Wishing you #PizzaOnEarth this holiday season (and a reminder that #BikesMeanBusiness, and bike racks let us know our business is welcome and wanted). See you in 2022! (I’m still posting on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter for another week or so, if you want to follow.)
UPDATE 1: I had such a stunning ride on this little pizza trip that I created a Ridespot Story about it. I’ll reprint it here for you:
“Checking on the Garden” Ride
It’s always good to have a destination as an excuse to ride my bike. On Saturdays, I check on a garden plot I’m growing in a community garden for refugees. I ride from one great bike city (Decatur, Georgia) to another (Clarkston, Georgia). Lots of nice things happen. Today I even got to visit a really nice Holiday Market. Oh, and the garden is doing great! I wish Ridespot would let me add TikToks so I could show you things more dynamically! Visit @SpeedOfBike on TikTok to see what I mean!
This is the garden plot of my Burmese garden neighbor. Isn’t it gorgeous? You can see my plot, which is a Sharing Garden, on TikTok at SpeedOfBike.
The garden is a project from the Friends of the Refugees nonprofit and is named The Jolly Avenue Garden for Refugees. Jolly Avenue in perpendicular to the PATH (which runs from Atlanta to Stone Mountain — many, many miles) when it veers onto a side street through this most diverse city in the USA. See TravelingAtTheSpeedOfBike.com/routes for a Ridespot tour of Clarkston (and another of Decatur!).
Yes, I went to the top of a parking deck in Decatur to get this vantage point. Decatur makes me drool with the stuff they are doing for accessibility. It’s the only city where I regularly see people in wheelchairs, by the way, out and about safely traveling. You can’t tell from the photo but the green lanes are raised to sidewalk height and separated from the roadway. I have two TikToks about this at SpeedOfBike. There’s also a gorgeous two-way cycle track, a major multiuse path, and more. Even more impressive, the culture in Decatur has been bike-supportive for many years. It’s the only place I ride where drivers stop when I’m still like half a block away. Note: I was hired this city to teach Seniors-on-Trikes, an Earn-a-Bike program and bike rodeos as a League Cycling Instructor. That’s when I became Coach Pattie!
This is a free fridge with fresh food available for anyone who needs it.
Refugee Coffee has become the de facto town center for the City of Clarkston. The fun part? It’s a repurposed old gas station! Just imagine what corners across the USA could be like if spaces got repurposed for people the way Refugee Coffee has! The Holiday Market was a vibe — see my TikTok at SpeedofBike.
SO many oyster shells from this restaurant. I talked with one of the cooks who was out harvesting in the kitchen garden and he said they actually recycle the shells back at oyster farms for baby oysters. I don’t know — these have been here or ages, they smell, and they are covered with flies.
#BikesMeanBusiness, and bike racks tell us our business is welcome and wanted. Thanks (as usual), Fellini’s!
UPDATE 2: Top blog posts of 2021 revealed! If interested in reading specific posts, stop the video to read the title and search in this blog’s search box.
UPDATE 3: See more “Best of 2021” winners on my Twitter feed, with links to posts.
Traveling at the Speed of Bike 