*GEORGIA* Hotlanta, here we come!

"THE WHOLE IDEA is to get people out here doing something different," said Bill Moll - Bike!Walk!Northwest Georgia mover and shaker, Southern Bicycling League treasurer, 3-D aficionado, blueberry grower ... and longtime 2x  Friday owner (pictured right, with Pocket Llama in progress).

I was one of six "adventurers" invited by Bill and Bike!Walk!Northwest Georgia to spread the get-up-and-go gospel in the far flung corners of the state. "We want to change the perception that stuff only happens in Atlanta," he said. As we soon discovered, he's got his labor of love cut out for him ...

Bicycling was well represented in the roster - speakers included the Metal Cowboy aka Joe Kurmaskie, and Bike Friday adventurette of 100+ countries (and still counting) Betsy Schwartz.

My one-day engagement consisting of a bike ride and presentation of 16,000 Feet on a Friday ballooned into a crammed, three day cook's tour the moment Bike Friday Club of Atlanta co-leader Brenda Carlton got wind of it.  View the "flat out like a lizard drinking" schedule, as we say downunder. 

Bike Friday folks are a fascinating bunch ... perhaps because their bikes aren't "mainstream". Bill showed me his museum-level collection of historic 3-D viewers ranging from those small red plastic ViewMasters we all owned as kids, to impressive floor models that practically transport you to the steps of the Great Pyramid complete with scarab beetles nipping at your toes. He then prepared a breakfast of hand ground flour (red wheat) pancakes studded with poolside-picked blueberries while I prepared the Princess Pink tikit for our 1pm ride. Way to go, daddy-o! 

Hotter than hell in a heatwave ... Bill's 40-mile round trip from Rome to Cave Spring at rotisserie hour attracted an apparently childless hardcore handful with zero pressing Father's Day plans. The completely unscheduled 100 degree heat had me plotting and scheming all the way to walk into the water fully clothed, as I did once in a Mexican cenote, SIDI bike shoes be damned. And that's just what I did, despite stares from the pint sized tots wading around me. A large gold star must go to Luis, a 60 something granddad on a somewhat inappropriately geared racing bike whose only previous ride was a flat 20 miles. Bill, your work was complete right there. One rider drove 65 miles from Atlanta and another, on a luxe Bacchetta Aero, talked endlessly of buying a Bike Friday. One thing I have learned about Bike Friday Club rides over the past 8 years: though the turnout may be small by bike club standards - say, half a dozen riders - the "interesting" and "interested in a Friday" rating of the attendees is high.

Half way back we spotted a church with an effigy of a Kangaroo out front - a welcome to the Evangelist from downunder? 

Rome wasn't built in a day ... and adventure converts aren't made overnight. My 16,000 Feet on a Friday Peru show attracted a small but attentive crowd if you count the garden gnome out front who had to leave part way through. But at least we've planted the seed of 'adventuring outside one's own zip code'. 

Rome does have yuppie oasis potential - a canny gentrification buff with semi-deep pockets has started restoring many of the storefronts. The only thing that could prevent it from becoming the next Marfa, Texas will be the fatal omission of downtown mixed use living. Let's hope it doesn't suffer that same fateful oversight that befell downtown Eugene Oregon! 

Atlanta: little wheels in the big smoke. Sunday opened with the regular 17 mile downtown spin with the Southern Bicycle League. Bill boasted that he could get his Llama out of the suitcase and ready to ride in 5 minutes and chided me mercilessly as I carefully unpacked the tikit for the first time - with different demo bikes being sold out from under my butt, I don't necessarily get to commune with my Friday like seasoned owners. He was still trying to remember how to pop on the older-style SRAM clickbox as I made a mess of myself scarfing a large, juicy peach before gathering to depart. Some things are worth committing to memory! If you have an iphone you can always Google for the adjusting the SRAM clickbox video on the Bike Friday Service section of the website, or call our 24 hour BF Service number. Um, that's what I do when I can't remember stuff. 

A couple of Fridays showed up - a gunmetal AirGlide (where did you go? You escaped my camera) and a canary yellow-right-down-to-the-fenders Friday ridden by a beaming Craig Wright. Some, like lawyer Jay Solomon (pictured),  even dared take Brenda's oranges'n'lemons Crusoe a Friday for a spin. Now there's a man of substance! 

