Quote Originally Posted by emily_in_nc View Post
I read through the thread to see if I needed to post this. I see tulip already has. Chapel Hill/Carrboro has a lot to recommend it per your requirements. I wish when I was a student here, oh so many years ago, that cycling had been "big". As it was, I didn't know a single person (male or female) who rode a bike while I attended UNC ('79 to '83), so it wasn't something I even thought of. If I were a student here now, I'd so ride everywhere. I do that as much as possible even as a 50-year old alumna!

And the free busses are great.
by the time I got there (1985), there were a few bikes, but by 1987 (my sophomore year because I took a year off after freshman year) I had one of the first mountain bikes around. It attracted alot of attention. My freshman year I lived in Morrison (9th floor) and there was no way I was going to lug a bike up all those stairs. The elevators either never worked or smelled like a frat house. Either way, I took the stairs.

When I went back for grad school (1997-99), everyone had bikes. It was great. But the busses weren't free until later.