Lakes to Mountains Tour

Thru the Endless City

Sat Apr 26: Chicago to Gurnee: 57 miles; 58, blue skies, windy, 12:50-8:00
As I stood outside the Subway outlet, about to mount my bike to roll over to the train station, a person toting a professional-looking camera attached to an oversize microphone walked up to me. "Hi! I'm with the local paper." All I could think was, "How did the media find me already? I haven't even started yet!"
Turns out he was getting local man-on-the-street interviews, asking, "How will you spend your rebate check?" I chuckled at that, turned to Tim, and said, "He wants to talk to you!"
Today's ride started late due to an emergency fix on Tim's bike. By the time the train got us to downtown Chicago, the time had neared 1:00. The ride north treated us to a smorgasbord of urban, suburban, and wild terrain. Two miles of rolling among skyscrapers segued into a long cruise along the Lakeshore Bike Trail. After that ended, we cruised through neighborhoods filled with brick apartments and quaint cottages, passing through Loyola University and beside Northwestern U.
Eventually we escaped traffic on the Green Bay and Skokie Valley Trails, packed or soft-surface paths paralleling train tracks with thick shrubbery on either side. As evening fell, we found ourselves on the Des Plaines River Trail, a dirt track through the river bottomlands, past forests and swamps, surprising two herds of deer and scaring a turtle slowly lumbering across the path. Due to the slow going as we had to continually check directions, we didn't end until 8:00, well after the sun had set.

posted by Glen @ 7:15 PM