Emory Commencement Monday 14th
 

Emory Commencement is Monday May 14.

Traffic around campus will be very heavy. Worst is usually 7AM to 8AM. Lots of drivers unfamiliar with the area too.

I have a friend who works at the Woodruff library who rides thru that intersection every day. He was hit by an SUV but still rides there every day.
Oh wait. I wasn't supposed to tell you that. Forget what I said. It's a safe area. ;)


I know it's a long way off but there will be another class at Emory on October 13, 2007. They always do their classes in mid-April and mid-October.


I know. I used to work there and my wife still does. She has to be at work at 7:00 and usually leaves home around 6:45 but she's planning on leaving about 10 minutes earlier on Monday.

I'll be riding through the campus. :( I'm sure there will be at least 10 morons who step off the curb and out in front of me Monday morning. :crash:

Trust me, riding in Atlanta is a breeze compared to what I have seen here in Saudi. I was never afraid of any of the roads in Atlanta. There were a few that I would avoid if I could find an alternate route, but with the right attitude and proper technique, everything legal in Atlanta is navigatable.

On my last contract, I rode Tucker to Midtown everyday and had to go by the Briarcliff/Shepherds/Clifton intersection. My best advise is that if you are riding from Midtown, turn right on Clifton and left on Biltmore. It is a little challenging to make the left on the downhill, but you will enjoy the cut through on Biltmore. Coming the other way, your best option is to take Briarcliff from LaVista, so that you are in the proper lane as you pass the Shepherds intersection with good visibility. Getting up the hill on Clifton and making the light for a left turn onto Briarcliff is kind of tough.

I would very much recommend an Effective Cycling class, as Ron did. After taking the class, I understand why you should never ride on the sidewalk.

Also, go to www.bikesbl.org and check out the ride calendar for group rides. Riding with experienced riders will go a long way to help you gain your confidence. The ones I would suggest to start with are the Freight Room, Valley Brook Backstretch, Wing Ding, Tuesday Melton's, and the Thursday Mellowmushroom rides.

It just takes some experience and you will have no fear on the Atlanta roads.

Tommy

How's everyone doing with all the pollutants in the air from the South Georgia fire? Today was pretty rough.

We had the windows open and the smell woke me up about 4:30 Tuesday morning. Didn't cause any eye irritation problems during the day.
Seems the wind is blowing from another direction today because I couldn't smell anything burning this morning. :)

Yesterday, I caught a ride in with Debbie in the morning and used public transportation to get home. Way too smoky for me.

Today we took the day off work and rode the Silver Comet :)

Hey everyone. Josh is having a birthday today. http://www.thesmilies.com/smilies/sign0008.gif
:bday: Have a great day Josh. http://www.thesmilies.com/smilies/party0019.gifhttp://www.thesmilies.com/smilies/party0018.gif

Any big party plans at Peachtree Bikes?

He's in Peru!

:)

Now that's what I call a party!

Hmmm. We rode together last Friday on Bike to Work Day and he didn't say anything about leaving town. :o

He's sneaky, and possibly snarky, like that. I'm cat sitting for him and Amy. :)

I've just started posting on this forum, but I've been cycling in Atlanta since about 1957 or so (I was born in 1951, grew up in the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta, and still live nearby in East Atlanta).

I started cycling in an aggressively vehicular fashion in about 1972, when my sister informed me that for the most part the same traffic laws pertaining to automobiles also applied to cyclists (both of us are in our fifties, and both of us are still avid cyclists).

I haven't read through the many posts on this thread yet, but am answering the initial post.

I cycle commute downtown (only about 3.5 miles away) and have recently developed a project of doing all my utility trips via bicycle.

My primary bike is a Raleigh Supercourse, which fits me like a glove in terms of cycling style, but really isn't well suited for what I spend most of my time doing (commuting, grocery shopping). It's a racing frame, which doesn't have the clearances for fenders, needed adapters for a rack to fit, and doesn't have fittings for anything but water bottles.

