Galico

How about a thread about: You should try Cycling In My Home Town Because:
I would like to hear about your Home Town.
Here is mine:
I live in : Salt Lake City Utah
Best Rides: We have 5 Canyons to ascend: Big Cottonwood, Little Cottonwood, Mill Creek
Emigration, City Creek. The Mouths of these canyons all are within 15 miles of each other and will take you from the city to alpine splendor within minutes.
West of us, about a 10 mile ride from my house, you can be in the desert and take lightly traveled roads for hundreds of miles.
For mountain bikers there is no end to opportunities in our nearby mountains and deserts. SEe
https://www.utahmountainbiking.com/trails/
Every time you ride you are training for Altitude, our valley floor is at 4250 feet and you can climb to over 9000 feet on pavement in several of the canyons from downtown in an hour or two.
From my home it is only 15 Miles to Snowbird Ski Resort in Little Cottonwood Canyon, or 20 miles to Brighton in big Cottonwood Canyon. In the summer when mountain passes are open you can peddle through mountains and valleys making large loop centuries with plenty of scenery, facilities and fun.
There is also a paved tail called the Jordan River Parkway that leads you through a corridor in the center of our valley. The parkway takes you along wonderful marshland areas and is a great ride for novices and children.
Come ride Salt Lake City we have the best rides around and we have the finest assortment of beautiful women cyclist in the World.

XzEn54321

Mill valley, I got a LOT of trails.

55/Rad

Portland Oregon and surrounding area. Simple - cycling friendly community and any kind of ride you can possibly imagine can be found here, without having to get in your car and driving 25 miles to a start point.

55/Rad

late

Well,
I don't know about best. I like southern Maine for riding.
We have a ton of rural roads, and dozens of pleasant destinations.
We have everything from beaches, museums, historic sites to great shopping meccas and a surprisingly good selection of restaurants (I don't know about you, but I find that last detail crucial )

One ride we do every year involves a ferry ride to an island. On the following day we island hop using a series of bridges to get home. It's a very nice ride. Our national park, Acadia, has Rockefeller's carriage roads, which is pretty cool. When I Mtn biked, I didn't lack for places to go.

I look at some of the pictures of southern france, northern Italy, California wine country, etc.... and just drool. But I have to say, this is pretty good.

khuon

Seattle, WA - The area offers wonderful and varied terrain that includes mountains, plains, urban, country, hills, coastal, islands, you-name-it. Road biking and mountain biking destinations are both plentiful. There's a very supportive cycling community here too. The nation's largest single bike club is the Cascade Bicycle Club for instance.

RedHairedScot

. . . the redneck dogs are good for impromptu sprint workouts up hills.

/Mississippi

DieselDan

Everything is flat. We have a few "hills" we call bridges to connect the various islands together. It can be fun to get a jump on the line of cars just as the draw bridge reopens to cars and bomb down the hill at 35mph leading out everyone. Not too far away are hundreds of miles of open country roads where one can ride for hours without dealing with much traffic. MTB trails are few, but the best are near the beach.

Head over to Hilton Head Island and just cruise on miles of bike paths. Wear sunglasses and don't act surpirsed to pass Jimmy Buffett or John Mellencamp. Get a beach crusier and ride miles of extra fine grain sand beaches for hours, or at least until high tide. Watch who shows up for Tuesday night rides after the time change, then listen and learn from cycling veterns who've ridden all over the world, and yes, Paul Sherwin shows up every so often while visiting family.

dee-vee

Chico, Ca:
Rated best bike town in 1997 or something
whole town is flat, biggest hills are from the overpasses
has lots of bike lanes and bike routes and bike path
has a really big city park with trails and places to mtb
has 8 bike shops for the small 100,000 person population
if you want a uphill ride you can ride to the next town up and its all uphill, very fun comming down

CAAD5AL

You wouldn't ever guess it if you've never been there, but some of the best road riding I ever did was in North and West New Jersey. Just miles of beautiful, rolling farm roads, not an hour from Manhattan.

mirona

It's been done. I'm working my way out of being a total d!ck, so I spent a minute of my time to bring up the post from before

https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycling/63389-why-great-ride-your-town.html

EventServices

Color me green with envy.

