Every year my 80-plus-year-old friend and World War II vet, Roland Giduz, tries to shame me into joining him and more than a thousand other bicycle riders who spend a week pedaling from one end of North Carolina to the other.

Roland has made the Mountains to the Coast ride every year since 1999.

This year he finally got me to give the ride a try. As a result I learned some things about North Carolina and myself that I would have missed if I had not answered Roland's call.

First of all, a confession. No, let me call it a clarification. I did not ride all the way across the state with Roland and the thousand others. I spent only one night and one day on the roads with them. I pedaled one of the shortest daily sections, about 50 miles, from Greensboro to Mebane.

What did I learn? Camping out in a big park in Greensboro with a thousand other riders, I learned that the ground is even harder that it was the last time I slept on it 30 years ago when my children were in Indian Guides and Princesses. I learned that the new-fangled tents are easy to put up if you know how to do it. But I did not know how. I learned that the smart "older" riders had hired an outfitter named Bubba, who puts up tents, blows up air mattresses, and hosts a hospitality tent for his customers -- all for just a few hundred extra dollars a week. Before my night on the hard ground was over, I would have paid Bubba that much just for one night on the air mattress.

When I saw Roland the next day, I learned that the even smarter "older" riders, like Roland, spend all their nights in the comfort of nearby motels.

I can put those lessons to good use when I ride with Roland next year. I will do it again because that day of bike riding turned out to be such a rich pleasure. The carefully planned routes guided us through lightly traveled rural roads that showed a side of North Carolina countryside that rushed travelers almost always miss.

I listened in as riders exchanged stories about their hometowns. Two men who grew up in Concord talked about how things were "when Mr. Charlie Cannon," owner of Cannon Mills, was in charge. A new Concord resident said that he bet that Cannon did not have as much influence in Concord as Lowe's Speedway owner Bruton Smith does today.

An old textile mill, far off the main roads, provided an important rest stop during the afternoon. Glencoe Cotton Mill near Burlington began operations in the early 1880s alongside the Haw River to take advantage of the falling water to power the mill's machinery. The mill's owners built small houses near the mill and rented them to workers. A church, a school and a company-run store made for a village that was pretty much run by the mill owners. Perhaps it was something like Cannon's mills and housing in Concord and Kannapolis, but on a much smaller and tighter scale. Most of the mills and mill villages, large and small, that were typical and plentiful across North Carolina, have disappeared. Glencoe closed in the 1950s.

Since so many North Carolinians or their parents and grandparents grew up in textile towns, we ought to remember and celebrate their experiences.

Thanks to the efforts of Preservation North Carolina and the determined help of lots of local people, the restored Glencoe mill village makes it possible to get the feel of those old days.

But I would have missed it if Roland had not shamed me into that bike ride. Now, I can't wait to ride again next year.