Route #4, The WTF was I thinking route. (Cornwallis, NC-10)

27 miles, about an hour and 45 minutes



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So a couple of weeks ago I took this route home because I was feeling feisty when I got on my bike in the afternoon.  Needless to say, I was not feeling feisty when I collapsed into the armchair upon arrival at home. While 27 miles is not a particularly long ride, I did this at the end of my workday, after biking in 13 miles in the morning. I felt good but exhausted after the ride. The route is similar to the Mt. Sinai route, but makes a wider detour than Mt. Sinai Road.

Martin Luther King Boulevard: I described riding on MLK Boulevard towards UNC in the Route #2 post. However, this road is whole different ballgame when you're leaving town. Heading out there is almost as much bike lane as there is going into town, so that is nice.  In contrast to the fast ride toward UNC, leaving town is almost all uphill. The route starts with a steep grade that tires you out for the shallow uphill grade all the way to the edge of town.

Eubanks Road:  I wrote about the horrors of Eubanks Road in Route #3. Fortunately, when you head out farther on Eubanks, you'll find all of those horrors are in the first mile, with the exception of the landfill traffic. Past the bus terminal, UPS depot and construction the roads are in better shape and 70% of the large vehicular traffic has turned off the road. Beyond the railroad tracks Eubanks Road is more like a country highway than an industrial intersection.

Old 86:  This road was a pleasant road to ride on. The shoulders were not very wide, but traffic was low and there were not many blind curves to deal with.  There also were very few crossroads which are often problem areas for cyclists and cars.

New Hope Church Road:  A nice wide country road with minimal traffic, and was relatively flat.

Old State Highway 10:  This is not really a bike friendly road.  There are wide shoulders, but there is a 55mph speed limit meaning traffic moves at about 65mph. I prefer to stay off of roads like this when I bike. I intended to get off highway 10 earlier than I did, but Cornwallis was not clearly marked on 10.

The Penis in the Pasture

Route 751: Instead of taking Cornwallis which I missed because of poor signage, I ended up going down Route 751.  At this end 751 is a nice road for riding, unlike the section of 751 called Hope Valley Road. The shoulders had ample room, and there was little traffic to speak of.

Kerley Road

Kerley Road:  I like Kerley Road a lot. It is low on traffic and high on scenery.  Surrounded by rolling farms and thick wooded areas it makes for a pleasant destressing roll. And as you approach Erwin Road you will see the strangest sight, the Durham Tower apparently plopped down in the middle of the woods. The Durham Tower, or as it is known locally, The Penis in the Pasture, already looks out of place from 15-501, but from this angle it looks absolutely ridiculous.

From Kerley I cross Erwin onto Randolph Road for less than a mile onto Pickett Road, which you can read about in Route #1.

Happy Riding!

Route #3, Mt. Sinai, aka my favorite route

17.9 miles, about 1 hour and 10 minutes



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As indicated by the post title, this is currently my favorite route to ride between home and work. That may not be as true returning home because Martin Luther King Boulevard going out of Chapel Hill is mostly uphill.
      Anyhow, this route starts out the same as the rest of my routes. I take Pickett Road out to Randolph then Erwin. However, when I get to Erwin I just cross over and keep going out Kerley Road for a few hundred feet to Mount Sinai Road.

Mt. Sinai Road

Mt. Sinai Road: I love biking on Mt. Sinai Road despite the large hill right after I turn onto the road. The shoulders are not super wide on Mt. Sinai, but traffic is low, and the cars seem to be very used to bikers. In fact I tend to see the most cyclists when I take this route to Chapel Hill. Most of the people out here look like recreational bikers, not commuters, because only idiots choose a longer route for their bike commute.  I am a self proclaimed idiot, I love to experiment with longer commutes.  I prefer less stressful routes even if they add a half hour to my commute. 


Millhouse Road: Mt. Sinai Road crosses Route 86 and becomes Millhouse Road. There is a barbeque joint on the corner that is always fired up in the morning when I bike by. It almost makes me want to start eating pork ribs, it smells pretty good. Millhouse is a nice quiet road that has wide bike lanes on the second half. The first half on Millhouse has no shoulders, but little to no traffic, there is nothing back here but a horse farm and a Waldorf School.