Metro-Detroit is the most horrible cycling place in N.America. Were it not for a velodrome nearby, I would go mad.

Find Harbor Springs on any Michigan map, and you'll find cycling mecca. Or if you want to go farther north, find Marquette in the Upper Peninsula. Hills, flats, and an occasional black bear.

Reviewing other posts:
Chico CA is quite amazing. I was there for a race in 1992. Promised myself I'd live there eventually.
Salt Lake City may be the winner here. Although Antelope Island smells really funny.
New Jersey is cool, too. Went through it with the 1989 Tour de Trump. Not what I expected.
South Carolina's Low Country just didn't cut it for me. Too flat. Too many aligators on the golf course, too!

If you ever get sent to Detroit for any reason, don't bring your bike.

my58vw

Riverside, California (actually Inland Empire Southern California)

Can go from perfectly flat to long steady climbs to mountians and everything in between within 40 miles. 80 miles to 100 mile rides are easy to plan, you can take any number of routes to pull them off. Also 30 - 40 mile rides are plentyful and lets of good destinations to ride onto.

Favorite Rides
Santa Ana River trail
Beach Trail (50 miles)
Sierra Ride (Nice 1 mile 9 percent hill with a nice smooth 45+ MPH downhill)
Redlands ride, all hills one way
Etc...

Great club with great people to ride with, bike trails most of the places. Also get all those *WONDERFUL* (I mean rude inconsiderate, etc) motorists from SoCal.

Guest

Chicago is ok. The best riding is up in the northern suburbs, though. You have to fight the urban sprawl to get to the northern suburbs, and it can get brutal.

Skokie Sculpture Park is a delight to ride through. Once you reach the northern end of the trail and you arrive at McCormick Road and Green Bay, then head north on Green Bay, it becomes one of the best rides. Green Bay Road is a great ride.

There is also great riding out by Downers Grove and the west suburbs. But again, getting there is a pain in the freakin' butt.

I suppose the lakefront is a good ride, but it's crowded unless you do early early morning rides when the weather improves. It's more of a convenience for me to ride the lakefront path than anything.

The North Branch Trail is nice, except some parts are pretty raggedy. I've gotten a lot of my flats from riding the bad bits (right by the horse farm). It also winds a bit at awkward places, and when you're going for speed, there can be trouble...

There's another trail up north just west of the Botanic Gardens off Lake Cook Road called the Skokie Skyway or something like that. It's 10 miles each way, but good riding, with very good, deserted clean, bike roadway. And if you continue north of that, you'll eventually meander onto the Robert McCleary bike path, and that path will take you into Wisconsin. It's good riding for a bit, but the last 12 miles is all crushed limestone, and that takes some time to get used to. Still, it's beautiful riding.

Koffee

Bekologist

Seattle is so rideable of a city.There's bike lanes all over the place that actually seem to work pretty darn good. And the motorists are amazingly polite, even while commuting in rush hour traffic. Most of them, anyway. And like Khuon said, the variety is all here. Mountain hill climbs you can do from town in a half day ride, lots of water to cycle around to keep the views fresh. I like the ride around Lake Washington, 60 miles? or take a ferry to some great riding, scads of mountain biking, and there's ALWAYS an espresso stand for a quick pick me up. Not that I stop for coffee.


Oh, and Marquette Michigan is one helluva destination for road or midwest mountain biking. But the job market is frigid.

Galico

Mirona: Thanks enjoying the previous posts.

Poguemahone

Richmond Virginia: No bike lanes (that go anywhere or connect to anything), no bicycling allowed on most bridges over the James river (bisects the city), no decent bicycle shops (nope, not one), no velodrome.

