I left as early as I could while also getting decent sleep with a reasonable bedtime. This ended up being about 6 hours of sleep and a natural turnover to look at the clock around 2:24. Had my alarm set for a little before 3 but I find it's better to wake naturally if possible. I dressed for low forties and was very comfortable throughout the morning and didn't have any issues with the first cold morning in weeks. It's been so warm lately it's hard to believe it's mid November. I rolled through Tyrone and north Fayette into South Fulton without seeing any cars really. I did a dead end road in Union City that i've passed many times and never explored. Since it was early I figured it was a decent time to try. First there was a side road that I was supposed to take to do a dead end east of 29. I rolled by without even noticing anything, circled back and realized that it wasn't really a road as it was very overgrown and had large concrete blocks at the entrance and no tresspassing signs. I did a bit of digging and it turns out that recent satellite photos from a few years back show 3 or 4 houses amid what looks like an old small farm clearing and activity of occupancy. But there was absolutely no sign anything like that had been there recently if you just looked at the entrance. There was a clear drive around the blocks though, and when I peered down it for the second look I saw a four legged animal that might have been a deer or coyote but I for some reason decided that it was probably a dog. And then it occured to me that perhaps someone might be camping down that way. So it was a hard pass for me to go around the blocks and ride down it anyway. I continued on, rode to the end of Westbrook Dr without issue. The road was in very bad shape with large holes and narrowed from growth on both sides. But there was industrial activity in the form of truck parking, and a couple of houses still being used and then it ended at a curve in a spur off the main rail line. I turned around to head back to highway 29 and saw a little light ahead of me in the road. It turned out to be a person walking with a small flashlight or perhaps their phone's light. We didn't exchange any words as I went by and the person looked just as weirded out by me as I was by him. Not sure if this was a person who had wandered down from the blocked road, or perhaps someone who happened to be nearby the houses and was just curious as to who would be heading down the road at this hour. I thought it was an interesting encounter worthy of note. I continued on my way down Stonewall Tell road and did a couple dead end roads, including a gravel road that used to connect across a creek to another road in the past but was not maintained and by the looks of the very end past the houses it might have been passable but I decided to save that exploration for another day in the sunshine. I got passed a couple of times on this road due to the influence of several 24/7 warehouses in the vicinity. Then I turned onto Fulton Industrial Boulevard and had a decent ride here. There was a great shoulder at first and traffic was very light. I did a couple dead end roads and the shoulder eventually dissappeared in favor of a third travel lane. This was mostly fine except for a bit of a cluster of cars occasionally due to the redlight rush. I made it to the river crossing to Cobb county without issue and turned off to do the first of many residential subdivision roads for the day. The route was very hilly and it really began in earnest here in Cobb county and didn't let up till I was heading south from Atlanta. After this first section of roads I did a rather long section of Atlanta road crossing over 285 and this went by without issue because it was still plenty early enough. Next I did a lot of roads in Vinings and was fully within the very expensive house area as well as in the hills by the river. I wasn't really all that super ready for a store stop by the time it came at mile 86 but I stopped for a coke and some chips at a gas station. I had a lot of water still and planned to top everything off at the nearby bathroom at the trailhead for the path system I would soon be on. When I arrived at the trailhead under a bridge, I found a bunch of large closed signs and some really intimidating and extensive tall fencing around the property. It being a Sunday there was no construction activity but there was lots of equipment and the parking lot was all torn up and being regraded. I really didn't have any clue as to how to go around this and decided to just power through anyway. I found a way up and around the fence but that entailed getting over the large rocks holding down the nearby bridge and forcing my way through the thicket growing there. Eventually I emerged into the gravel parking lot, quickly rode across and found that the actual path on the other side was untouched by construction and I had to get over yet another similarly tall fence. This time I had to hoist the bike over it and hook the handlebars on the other side, then climb up and over and jump down. Kind of annoying but I managed to get through just fine. I took the opportunity to use a nearby bench in front of the river to take a small break and take off my cold weather gear as the day was warming up really fast by this point in the morning. I rode the rest of this nice path underneath and beside all the large highways and up a pretty steep hill beside a rushing creek. Decided to push on to the middle stop of the day despite not topping off my water at the trailhead. Did lots more hills and dead ends before coming to my second and unexpectedly final stop of the day at a little shell station on Johnson Ferry road. I got lots of food and topped off my water here and left pretty quickly down a very fast and steep hill to the river. Onwards through Sandy Springs and some even steeper roads through the next 20-30 miles, a few dead ends and some very nice forest. There was a couple of slightly busy roads here but people were somewhat nice about passing me and any case they were moving slow so even close passing wasn't too stressful. At length I cut across the Crestlawn cemetery and the Inman railyard and was soon heading through the grid of West Atlanta, East Point and College Park just as the sun set leaving a red glow for an hour or more that was especially beautiful. I had to wait on a train to pass and the traffic to clear before jumping on Buffington road. I did a big extra here to make up some miles lost to gated subdivisions earlier in the ride and managed to mostly enjoy my trip down through South Fulton to Fayette in the dark without much issue. The temperature was cooling off and so I decided to put on arm and ear warmers at the end of Old Milam road. Figured that this was a quiet intersection that I could spend a couple minutes free of anyone going by. But instead I had a big black truck turn in from Milam road, only to have it come back out the same way a minute later JUST AS a white compact car was waiting for it to clear the road to turn left right in front of me standing there. It was kinda silly. Why was this gravel road with like 4 houses on it so popular at 7:30 on a Sunday night? Who knows. Anyway I got back going and mostly had a painless trip through Tyrone where I added on Pendleton trail and Valleywood road to add a couple more miles and come back via the Kroger and Target shopping center route and arrived home a bit earlier than my pessimisic estimate of 9pm. This was a very fast urban 200+ ride considering the typical challenges of hills, dead ends and intersections. I felt really good the whole ride and had good energy all the way to the end. The weather was absolutely perfect with very little wind and a max temp of around 70 with the low in the morning bottoming around 40.