Anyway, click here for the route we took to get to Hope Valley Farms. 9 miles exactly. I think it would've been a little less if I'd stayed on the ATT and taken Juliette Drive to S. Roxboro St. Oh well, there's always next time. It took me 55 minutes to ride there. I stopped once as soon as we got on the Riddle Rd spur trail to take a couple pictures. So maybe my actual riding time was more like 51 or 52 minutes.
And here is our route to go home. We took a little bit of a longer route on the way home. It was a great bike ride and overall a wonderful way to spend a good majority of our day doing something fun!
Here are some pictures of our ride.
This picture shows how Eliza took a nap on the ride. Hmmm, this must mean that the bike trailer rides smooth enough to fall asleep!
And this is a picture of what the beginning of the Riddle Rd spur trail looks like. I'm looking west and Briggs Avenue is behind me here.
This next picture was taken on the dirty picnic table I wrote about above. Ewwww!
Help, I'm trapped!
Now we're on the way home. Eliza enjoyed a sippy cup of watered down juice. I love how she leans so much to the side. Like she's really relaxed or something!
Here's a little video I took while I was riding home on the ATT:
I haven't ridden the ATT in so long that this is a new-to-me sign and a new-to-me little trail that's spurring off into a neighborhood. Wow!
We took the ATT all the way into downtown Durham. View of downtown as we approach:
Rode past the Durham Bulls stadium, the Durham Performing Arts Center, and reached this well-known, well-traveled intersection:
I stayed on Pettigrew Street until I crossed over the railroad tracks at Driver Street. Ah, good ol' Driver Street. I'm not a newbie bike rider to this area of town. Most people would say, "isn't that in that really bad part of East Durham, you know the one they show on the news all the time?" To which I would reply, "nah, you must be thinking of Liberty Street, in between Elizabeth and Alston!" Now that's some scary neighborhood. If I pedal towards downtown from my house, I will take Liberty Street as it is less of a climb and a much safer route for cyclists. But in between Alston and Elizabeth - you can rest assured that I will NOT be stopping for anything! Flat tire, $100 bill (yo!) laying on the ground...nope, I'ma gonna keep on truckin' until I get to at least Dillard St.
Anyway, back to Driver Street. This area of East Durham has seen some revitalization in the past couple of years. Project RED is a new program that's fixing up some historic houses and selling them owner occupants who want to invest in the neighborhood by living there, being a permanent neighbor in an area that is very transient due to the high number of rentals. TROSA has also made its mark on the small business district at the intersection of Driver and Angier with its community grocery store. Another food option, 2 doors down from the grocery store is Joe's Diner, which is apparently the place to go when you're hungry for a 1 pound hot dog. 1 pound! Yikes!
I used to ride my bike fairly often through this neighborhood in the early years of my coaching with DAMA. I'd ride to swim practice at o'dark-thirty and I usually only saw 2 sights regularly: multiple white econline vans with 12 ladders stacked up on the top, most likely driving out to North North North Raleigh to go work on a million dollar house near the lake, and crackheads who were just coming down from a high and looking for their next john. It was kind of sad, but I was a bike commuter on a mission. Keep on pedaling, keep on pedaling, just get past them, don't stop, they may throw a bottle on the ground in front of me and then I'd get a flat... It's not that much further from this neighborhood to Campus Hills Pool where I coached. Places like TROSA grocery and Joe's Diner were not there in those early years. I don't know for sure when they opened, but my best guess is during the years of Rob's heavy dialysis when I wasn't coaching or bike riding.
Back to Joe's Diner: this place has a cool walk-up window! I guess it only operates the walk up window during late night hours.
Aww man, I wish I could order from this window right now! (Eliza was snoozing in the trailer, by the way.) Someday, I will go to Joe's Diner and eat. Did you see their menu? YUM. My stomach was growling at this point on my ride because I didn't pack myself a lunch to eat at the park. So I'd only eaten a few bites of some yummy homemade curry my friend made. It was close to 3pm at this point in our cycling adventure and I hadn't eaten much of anything all day (breakfast was a rushed bagel and cream cheese). Grumble, grumble... oh man, did I think about waking Eliza up and saying, "Snack Time!" And then going inside to chow down on a 1/2 pound dog covered in ketchup. I thought about it, but then decided not to! I decided to keep on trucking a few more miles home where I could eat healthy and it wouldn't cost me $6. Someday, though...Joe's Diner is calling my name.
Bye Joe's Diner!
Bye East Durham...We made it home and Eliza woke up as soon as we hit our gravel driveway. Nice nap baby girl! Nice bike ride Mommy! This was our greatest adventure yet! I'm sure there will be more to come this year, but I have a feeling this one will rank quite high on the memory list when I do my "best of 2012 bikes and hikes" blog in late December.
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