Still a fun place to ride-- mix of urban and rural rides in easy reach. Good town for finding vintage stuff. There's an MTB trail along the James, but why bicycle the James when you can Kayak it (class 3-4 rapids thru downtown)? They also recently put bicycle cutouts thru the gates of Bryant Park, so if you want to ride there you no longer have to dismount and walk around the gates. Gates still keep the cars out, tho.

Bolo Grubb

Well here are some pics of where I road on Sunday

I road from my house to Saguaro Lake, through Usary Pass and back home.

A very hilly but beautiful 42 miles







Not the best roads but riding and traffic was not bad. And the fact that this is January and I am riding in short sleeves and shorts make it a great place to ride

pedal

Victoria BC aka The Cycling Capital of Canada.

You name it, we've got it. Miles of paved trail, MTB trails, Whistler isn't far, Road race, Triathlons, Velodrome, BMX parks, Unicycle community (including Muni), Trials, etc etc etc.

jfmckenna

In Blacksburg Virginia I can be out my door on the bike and 1 half hour from some epic climbs that Lance Armstrong and Greg Lemond did in the Tour Du Pont back in the 90's. I can also ride about 10 months out of the year. The mountain biking is equally as good. The only real drag is that there is no racing around here anymore.

Portis

It isn't. At least it isn't the best but probably far from the worst. ONe thing we have is low traffic and lots and lots of scenic country roads where cars are rarely seen.

nick burns

Pinelands of South Jersey. Miles & miles of desolate rural roads that are for the most part well maintained. Lots of old ghost towns to ride through. Don't forget to bring lots of water, it gets hot like a desert out there & places to refuel are few & far between.

allgoo19

Pictures, folks. More pictures, the scenery! Please.

My home town itself is not that interesting, unless you like the thrill of taking the risk negotiating with cars and most of things you see are somebody's houses. The interesting part begins when I go outside of the town 10 or so miles in right direction, then little traffic, good scenery, little dust and exaust gas, not too many stopping at lights and signs. There's one route much closer to my house called Ortega highway with good scenery neary 30miles of good climbing up and down but no cyclist with right mind goes there. The highway is used mostly by car drivers for testing their car how fast they can go and turn, and it's famous for being used as dump site for dead bodies. Nobody is quite sure how many decomposed dead bodies are there, possibly by hundreds. It's narrow and no shoulder in many places and many blind spots, very bike unfriendly. Two cities on both sides are working on it to make it wider, so some day it'll make a great street for bike riding. Better yet, they should make another highway as a by-pass.
Next time, I'll bring my camera with me.

outdoorboy

Who knows if it's the best but we do have some sweet technical mtb trails practically downtown (Allsop Park), Almost 35 miles of what is described as the best single track in middle America (Camp Robinson). 100's of miles of sweet single track within two hours (Ozark & Ouachita Mountains). ...and that's just the mountain biking.

From Little Rock you can do road rides in the mountains (we have a great 38 mile loop that is very hilly just 20 minutes from my front door) or you can head 20 minutes toward the southeast and get in some nice flat riding.

This place is sweet, stay away 'cus it's mine, all mine!

sggoodri

Here's a fun sightseeing ride I designed to help novice cyclists get out on their bikes in Cary, NC:

https://sggoodri.home.mindspring.com/...g/caryride.htm

It's mostly 25 mph posted roads through pretty neighborhoods, and historic landmarks as shown here:
https://sggoodri.home.mindspring.com/.../landmarks.htm

Maelstrom 

Hahaha...ironically, thats the 4th city in bc I have heard claim the cycling capital of canada. Rossland, whistler and North Vancouver have also had that name attached to it.

To combine all the good spots, I will say Squamish. Best of every world, more trails in a 200km zone than likely anywhere in North America (I would say close if not the most)...I don't know diddly about the road cycling aspect but for mountain biking, there isn't a better location for everything you desire.