Eubanks Road: Eubanks is the worst part of this ride, but it's short so I can accept it. Eubanks is in a state of major disrepair, on top of that there is a constant flow of buses, UPS trucks (there is a distribution center on Eubanks), garbage trucks (Orange County Landfill is farther up Eubanks) and construction vehicles (there seem to be some developments going up). This combined with no shoulders and heavily cracked pavement forcing you to bike into the lane make this a tense section of road to bike on. Like I said though it is less than a mile long, so mount a mirror on your helmet or handlebar and watch for large vehicles before you swerve around that giant crack in the road.


UPDATE: Eubanks road is being repaired and widened, see new post.


Eubanks Road connects to Martin Luther King Boulevard, and the rest of this ride plays out like the end of Route #2. So connect to that post to see the rest.

Route #2, Whitfield road to MLK boulevard

Total Distance 14.9 miles, about one-hour ride.


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So this second route that I have taken a couple of times gets me off of Erwin Road sooner than my usual ride. It is a bit longer due to the shunt over to Martin luther King Boulevard on Whitfield Road. Honestly this route doesn't really make me feel any safer while I'm out there.

Whitfield Road: Whitfield Road has more traffic than I expected it would. I'm not sure where everybody is coming from or going to, but there tends to be a fair number of vehicles driving this road.  On top of the traffic, there is not much of a shoulder for the entire length of Whitfield.

Martin Luther King Boulevard: The one thing I learned from taking this route is that MLK Boulevard in Chapel Hill is very well equipped to handle cycling traffic. There are dedicated bike lanes on both sides of the road for almost the length of this ride.  The grade is sloped mostly down toward the UNC campus, but gently so your not flying down a steep hill. This does make for a very quick ride end to end.  The slowest part is the last half mile or so, which is a bit of a hill.  If you're lucky you'll catch the green light at the bottom of the hill and momentum will be your friend for the first part of the climb.  I travel this route faster than the heavily used busses, i.e. if I see an NS bus at Eubanks Road headed toward UNC, I will get to work before the bus gets to Manning Drive.


 From the intersection with Franklin Street my ride through campus is the same as my usual route.

My Usual Route (Erwin Road)

13.1 miles, about a 50 minute ride.


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So I'll start by describing my usual route to work. I'll be the first to admit this is not an ideal bike route. However, I have noticed more the number of bikes along this route rising since I started riding it three years ago. I used to pass the occasional rider once a week or so, now I am almost guaranteed to see another rider on every trip.  Here are descriptions of the four main parts of the trip.

Pickett Road

Pickett Road: Pickett is shoulderless, but traffic is relatively slow and there are few cars.  Traffic can be a problem around Garrett road and near Durham Academy at the beginning of school hours.  The surface is super nice because it was paved at the beginning of the summer 2010, unfortunately they neglected to widen it a little for bikes when they repaved.













Erwin Road: Erwin has a fairly wide shoulder, it's not a bike lane, but it is absolutely necessary for the speed and volume of the traffic you will encounter on Erwin. Erwin is definitely the route of choice for auto commuters avoiding 15-501. My ride includes only about 10 minutes on Erwin, which is too much if you ask me, I don't like biking on this road.

Erwin Road

Franklin Street: If you live in Chapel Hill and ride your bike, you've biked on Franklin Street. This the main artery through Chapel Hill. Coming from Durham, I ride Franklin almost from end to end. I join at the east end of Franklin where it begins as a four lane 35 mile per hour clusterfuck with all sorts of businesses and side streets on both sides. There is no bike lane and the gutter has some crazy storm drains that I'm sure could catch a bike wheel. Traffic is heavy during rush hour and cars are turning on and off, so you have to be very alert here.
     Eventually, you get past the business end of Franklin Street, and head toward the residential/campus end. After you cross Estes Drive you are past most of the businesses/malls but now you head up the eponymous hill. It's not that big a hill, my GPS data says about a 200 ft climb, but some days it seems to go on forever.

Campus: The final section of this route is through the UNC campus, which I will define as the top of the Franklin Street hill just described. The Franklin street speed limit drops as you approach campus, down to 20mph. I go right up to Columbia Street on Franklin. Franklin is kinda crazy on campus, but traffic is slow. You do have to dodge unloading delivery trucks, busses and thousands of students. The entire route through campus including Columbia and Pittsboro Streets is littered with busses, trucks and students. Trucks stop in the middle of Pittsboro street to unload goods for the Carolina Inn. There is also a good deal of construction through campus that robs us of our bike lanes.

As I said at the beginning, this route is not ideal. I will post some of my longer commutes that are safer, but longer.  They are also prettier routes!