Biking to the Coast

Yesterday I set a new personal record for miles biked. The distance from Raleigh to Wilmington (specifically my house to my brother's house) is 130 miles. I knew if I left around 6am, I could make it before sundown, and I arrived with an hour to spare. The journey wasn't easy, but at least I discovered some inspiring things along the way.

First off, there is a nice little town called Benson along the way. They had a community event with local business selling their wares and non-profits fight cancer. It's nice to know that small towns can fight the big battles too. I enjoyed a tap dancing show and a couple sausage biscuits before continuing southeast towards Wilmington.

Never have I seen so many cotton fields, wheat fields and farms in general. I noticed nearly every farm followed the same pattern with two trucks. I suppose one is a utility truck, while the other is for cruising around town. The latter being more of a show off truck, I thought that was a bit uneccessary. There was a trend in general with multiple cars residing with each home. Country folks sure do love their cars. I guess they don't see the downsides of them yet. Owning and driving cars seems to be fine in a sparsely populated area, but once you build a city and population density reaches a certain threshold, you start to have problems with pollution, space allocation, traffic, and accidents.

Since I learned about Google's campaign to build autonomous cars, I've been a big advocate of them since they solve most of the problems I mentioned. You can read my short story on my vision of the ride sharing enonomy of 2030. Still, biking instead of driving is the greenest solution in my opinion. No fuel costs, no global warming, and best of all, its a great way to stay in shape!