43: coffee shop, smooth sailing, horse farms, manly church, highway 1, police, smooth sailing again, lunch at sky mart, uncle willie, flags, friendly people

April 29, 2025

Southern Pines to Sanford

Tonight I'm staying with my friend Jessica, a Social Worker with whom I worked at the VA in Iowa prior to her move to North Carolina. She doesn't get off work until 5:00 so I loitered in Southern Pines at a coffee shop until 1:00.

After slipping out of town on backroads, it was smooth sailing. Not only did I have a nice tailwind, it was mostly all downhill for the first eight miles so I did very little pedaling.

All of this came to an end after about 6-7 miles when I had to ride on Highway 1. Remember how terrible Highway 17 was in Georgia? It was like that, but with North Carolina drivers and more traffic.

There were two lanes going in each direction, separated by a median, and the speed limit was 60 mph. In some sections there was a small shoulder with shredded tires and broken glass, in others there wasn't enough to label it as a shoulder because of the rumble strip. I tried not to but, as a result of the debris or rumble strips, had to ride on the road at times. I took up my lane for a while, but because the cars would pass me anyway I realized that I needed to just move over as far as I could and keep an eye behind me. For the first time on this trip someone honked at me, once when they were ten feet behind me, then again as they were passing. I smiled and waved. It was somewhat intense.

Eventually, even with the noise and the blasting wind, I settled into a rhythm on the slim 1-foot-wide shoulder, ignoring the traffic as best as I could, and dodging the trash. I couldn't compete with the traffic.

After about ten minutes of this a police car, lights flashing, pulled up behind me. My first thought, obviously, was that I was probably speeding, but looking back I really don’t recall pedaling faster than the posted 60 mph speed limit. I mean, it’s possible but I sure don’t remember it.

Interestingly, in this picture, not a car in sight.

An officer got out and slowly approached. When he came up to me he said,
“I’ve received several calls that you were riding on the road.”
“Yes.” Then added, “When I have to.”
“I’m just concerned because this is such a busy road. There’ve been a number of accidents here.”
“Yes, I can imagine.” And had, all of them mine.
He wasn't giving me a hard time; he just seemed unsure of what to do.
“Could I take a look at your license?”
After giving it to him he retreated back to his patrol car for a few minutes, then returned.
"It's a really busy road... several calls." A pause. "I checked the NCDOT and you do have the same right of way as a vehicle. And you'll need to be riding safely, with appropriate equipment." He looked at my bike, with the flashing taillight, and my Hi-Viz vest.

He seemed befuddled about what to do. On the one hand, he didn't want me to be the victim of an accident, whether from compassion or the amount of paperwork that would ensue (I suspect the former). On the other hand, his office did receive several calls...

We both just stood there, not saying much, until an idea came to him.

“Did you know that Business 1 runs parallel to this? There's not much traffic on it.”

I didn’t, but quickly pulled up google maps. Indeed, there was a road parallel that runs all the way to 27, and I could bypass the rest of this entire section of Highway 1.

“I like this,” I said eagerly, “because I actually don't want to die.

“For the safety of everyone, it’s a better road.”

And I completely agree. I shudder to think of the damage I could inflict on someone restrained by seat belts surrounded by 2 tons of metal who hit me. It’s unthinkable.

I asked him for his name (“Lt. Miller”) and thanked him for his help. Once back in the car he drove slowly behind me in the right lane with his flashers on, protecting me from the passing cars. When we arrived at the intersection to turn left, he blocked both lanes, then again with the oncoming traffic on the opposite side. After that, he followed me to Business 1 to make sure I didn't miss it. As I turned right I gave him a thumbs up (actually, it was a single thumb up because I needed my other hand to stay on the handlebars) and he turned back to Southern Pines.

I couldn't believe the difference. No cars, and the only thing I could hear were the birds. Why didn't I get routed this way?!?!?

I decided to stop for lunch in Cameron. This was taken at 2:40.

So I ended up stopping a few miles up the road at the Sky Mart convenience store. I scouted around for something healthy and, knowing better, I checked out the "carrot cake."

