Sunday, a couple of the OGRE’s set out to find an open road or two. The plan was simple. Go that north until the odometer said 35 miles, then turn around and come home. It wasn’t an overly complex plan, but it did overlook a detail. North from Atlanta also means up hill. At least uphill biased as the terrain climbs into the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. The net result? 70 miles, 4000 feet of climbing, 4 deer, 5 counties, a couple of dumb passes, a lot of water, and some interesting thoughts on how to sell bike safety.

We got an early start, and focused on roads that are heavily travelled by bicycles, as we worked out way north. As we moved from county to county, it was interesting to see the different levels of signage and support for the bicycles. Along the route, it was curious to see that none of the roads had true bike lanes and only one of the counties even bothered to have “Share the Road” signage. That said, we did see a lot of other cyclists out on the roads, and experienced a low number of poor car/bike interactions on the day, with only one meep meep of a horn and 2 instances of poor judgement passing.

As always, riding with the OGREs, there is a lot of chatting along the way. The topics range, but making the roads safer for runners and cyclists is a common thread.

Over the last few months, we have concluded that there is a deep need to build a grass roots effort to get this done. Our municipal governments simply aren’t focused on bikes and foot traffic right now. So it falls to us to get it done. So the next task, is to build something that enables us to ‘get it done’.