for the Center’s 17-mile trail network. Mountain bikers, trail runners, hikers. As for the rest?
“There are people who like the outdoors,” he said, “and there are people who like the idea of the outdoors. Really, a lot of what we’re about is trying to make a connection with those people who like the idea of the outdoors. To create a spark.” A spark.
Youngblade told me the story of a woman looking to get in better shape who signed up for 5K on the Center’s trails. She was taken by the experience, so she signed up for the next race in the four-race series, a 10K. Then she did the 15K and finally the half marathon. A spark.
Or the 12-year-old boy who showed up a couple years ago for day camp. A typical 12-year-old in a lot of ways — until he was given a paddle and put in a kayak. This year, at age 14, he tried out for the Olympic kayak team. He didn’t make it, but he had found his passion. A spark.
I wandered around the Center looking for sparks. For signs of people who might not consider themselves outdoorsy, but had tapped into something that registered. People who weren’t just having fun, but were challenging themselves in new and different ways while having fun. I found numerous examples of sparks flying on the Ridge Course, seven aerial challenges consisting of cargo netting, thin tightrope cable, unstable bridge planks and ziplines ranging from 20 to 40 feet off the ground. I watched a guy who probably wasn’t on the football team in high school bite his tongue as he navigated a cable tightwire — then beamed at the end. I watched a very focused 8-year-old girl and her equally focused mom successfully navigate a similar obstacle. And I watched a women not-at-all happy to being clipped into a zipline 40 feet up take a good ribbing from her less concerned sister on the adjoining zipline. I watched the sisters drop off their platform and speed to the ground, where upon the reluctant sister yelled, “I totally hate you!” — sporting one of the biggest smiles I’d seen all day.
They were perfectly safe, being clipped in to safety lines. But there was that perception of danger. And, at the end of the line, there was that impossible-to-miss look of satisfaction, of accomplishment, of overcoming a fear. And, perhaps more significantly, that look of, “What’s next?”
Sparks — they were flying at the National Whitewater Center yesterday.read more
Today I’m heading down to the U.S. National Whitewater Center in Charlotte to do some … reporting. Yeah, that’s it, reporting.
That’s a taller task than you might imagine because the Whitewater Center is about more than just whitewater rafting and kayaking. It’s about flatwater paddling, about stand-up paddleboarding, about rock climbing, mountain biking, canopy tours … . In short, it’s a microcosm of everything adventurous you can do in North Carolina.read more
