Tag: bicycling

A warren of devilishly good trails—and a bike memorial of mysterious provenance—keep me coming back to Atlanta's Southside Park.

My late father taught me how to ride a bike, and my late husband taught me how to enjoy it. The legacy continues with my kids.

Jarrod’s Place Bike Park is the brainchild of two thrill-seeking buddies with disparate dreams for the same industry. It celebrated its first anniversary May 7. And it’s already established itself—without really trying to—as an international destination, an anomaly in a burgeoning sport, and a boon for one of Georgia’s poorest counties.

Atlanta is hilly and addicted to cars. But it’s a great place to ride a bicycle and is only getting better with more trails, more bike lanes, and more riders, proving that old car-dependent adage doesn’t have to last forever.

Like all cyclists in Atlanta, Black folks who ride bicycles are accustomed to irate car horns and hurled expletives. But it’s also not uncommon for them to receive a surprisingly warm reception—an encouraging gratitude that even the United States’ first cycling world champion, a Black man named Marshall “Major” Taylor, was denied during the height of his career at the turn of the 20th century.

When you outgrow riding in your neighborhood and on the well-trodden BeltLine, metro Atlanta presents a wealth of places to explore (or just get lost) on two wheels.

Long bike rides during the pandemic didn’t just introduce me to new spots or bring me closer with friends; they forced me to process how I could find the spaces in hardship where I could grow, get lost in thoughts about life, and reframe my challenges.

Atlanta’s springtime weather, homebound remote workers, and bicycle shops made bicycling more attractive than ever before for newcomers and experienced cyclists alike. So local bike shops did their best to keep up.

Can you ever feel comfortable letting children bike solo around a city with countless hills and roaring cars, one that’s still recovering from generations of autocentric planning? Is that traditional rite-of-passage still safe? Absolutely.

From easy rides to heart-stopping climbs, metro Atlanta and beyond have plenty of places to get lost on two wheels.