The 7th Annual Honeybee Bicycle Ride will be on Saturday, April 27, and the Chattanooga Bicycle Club is doing the first rest stop again this year at the Helicopter Park in Chickamauga. The organizers are planning on 250 riders this year, and since ours is the first rest stop, we’re hoping to see all of them. We need snacks and we’d love for you to join us in handing them out!
You can drop off your delicious goodies at any of the three times:
Monday, April 22, 5:00-7:00 p.m.: Outdoor Chattanooga 200 River St. Chattanooga, TN 37405
This is our monthly board meeting. Drop off your goodies, and maybe stick around if you’d like! Remember that all members are encouraged to participate in our monthly meetings. But no pressure; you can drop your snacks off, and we’ll be glad we saw you.
Tuesday, April 23, 5:00-7:00 p.m.: East Ridge Bicycles 5910 Ringgold Rd, Chattanooga, TN 37412
We’ll have a table set up, and Scott Self will be there to collect your goodies. Maybe you can pick up an extra pair of socks or a new Bianchi while you’re there; we promise not to tell
Saturday, April 27, 8:00-11:30 a.m.: Helicopter Park, Chickamauga, GA
We’d love for you to bring your goodies and a comfy chair and help us feed the riders on Saturday. Ours is the first rest stop, so it’s a great opportunity to encourage newbie and less experienced riders. It can be a real shot in the legs to get nourishment and encouragement from serious cyclists like those who are members of our group, so come along, bring some goodies, encourage some riders, and then have yourself a nice ride afterward in beautiful North Georgia.
Athena and I are now two-thirds of the way through our Pacific-Atlantic, cross-country bicycle tour. Today, we are in DeRidder, LA, which is 1962 miles from where we started and about 1,000 miles from our destination of St. Augustine, FL.
We set off from San Diego on a beautiful morning on March 3 only to battle rain, wind, and horrendous roads for three full days, until we entered Arizona late on our third day of riding. We had six punctures in the first three days due to a combination of gaping potholes and road debris. On our fifth day, thunderstorms and hail in southern Arizona caused us to take refuge in a Circle K gas station/market for the better part of an hour.
Throughout the first couple of weeks, after descending the Cuyamaca mountains east of San Diego, we mostly hugged the southern border–sometimes just yards from the border wall–through Arizona, New Mexico, and for the first couple of days in Texas. On our first rest day (day 8), I took our bike to a bike shop and discovered that the we’d not only punctured in California roads but had managed to sustain cracks in both of our wheels. Fortunately, we brought along an extra pair of wheels.
Highlights during the first two weeks were Ocean Beach/San Diego (our starting point), notable (or notorious) because of its bohemian character, large homeless population and open drug use; Gila Bend, AZ, notable for the kitchy, space-themed Space Age Lodge where we stayed (see photo); Tucson, notable for Mt. Lemon; Bisbee, AZ, a former mining town that has metamorphosed into a fun, artsy tourist spot; and Columbus, NM, notable because it’s the only place we stayed in New Mexico and it felt so verty remote.
We entered Texas on our 12th day and spent a total of 17 days crossing this large state, transitioning from desolate-looking desert and the big-sky, high desert of Western Texas to Texas Hill Country with mountains (Camp Wood, TX to Ingram, TX) that gradually turned in to gently rolling hills as we travelled eastward. By the time we reached Lumberton, TX near the state line with Louisiana, the terrain was flat and the climate humid.
Texas is a beautiful state, especially Hill Country and especially this time of year. The transition from desert/high desert to the Hill Country was truly beautiful and, for the most part, we experienced it on fairly quiet roads. We spotted Antelope, Elk, Javelina, and other wildlife as we traversed the desert areas and fields of wildflowers, especially blue bonnets (a species of lupine), but also orange, yellow, white, and lavender wildflowers, became increasingly abundant as we entered Hill Country and rode eastward. Heretofore unbeknownst to us, Texas has quite a few vineyards and Fredericksburg, where we spent our third rest day, is the center of Texas wine country. We rode past quite a few vineyards both west and east of Fredericksburg. Neither of us tried Texas wine…we’ll save that for later.
Rather than a self-contained bicycle tour we sprang for a fully supported tour where hotels and most meals are provided by the tour company (Cycle of Life Adventures in our case). It’s an efficient–and quick–way to ride a bike across the USA, although it doesn’t leave much time or energy for sightseeing. Moreover, when you ride 75+ miles day in and day out, the towns and hotels tend to run together and it’s easy for us to forget where we were a couple of days ago. Our average days consist of riding, eating, washing kits, and sleeping. Repeat. Whereas the first two weeks were quite tough, the second two weeks seemed much easier as we rode into better shape and got used to long days in the saddle. We’re riding with a group of 10 other riders, most of whom are retired and aged 60 or older. The oldest (and fastest) rider is 73. We have three riders from Tennessee; one each from Ohio, Connecticut, Florida, California, Virginia, Kansas, and Wales, UK; and one rider who changes weekly (riding for a charity org). Our group is supportive and the camaraderie is real.
And so we keep rolling….the rest of Louisiana, then Mississippi, Alabama, and finally, Florida await us.
Chattanooga is taking public input on the Frasier Ave redesign.
I encourage everyone to participate in the public survey.
I am pushing for the bike lane on Frasier Ave because of the elevation and access gap between putting a bike lane on River St, which is already slow enough for mixed traffic safely and on Frasier Ave is significant.
In context, there are 27 parking spaces that would be eliminated from Frasier Ave for the option with a bike lane, but there are over 700 spaces within walking distance of the section of road that is to be changed, which makes the parking spaces on Frasier a very inefficient use of public land. This is documented in the survey’s context and materials section.
Having a bicycle lane on Frasier Ave improves access and safety significantly for all forms of micromobility including bikes, scooters, onewheels, or anything else that people come up with. Supporting this option is the position I am taking and encourage others in this group to take.
