Lullwater Shade Tunnel

When I go to heaven, it's going to be like this. I'm riding my bike along a quiet road with a few other walkers and cyclists, the sun is filtered by a tunnel of trees, the air is cool and crisp, except the left-most portion of the image won't be a little out of focus. I rushed to get the pedestrian in the photo before the traffic came by and captured the wrong focal distance on the first frame of my stitched panorama.

This is Lullwater. Even the name is restful. It's part of my daily commute and one of the big reasons I start my commute by heading in the opposite direction of the office. It runs by a creek and on the other side of the creek and trees is a golf course. This shade tunnel stays cool even at the height of summer.

At night, the lack of streetlights gives you the impression you're far away from town. That's when I like to run along this road and listen to the creatures in the woods.

In this image, you should find the bridge crossing the creek. The small concrete bridge isn't as easy to pick out as the weight-limit sign at its foot. There is also an approaching cyclist. I didn't catch the other cyclist that was 50 yards behind.

For those that are movie buffs, this is just down the road from the house they filmed for "Driving Miss Daisy". There may have been some shots along this stretch in the movie.

Certainly the moments and impressions I treasure have changed over the years, but making my way along this road has always been a favorite.

Commute Summary

Round Trip Distance: 17.4
Number of Cyclists seen: 23
In-bound Route: Lullwater/PATH trail
Out-bound Route: Emory via Clifton
Weather: Wow! Sky goes all the way up and cool, crisp air. What a break from last week.

Is this not Spring in Atlanta?

Commute Summary

Round Trip Distance: 11.6
Number of Cyclists seen: 9
In-bound Route: Lullwater/PATH trail
Out-bound Route: Piedmont Park
Weather: Drizzly, cold clouds, fog in the morning, rain in the afternoon.

Pink Snow

 

Despite the cold drizzly weather, the trees continue to bloom. Here's a shower of pink covering the sidewalk at John Howell Park in Virginia-Highland.

Here's a wider angle shot.

Bradford Pears are Blooming

 

This intersection at Central Park and Ralph McGill is one of a few intersections on my daily commute that coincides with the course for the Tour de Georgia Circuit race April 27. (Barry has added some interesting commentary to this route in bikely.com.) Cyclists will make a right turn and pass from right to left in this image.

I took this photo to put a date on the first blooming of the Bradford Pear trees.

Commute Summary

Round Trip Distance: 15.2
Number of Cyclists seen: 15 (outside of rush hour on both ends)
In-bound Route: Lullwater/PATH trail
Out-bound Route: (abbreviated) Emory via Clifton
Weather: Sunny and Mild - Should have worn shorts

A Fun, Social, Recreational Christmas Tree Ride

There was nothing utility about this ride. Pure recreation.


When I was growing up, I calculated the speed at which a single Santa would have to fly and deduced that there must be a whole army of Santa's. We had two assigned to leading our ride.

In keeping with Christmas Tree Bicycle tradition, we also had reindeer and elves.



Cycling Santa was good about leading us to houses with lots of lights, to friends with lights and refreshments, and to bars where he could get us free shots of Jaegermeister. We must have been good cyclists this past year.

More photos here.

Slow, Steady Train

Despite the number of different people I see riding the Wednesday Bike Train route, I'm not sure we'll ever have even 10 people riding together. On the other hand, our Sunday Morning group ride often carried much fewer than 10 for several years. Now we typically get at least a dozen and a couple dozen on good days. The encouraging news is there has only been one day out of the last 7 weeks that no one joined me on the ride.

This morning I was accompanied by Amy, a Ga Tech student studying Civil Engineering. She has a full appreciation of communities whose amenities are within easy walking and cycling distance. It is an idea whose time has come.

I haven't posted a panorama in a while. I had made a few recent attempts, but this is the only one that I've been pleased with.



The bridge in the lower right-hand corner reminds me of the winter of 1982. I was a student at Tech at the time and we were in the middle of Snow Jam. A sudden afternoon snow storm caught many people downtown and everybody joined in a big party across the city. All the roads were blocked with stranded cars so lots of people were walking everywhere.

Several of my best memories occurred during those few snowed-in days, but the "sledding" day is near the top. We took sheets of linoleum down to Candler Park (pictured here) and slid down the 1/4 mile hill that ended at the bridge you see in the panorama. We tried over and over to steer a sheet of slippery flatness across that bridge without falling into the water. The hill is out of view to the right of the bridge.

Most of the steering involved picking the initial fall line because the best you could do with your feet or hands was keep your head facing the trees you wanted to avoid. About half-way down the slope was a ridge you would disappear over. On Graham's turn, we watched him disappear over the ridge and then turned our eyes to watch if he would cross the bridge. We didn't see exactly what happened, but what we could see gave us a pretty good idea. One of the dogwood trees whose top was all we could see, had the snow shaken loose. This observation fit well with our next observation: an empty piece of linoleum sliding across the bridge.

Commute Summary

Round Trip Distance: 17.8
Number of Cyclists seen: 37 - A very good number
In-bound Route: Wednesday Bike Train
Out-bound Route: Emory via Clifton
Weather: 57 in AM, 70s in afternoon. Mostly sunny.

Counting Cyclists

Evan recently posted in his Atlanta By Bike blog about the pollen that has been dumped on Atlanta and this ties in with my photo documenting one way I can count how many cyclists are ahead of me on the road. You can see several bike tracks in the pollen. What I'll do next year is take another photo and compare how many tracks I find.

I was in Intown Bicycles on Monday replacing a tire and was talking with owner Mike Goodman about the number of cyclists. He says his sales season is getting off to a great start and he's hearing stories about more commuters hitting the roads. Maybe we are reaching a tipping point.

Excessively nice mornings

This morning is so frickin' gorgeous, I, I ... I'm afraid I'm just gonna have to sing.



I'm trying to make everyone jealous who doesn't get to ride their bike on mornings like this. Photos stitched from multiple images taken this morning on my way in. I was lucky to catch a fellow commuter at the right side of the image above.

Looking at these images makes me want to go right back out there again. Maybe tomorrow.

Tree that Babe Ruth put a baseball in

Yesterday I ran an errand on my way home from work. Looking for better bike access to the shopping center, I wound my way along the tracks behind the shopping center, and came across the Center-Field Magnolia.

The story behind this tree concerns the Atlanta Crackers, their ballpark, and the only ground rule in baseball history that included a tree in center field.

The shopping center has been built on the grounds of Atlanta's old Ponce de Leon Park, home of the Atlanta Crackers. The stands were taken down when Atlanta built Fulton County Stadium as part of bringing the Braves to Atlanta and now we have a shopping center.

While searching for a photo of the tree sitting in center-field, I came across the blog of another local who has run across the tree.

I also came across this aerial photo probably taken around 1960. This photo shows the ballpark's orientation relative to the large building now used as City Hall East, and also known as the old Sears Building. The magnolia is probably the tree that can barely be seen at the lower right corner.

One of the merchants in the shopping center has placed this plaque at the base of the tree. It doesn't mention Babe Ruth, but this article does.

Intown Canopies

Many visitors to Atlanta remark how many trees we have, and compared to most cities, we do have a lot.

Perhaps Atlantans should emphasize the cycling assets we do have instead of getting ourselves discouraged with what we don't have.

These two images of the same trees were taken in February and September from the corner of Durant and 6th looking north. They remind me of a cathedral.