Bicycle Built For Two
Today (one of the most beautiful days in recorded history) Jessica and I visited the Silver Comet Trail at Art’s suggestion, renting a tandem (”bicycle built for two”) bike from Silver Comet Depot and taking it about 4 miles west of Floyd Rd and back again.
The Depot guy was very friendly and helpful, introducing us to the bike (at my request), which is really just like a stretch 21 speed mountain bike with an extra seat and linked pedals. Jessica and I haven’t done much bike riding since 1995 or so, so it was a little intimidating to jump back on a bike (a tandem, no less) after so many years.
We walked it up to the paved-over railroad bed, which was populated by cyclists, a few walkers/runners, some kids with bolt-on tandem attachments to their parent’s bike, strollers, etc. In position, it was then time to jump on and go. Frankly it wasn’t easy, getting on and getting going; I could touch the ground with the balls of my feet, but I think Jessica would have been hard pressed to get a steady toe down herself. We were a bit wobbly and possibly hilarious for the first few yards, but gradually got very comfortable whizzing down the paved trail. I imagined I was smiling a bit too much for a 28-year-old on a bicycle, but it felt good to get going. Then we came to an intersection where we had to stop.
While the tandem is fairly easy to get rolling (and pretty quickly), it’s rather tricky when you’re starting out to get slowed down to a pace where you can stop, look both ways, and then continue. Though after a couple more stops we were much more comfortable with it, getting going again continued to be a hit-or-miss operation. Remembering to bring the bike down into its low gears before you stop is key, and not easy to do when you don’t really want to be in such a low gear for fear of tipping over!
We had one nasty situation where the chain popped off the sprocket as I was shifting it into low gear to stop (suddenly the pedals were spinning quite easily!), but it proved simple enough to rectify. Thankfully we’d packed some wet wipes, so we were clean and ready to struggle across the intersection in the middle gear (oops).
It’s a truly beautiful resource, the trail. Jessica seemed to like it so much that she was asking me about what my commute from there would be like (hahahahahahahahaha). We’re definitely going to go back, and I hope we’ll get a tandem again. I do wish the east side of the perimeter (our side) had something similar, but the drive out to Smyrna (Mableton?) isn’t too rough. How’s that Beltline project coming?
March 13th, 2006 at 12:25 am
This trail system starts in Stone Mountain Park and heads towards Georgia Tech. http://www.pathfoundation.org/trails/atldek.cfm
March 13th, 2006 at 10:41 am
The unfortunate thing about the PATH Foundation’s trail is that, as I understand it, it’s mostly just along normal roads. The great thing about the Silver Comet Trail is that, except for occasional road crossings (each of which had stop lights & push-to-cross buttons), you’re essentially isolated from road traffic (and noise), on a nature trail.
Edit: I’m wrong about that first part… had I looked at the map and not worked off of assumptions, I would have seen that it is, indeed, a similar sort of trail. Thanks for the pointer, Mike. We’ll have to check it out.
March 13th, 2006 at 11:13 am
Because it’s a old railrod bed. Adam you got grease on your hands!!!!!! I don’t want to bandstand, but Glenn and I attended a meeting were the beltline was the topis of discussion. It should be a good thing.
March 15th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
“I imagined I was smiling a bit too much for a 28-year-old on a bicycle…”
Nonsense. If you’re on a bicycle and not smiling, at any age, you’re either too serious or doing something wrong.
March 19th, 2006 at 11:46 pm
I bike to work about once a week. Half of it is via off-road trail (along Freedom Parkway, itself another rare victory over the pave-it-all mentality of this state) but the other half is on street. The key to biking in Atlanta is finding the streets that are bike friendly, which you’d never know about by driving around, and that’s the point. In my case, it’s Argonne (now “Central Park” — ha!), 5th Street, and Auburn Avenue. All are wide, sometimes even with designated bike lanes, and have low auto traffic.
But having those kinds of resources (bike friiendly trails and streets) are usually the result of years of efforts by do-gooder liberals, in the face of obstructionist and sometimes even illegal tactics by the developer / roadbilder opposition. (Google for “arc 70 percent congestion” to see the latest incarnation of this)
I’m just sayin’, think about this the next time you’re driving in the ‘burbs trying to pass some poor dude on a bicycle, or see someone walking along the side of Buford Highway because there’s no sidewalk.
Waving from intown,
Chris