Originally Posted by
recneps345
Another Birmingham, AL guy here. Grew up in Mississippi and Memphis. The good thing is that even in most cities you can find some great rural roads with very few cars and nice scenery. You do have to do a little homework in some areas, but I haven't found a single place in the Southeast that I couldn't find 4-5 really nice 50 mile rides that I really enjoyed. I have ridden in each state except SC and LA, but I can vouch for every other state in the SE. You can also ride year round without any issue. The heat can be tough on some, but I will take 100 over 10 any day.
The downsides are the drivers and some areas of bad roads. I don't take any route where I am going to have car after car buzzing me every ten seconds. I maybe have a honk from a car once a month and someone yell something once a year or two. The problem is the idiot drivers that drive looking at their Iphone texting or whatever else they do. This is why I love going out on rural rides where 10 cars might pass me on a forty mile ride. JMO and a few of the reasons I like riding in the SE.
I moved to SC from WI a few months ago and was shocked to find roads with no shoulders and few to no interconnecting sidestreets to utilize in avoiding the busy traffic. There simply are no effective and safe options...a poorly designed infrastructure for sure. That said, rural riding is as good as anywhere else. And of course you don't ride on the sidewalk although I have seen a few cyclists on sidewalks simply out of self-preservation. And pedestrians are screwed here too...gotta walk in the road more often than not, dodging the cell phone & texting idiots.
Basically, utility cycling is out until I can move to somewhere that's more bike-friendly. What good are more warm months per year if you can't ride without fear of getting clobbered. Three cyclists have been struck and killed in my first 10 weeks here, one of them a 48yo pastor and father of two kids. Compared to the midwest, SC blows.