The carbon connexion were very friendly and polite, apparently breaking away to their usual sprint pace only after letting my Princess Pink 8-speed tikit tag along 'til the first re-group stop. If only I'd brought along a Speeding tikit ... 

After gorging on Korean-style sushi, we headed to REI for my Route66 by Bicycle show. The turnout here was more promising, and included Pocket Rocket owner and harpist Cheryl and other folks from the fold. Did you eat the whole 72 oz steak? someone asked - still the most frequent question after this movie is shown, despite a clear shot of the gristle-filled garbage bin near my feet. Thanks to REI events organizer Jamie Fergerson for welcoming me, even though my Bike Friday doesn't begin to resemble a Novara. I guess they know that we buy all our other gear from them. Why, the Ex-Officio knickers I swear by came from REI.com, and with the very kind gift cert Jamie presented me with, I'll be covering my butt with even more, so to speak ...

The final gig of the day was my slideshow talk of The Handsomest Man in Cuba for the women-roadie Sorella Cycling Club. It so happens that several readers have since visited with my book in hand and tracked down the people I stayed with in the book, including .. the Handeomest Man in Cuba! Read my Cuba blog for the skinny on that. A few attendees even invested in my signature, made in New York Traffic Cone Bag. The recession must be lifting! Thanks so much to Gwyneth Lodge for hosting in her magnificent house with the coolest wall art ever - 4 impressive steeds mounted in the wall.

Peachtree City: golfcart central

Monday's festivities took place 25 miles south of Atlanta in the oft-cited, planned community of Peachtree City. We're talking 100 miles of paved trails meandering through golf courses, man-made lakes and forests. And the primary form of transportation? Electric golf carts. All businesses must provide parking space for these electric powered, urban dune buggies. Apparently the city is quite the enclave for pilots, as the airport is but a propellar turn away. Bike Friday pilots, take note!

At 7:00am Brenda shook me from a panoramic dream, loaded up her TravelTrailer with my chattels and and we pedaled off to the lake where I conducted a yoga for cyclists class - part of my 200 hour teacher training certification at Joschi Yoga Institute, New York. Participants included Mariano, a guy (yay!) from the local running club, and Flo, a yoga teacher of nine years standing.

I've done a lot of reading about the 1-dimensional, front to back nature of cycling, which, unlike more "lateral" activities like skating and dancing, makes us vulnerable to misalignment, for example, in the knee. Read my bike fit article about Andy Pruitt and crunchy knees.  However, if you think about it, almost all our daily activities are conducted in that plane - eating, driving, reading, walking, running, hiking, computer work, knitting, even swimming. Why? Probably because our eyes are in front. Then there's the shoulder-rounding, semi-foetal position of performance cycling, not to mention inadequate stretching ... we need help!

"Well I certainly learned something," said Flo the yoga teacher, after several grassy down dog tunings.  Mariano was grateful for my crayola descriptions of the basics to achieve good alignment. I think teaching beginners is in my future, because after fine tuning a few downdogs and Warrior positions, time just disappeared ...

We yogis then set off on a delightful spin, sharing the path with some very young golfcarters who'd do well to git their prepubescent tails on a bicycle.  Take a peek at the photo gallery above for shots of the peachy surrounds of Peachtree City.

At noon I showed Route 66 and talked about the making of such a handlebar movie with at a "Lunch and Learn" organized by Brenda (she's surely an event organizer in a past life). 

Then at 7pm, we screened a repeat performance 16,000 Feet on a Friday movie hosted by TREK concept store, Bike Center. Some real Friday fanatics showed up: Kevin Fitzgerald (last seen on RAGBRAI 07 and all over YouTube) with his Classic Friday, Lt Col Jim Gibson (an original BF Club of Hawaii member and one of our armed forces fold) with his Twin Air Q lashed to the tray of his pickup, and BF Club of Atlanta co-leader Eric Chatham, last seen on Desert Camp 08. Thanks to Alex and store owner Willard for welcoming us with food and their luxe HD TV, even though again, a Bike Friday no more resembles a TREK than an REI Novara ... "we fix 'em all," said Alex. 

Finally, the hangers-on all headed for a celebratory pitcher at Taco Mac, home of 300 beers and more flat screen televisions that Circuit City. Ah, this is America ... 

Thanks to Bill Moll, Brenda Carlton, and all my gracious venue hosts for helping spread the GreenGear gospel in Georgia. - LC

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