Consequently I'm in the process of converting an old Peugeot Iseran into my commute bike. I picked it up in a thrift store for $35.00. It's in amazingly good shape, although when I'm finished with it it'll have an order of magnitude more cost than the initial purchase price.

I also have a funky old Raleigh built in the "let's see how heavy we can make the frame" era, complete with one of the worst engineering decisions in the history of bicycle manufacture (top tube shifters),
some sort of cheap folding monstrosity that I've taken on as an extreme makeover project, and a bicycle from Performance which my sister recently gave me (very light, dura-ace components, needs some work).

My primary destinations are my workplace, Sevananda (in Little Five Points), the Edgewood Retail District, and the Dekalb Farmers Market.

Well, that about describes me and my cycling.

I'm new on this forum, but I'll ditto this observation. Take the Effective Cycling course (and read the book Effective Cycling by John Forester... the best single volume on cycling ever written).

Two other things I'd add (and they may sound somewhat contradictory) are that:

1) Cycling conditions in Atlanta are really pretty good, despite the reputation Atlanta has as a car dominant city. You'll always get a few jerks honking their horns if you ride long distances here, but for the most part if you know how to operate (and the Effective Cycling courses help in that regard) drivers here treat you well.

2) Cycling must be enjoyable to be sustainable. I'm aggressive about asserting my rights to the road, but if I have to modify my route to feel comfortable, I'll do it. As an example, the most efficient route to work for me (East Atlanta to downtown) would be Moreland to Memorial to Capitol Avenue. But during rush hour the chaos of crossing the Moreland bridge over I-20 and the lane changes involved in making the left turn onto Memorial make that route unpleasant. So I take a route I enjoy (I cross the I-20 bridge at Boulevard).

Needless to say it's gotten much better. At around the date you wrote this I'd go to my front yard in the morning and glance around to make sure no one's house was on fire (I didn't want to make the assumption that the heavy smoke on the neighborhood was from the Georgia/Florida fires).

I'd also arrive at work coughing.

At this point I think the worst is clearly over.

As one of the Effective Cycling instructors for the Atlanta Bicycle Campaign I totally agree with Larry.
I see too many cyclists who take up commuting or rec riding on the streets who don't have a clue about how to *safely* navigate in traffic, don't know the rules of the road, don't have lights or blinkies, don't wear bright colors (especially at night), etc.

This thread has certainly been "quiet". No one in Atlanta riding??? ;)

I have been on vacation, and not riding too much. Just started back to work today, and the ride in wasn't too bad. Have you been riding Ron?

Hey, all. Just checking in. I grew up in SoCal, where, yes, we still got teased for shaving our legs and wearing spandex. I've been riding most of my life and I commute from Woodstock to Norcross daily down Hwy 92/Alabama Road NE/Woodstock Road/W Crossville Road/E Crossville Road/SR 140/Holcomb Bridge Road (all one road, actually. Thanks, Georgia!). Going over 400 is perhaps the most exhilirating aspect of my commute what with the double-wide suicide turn lanes. I've been commuting since October of '05 after getting back the courage to do it after being broadsided by an F-250 going through a green light in March '04. I Haven't had any collisions since then, but I've had a few incidents and close calls. My commute is 24.5 miles each way and I do it on average 3-days per week. On a good day, it's 90 minutes or less, but the record is 1 hour 14 minutes. I need to start a tally of this but I've probably been honked at 100 times, had one bottle thrown at me, had at least a dozen semis push me into the rain gutter, been screamed at at least two-dozen times and been cut off at least a dozen times. I had one lady pass me and then cut me off to change lanes into a curbed turn lane, which forced me to do a hail-mary slam on the brakes. I had to literally jump up onto the curb to avoid slamming into her car which came to a stop six inches from the curb. She looked at me through her window like, "You dumb ass. Get a car." Like I said when I first got here, "Southern hospitality ends at the curb." Still, I need to ride to keep the weight down, for my sanity sake and to feed my addiction. It gets better over time but two things are still pretty crappy - picking up nails and semis and dump trucks that don't give you enough room when they pass you. I log about 5-6 kilomiles per year, 90% of which is commuting in heavy traffic, but I do other fun stuff like every-once-in-a-while show up at the velodrome and I raced last year but I'm waiting until I'm light and fast enough to win instead of pay $80-90 a weekend, plus fuel, hotel and food to ride in circles without compensation.

