Intown Atlanta Hill Documentation

 

I had mentioned in a recent post about one of my -- I really don't know a good word that describes it -- frivolous routes, that I wanted to show the hills better. Evan likes gmap, and Apertome mentioned that bikely.com's elevation profile works pretty good (850 feet of climb on this route). What I'm after IS visual, but in a different way.

It's my DIY helmet cam. Duct tape is prominently featured, but this is pretty much a stiff metal base with a 1/4" thread bolt attached and then the whole thing is taped to a spare (if not somewhat out-dated) helmet. I'll have a tether attached in case of accidental detachment, but initial testing shows a low likelihood of this occurring.

I've practiced starting and stopping of recording without taking the helmet off and will be conducting road tests before long. Then we'll see some of Atlanta's hills as they are experienced.

Cyclists can benefit from Urban Sprawl

Whether you've never visited Atlanta or lived here for 30 years, you can't help but notice how spread out it is. There are no natural boundaries, so new sub-divisions keep springing up further and further out from the city's center.

The average commute by car exceeds 30 miles -- for years I traveled close to this distance daily -- which was further than a trip to our family's summer home from the house where I grew up.

The spread is bad for air quality and also the quality of the commute, but it also means lots of roads to explore on bike.

We rode southeast of town this morning along some familiar roads, but also several roads I've never been on. There's a 50-mile loop that takes us through 4 counties that we like. It only takes about 30 minutes to get out of the city and onto low-traffic roads with lots of shade. Coming back, there is a substantial amount of climbing along River Road and Bouldercrest, so we tried finding a different route back into town. This brought us down a whole set of roads I've never traveled down, lakes I've never seen, High Schools I've only heard of, and neighborhoods with different personalities.

What I find impressive is I've lived here 30 years, we ride almost every week, and we're going down new roads all the time. SO many roads, so little time.

Even though so many people have to drive so far to get to work, it is a delight to discover new places to go and new roads to ride.

Oh, we did have to make up that elevation eventually, so we only managed to substitute one set of hills for another. White Oak needs to go on our Dirty Dozen list of hills.

Color-coded Elevation of Routes in Google Earth

One of the reasons I was considering a GPS was to get a better picture of the elevation I was gaining on my rides around town. I've learned that most GPS aren't accurate enough to be useful so I looked for alternatives.

Since all my riding is on-road, I can easily create a track of my route using bikely.com, but the elevation information had some problems. Sometimes it wasn't available at all and when it was available, it wasn't always accurate. In any case, I couldn't export the elevation information to make corrections or perform calculations.

I recently learned about an online tool called GPS Visualizer. This has a set of tools that allow working with the tracks created in bikely.com. The result is Google Earth file that shows color-coded elevations along the route set against a 3D view of the earth's surface in reasonably good detail. The file JacksNicakjack.kmz covers the route we rode this past Sunday. Red is the lowest elevation and purple the highest. The ridge along Pebblebrook stands out nicely even without lowering the eye-level so you can see the hills.

I'll post other routes and the steps for creating these files in a later post.

Long Ride - Fall Version

The Friday after Thanksgiving is always a good day for a long ride away from the malls. The Silver Comet Trail allowed me to put sufficient distance between myself and distracted drivers.


I wanted to explore a different route across I-285 to get to the Silver Comet. I chose a route that took me into a neighborhood that I knew was hilly. I just didn't imagine it would be granny-gear hilly for so many hills. There were several 100-200m stretches of >15% grade. Of course I got turned around and had to go up and down more than I bargained for. Particular painful were the stop signs at the bottom of the hill. I won't recommend this route.

Besides the hills, what I found striking about that neighborhood was no one was outdoors. I saw four people. All of them were getting in their car. How well could these people know their neighbors? It felt colder than the temperature.

I had wanted to ride at least 60 miles which would have taken me past Hiram. I would go out and see what kind of time I was making against the wind. I reached Dallas, GA after milepost 19, and realized I was only 3.5 miles from the Pumpkinvine Creek Trestle. This trestle was the highest point above the ground and would have an expansive view. I was ready for more miles.

I was surprised to find so much housing in view of the trestle. This was disappointing because the developer was the "trees must go" sort of developer. I guess we don't have to go far to find 3rd-world deforestation. The trestle was still nice.

At this point, I was within striking distance of the Brushy Mountain Tunnel at milepost 31 even though this would take my ride beyond 90 miles for the day. I had not seen the tunnel and I still felt good, so I rode on.

Beyond milepost 27 or so, the trail enters a State Wildlife Management area and the terrain becomes noticeably more contorted. The trail stays at an even grade while the land rises and falls above and below the trail. You'll be riding through a cut in the rock and then 2-3 hundred meters further you're looking down into a deep ravine. This was worth riding 80-90 miles to see. Not even a video would do this justice.




The Brushy Mountain Tunnel is bigger than I imagined. There is room for two lanes of traffic inside and tall vehicles that would have trouble with interstate overpasses would have no height problem in the tunnel.

The outbound headwind did not switch directions for my ride back in, and I had an easy time raising my average speed although I wasn't working as hard. As I came back into Smyrna, I found that I was able to clearly see Stone Mountain about 25-30 miles distant. Days that clear are getting fewer and fewer in Atlanta.

Adding variations to the commuting routes

I've wanted a few more miles during the week so I decided to expand my commute routes to include a little more distance. In-bound, I added the big hill that approaches the Centers for Disease Control along Clifton Road from the west. It's a bigger hill than I remember. I think I've only climbed it once or twice before. It rises 175 feet over half a mile for a 7% grade. It's nice and steady though so other than the length, it wasn't too bad. Working hard early in the ride did mess me up for the rest of the ride. Hill profile shown here:



On the way back, I swung south to Grant Park home of the Zoo and Cyclorama. I had never taken the Cherokee Road crossing of I-20, and wanted to see it's attraction to other cyclists. It's not a bad route for those coming from Grant Park up to downtown and midtown.

Breathed in another insect on the way home in about the same spot as before. This one got swallowed, but only after scratching around my throat for a few miles. I'd been wanting to add a little variety to my diet.

Commute Summary

Round Trip Distance: 20.5
Number of Cyclists seen: 27 (new record)
In-bound Route: Emory/PATH
Out-bound Route: Grant Park
Weather: Sunny warmth seems to bring the people out.

Single Speed?

If I didn't have hills like these around my house, I might ride a fixed gear bike. Sure, this hill would be great for working on my buns of steel, but I have to also think about my knees of rust.

This hill is on Stillwood headed east, right before crossing into Dekalb County. It's not very long, but it is steep enough to kill momentum and makes a great warm-up in any gear.

The morning was so nice, I took several shots. This shot of a Bradford Pear shows a branch that would brush my helmet as I pass under. The image is now my computer's desktop image.