10 The Tar Heel Thursday, June 9, 1977
Cyclists ride scenic backroads of red clay
n a bright Sunday
afternoon Gordon
Sumerel led a bicycle
expedition to the
north of Chapel Hill
on Old 86. This writer,
decided to take the
challenge and went
along for the ride.
"It's an easy 17 miles," Sumerel told us.
"Mostly flat lands. I'll be riding slow since I
haven't been out in a while."
With that, our group of five riders left the
hallowed Old Well. After passing through
Carrboro we were in the country within five
minutes. Soon we reached Calvander, which
is a deserted two-pump gas station at a fork
in the road. To the right was Old 86 and to
the left Orange Grove Rd. We took the road
Carmichael-
name. I could call Mary Alice Smith's
mother to tell her that her daughter was fine.
"I imagine a lot of people said, 'What's
that fool woman doing when she should be
doing her job, but it saved many a mother a
lot of worry."
Though she has remained in Chapel Hill
for three decades, Miss Carmichael has
shaken the sand out of her shoes several
times to travel and teach. Twice she has
taught in the Orient, first in 1951-52 as a
Fulbright lecturer at Philippine Normal
College and later in 1961-62 as a Smith
Mundt professor at the University of Saigon
in South Vietnam.
Remembering the time in Vietnam brings
back some of her most loving and yet most
painful memories. "1 was first in Saigon in
1 952, when the French occupied the country.
The roof of the Opera House had just been
bombed, but it was still the Paris of the
Orient."
But things changed greatly in 1961, when
she arrived to teach. Miss Carmichael speaks
of this time slowly with her eyes closed, as if
seeing it all again.
"The city had doubled in size, and many
sectors were being settled by Northern
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to the left and would loop around and return
on the other one.
"The cars are friendly today."
"Are they usually hostile?"
"Well, it depends who's driving really."
We rode in a 2-1-2 formation spread out in
our lane on the deserted road. If a car
approached from behind we collapsed to a
single file and kept to the edge until the car
passed.
This was red clay country we were
traveling through. The clay is seen in the high
banks on the side of the road and in the open
fields where the six-inch high corn grows.
Some fields are covered with tall grass but
the muddy red clay is beneath it all the same.
In the middle of many of these fields an old
weatherbeaten barn with a rusty tin roof
stood sentinel over the crops. Farm houses
set back from the road were surrounded by
groves of oak and magnolia. Muddy country
roads branched off leading to the outback of
the American South where good ole' boys go
hunting and fishing. At the edge of the fields
rise tall green woods that sometimes stick
out like fingers between the fields.
The sun and fresh air hit our faces and
blew through our hair in one continuous
rush along the road. We could feel every
bump in the raod and watch the countryside
roll slowly aside instead of seeing it as a 60
MPH blur from the windows of a car.
Where do these trips begin? The bicycle
excursions are established by Cynthia
Summers of the Chapel Hill Recreation
Department. Cyclists leave the Old Well
every Sunday at 1 p.m. to travel into the
country. Each group is led by an experienced
rider who selects the route. Some of the
leaders are Gordon Sumerel (of the Clean
Machine); Jim Rumfelt (Clean Machine),
Dave Whitten (Chapel Hill Cycle Shop) and
Butch Baily (Baily Realty). If you want
information on the trips it's a good idea to
get in touch with the leaders beforehand.
Cycling Trips for June
12 10-15 miles led by Gordon Sumerel &
Jim Rumfelt
19 10-15 miles led by Butch Baily
26 40-50 miles led by John Hurlbert
(Experienced riders
only.)
The trips follow the less used rural roads
of Orange County because they are safer and
more scenic.
"The nice thing about Chapel Hill is that
in two to five minutes you can be in total
Continued from page 8.
refugees. When the American troops began
to arrive in late 1 96 1 , more barracks and PXs
were built. Bars with names like the 'Blue
Angel' and 'Neon Lights' sprang up.
Sandbags and barbed wire were
everywhere in the once lovely city and the
palace, close to where Miss Carmichael
lived, was bombed.
Although the government tried not to
draft college students, by the time Miss
Carmichael left Vietnam her students were
going into the Army. "You must understand
that it was really a labor of love to serve in
the Army," she remembers.
Katherine Carmichael's philosophy of
teaching, no matter where she is, is to believe
in what she is doing and to enjoy it. "I have a
98-year-old mother living in Birmingham
who once told me, 'Get up and get going with
what you want to do.' Isn't that lovely of
her?"
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