Woodstock to Norcross? You deserve an award, my friend! Seriously, I'm impressed.

Been riding a ton, also busy as hell at the bike shop. Thanks for the birthday wishes Ron. I was in Peru and on my birthday I got a tattoo:D , hey that rhymes.

That should be on a bumper sticker for sure. You must have some thick skin to deal with that commute.

We too are extremely busy. :( :)

Vacation in Peru. Awesome!! :beer:
Tattoo?? Got pictures?


I must confess that I haven't been bike commuting as much as I'd like. :o
When I ride on the days that I work until the shop closes, I don't get home until ~7:40 PM. Then a quick shower. Then I gulp down some supper. Then spend the remaining time with my wife before going to bed at 10:00 (We get up at 6:00 AM because she has to be at work at 7:00 AM).
Consequently my waistline is not getting any smaller. :(

Welcome nmanhipot.
Wow!! That's quite a commute. :beer:

I thought my old commute (2001-2003) from Decatur to Norcross (14 miles one way) was tough but yours is worse. :eek:
Stay safe.

Hey thanks all, glad to be here. I'm enjoying this summer much better than last year when I was on a single speed with just a front break. That got a bit sketchy when wet so I picked up a 700C disc bike and am loving it! It does have a triple on the front (wuss factor!) but it's OK because the bike is pretty heavy. I rode home in rain the other night and the next morning and that sucker stops on a dime! It also keeps the bike cleaner which is a big plus. I can't bring myself to put the fenders on though because it seems like I really get hit with crosswinds at high speed. Anyway, nice to be here. Awesome commute this morning.

I need an opinion here. If you're on a four lane road with absolutely no shoulder and the cars are farther away from each other than they are from the grass, is it OK to ride the dashed white line between the two lanes? I know the rules say you can take the lane if you are travelling at the same rate of speed but what about riding between lanes or "white lining". This was legal for motosuckers in California but I wonder what a) the law in GA says about this and b) you effective cycling gurus would think of this. :) There are long sections of Holcomb Bridge Road where the white line meets the grass with no shoulder and I have actually cyclocrossed it to get around cars stopped on or within inches of the white line. If I can't get around on the right, I either wait or I have the option of passing on the left between the lanes if it's a parking lot. So what's the official position on overtaking cars?

I'm an Effective Cycling instructor (LCI #1076) and GA code says
Georgia Transportation Code 40-6-294:

(a) Every person operating a bicycle upon a roadway shall ride as near to the right side of the roadway as practicable, except when turning left or avoiding hazards to safe cycling, when the lane is too narrow to share safely with a motor vehicle, when traveling at the same speed as traffic, or while exercising due care when passing a standing vehicle or one proceeding in the same direction; provided, however, that every person operating a bicycle away from the right side of the roadway shall exercise reasonable care and shall give due consideration to the other applicable rules of the road. As used in this subsection, the term 'hazards to safe cycling' includes, but is not limited to, surface debris, rough pavement, drain grates which are parallel to the side of the roadway, parked or stopped vehicles, potentially opening car doors, or any other objects which threaten the safety of a person operating a bicycle.


If you pass the stopped cars by riding between the lanes on the dashed line, watch for some idiot who may open his/her door (for whatever reason???).

And whenever you feel you must do so, TAKE THE LANE!!