Not only is sugar the first ingredient, just to make sure you get enough empty calories they toss in some high fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, and dextrose. I remembered that I had a banana and some crackers with cheese in my handlebar bag so I ate those. With a slushie.

Good old Uncle Willie. We should name a street after him.

The steepest grade today was 12%, but it wasn't sustained.

I have to say, the people in Jess's neighborhood are really friendly. Green Way and Trail Way were nice, but the people on this street were particularly nice, almost all of them honking, waving, and shouting greetings.

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Rich FrasierMark - Looking at that route, I think you could have made some less dangerous choices on roads. Are you using something like Komoot or Google Maps to generate your routes? When I look at your route in the Route Planner in RideWithGPS (OSM Cycle Map Layer selected and heat maps turned on), it shows no bike traffic at all on Highway 1 - an ominous sign. All the bike traffic is on that road that Officer Friendly put you onto. It would have taken you a bit out of the way to get to it - maybe that's why you didn't choose it? FWIW - I use the heatmaps all the time to tell me where the locals choose to ride. Good riding to not get clobbered in that situation. Sounds super-scary!!
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1 month ago

Mark BinghamTo Rich FrasierI’ve determined what the problem is, and will post about it before too long.
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1 month ago

Today's ride: 32 miles (51 km)
Total: 1,163 miles (1,872 km)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	13
Comment on this entry	Comment	6

Jeff LeeAt the risk of being a "monday morning quarterback", this is how I would have routed it:

Leave Southern Pines on Pee Dee Road, then Camp Easter Road, then Holly Street to Vass.

Leave Vass on Cypress Church Road, cross 1, then Atkins Road to Carthage Street, then use the last part of your route.

In general, I believe that the most direct route is rarely the best bike route in the eastern US. If you're willing to zig zag like I do, it's easier to avoid unpleasantly busy roads
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1 month ago

Mark BinghamTo Jeff LeeThat's also how I would've routed it. I don't think the guy who did knows much.
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1 month ago

marilyn swettWe had a similar encounter with the local law enforcement when touring along the Gulf Coast. In order to reach a hotel we had booked, we had to ride across a long bridge. There were vehicles but nothing different from other roads we'd been on. A cop came up behind us, flashing his lights and slowly followed us over. I thought - "nice, he's giving us a buffer from the cars". We stopped on the other side of the bridge and he came up to us saying that he'd run our license plate. Now, we ride a tandem and just for fun we had mounted the license plate of our former car because it was a vanity plate with a cyclist on it. Anyway, he commented that our bike clearly wasn't a Suburu! And that we shouldn't have been on this bridge slowing down vehicles and possibly created an accident, but taken another one that would have had less traffic. Hmmm - sorry officer, we didn't know that. He ended up slowly following us to the hotel with his flashing lights where he wished us a safe tour.
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1 month ago

Jeff LeeTo Mark BinghamHi Mark, since I know that you are using RWGPS, I was curious about why your were on that terrible "1" highway.

I opened up an empty tab with RWGPS on my computer (without your route already loaded), and manually clicked on your starting point in Southern Pines, and your ending point in that development on the lake.

As I expected, RWGPS made a route similar to what I would have done manually, zig zagging on country roads, and completely avoiding "1".

That makes me wonder - are you not letting RWGPS figure out the route for you, at least as a way to get an initial idea for the route? I think that's the intended usage, or at least how I've always seen it used. I usually let it figure out a route between two points, where it always avoided busy roads, and then look at it to make sure its route does not have a lot of dirt and gravel. You probably will have to check the route it makes to make sure, but one thing it almost always does is keep you off busy roads.

FYI - Google Maps is a lot less reliable at that. To the point where I don't use Google Maps for bike route making at this point.
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1 month ago

Mark BinghamTo Jeff LeeI think I figured out the issue. More later.
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1 month ago

Mark BinghamTo marilyn swettSome of them are nice, and some.... less so. I had another incident involving a state trooper:
https://tinyurl.com/h8s88vxw
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1 month ago