Went to Three Floyds Brewery's much discussed "Dark Lord Day" a few weeks back. Missed it last year due to I-can't-remember-what, but I DO remember realizing during whatever it was I ended up doing that the weather was a bucket of sh*t around the time folks would be riding their bikes back. I mean, ripping winds, temperature dropping 20+ degrees and very, very cold rain style. In other words, a typical Chicago Spring day!
Well, my buddy Arman was up for it again in spite of the brutal beatdown he took on that one. I think he was also in charge of leading a rather mixed crew of riders in terms of amounts of stops per trip and such, so I believe it came as a relief when only a couple of people sounded like they were going to turn up this year to ride down. The weather was looking pretty bad this year too, but he scoped out a METRA ride home option for this year, riding the 10-ish miles over to Flossmor and catching the train, so I guess one way in some potential rain seemed doable.
We met up on the Lakeshore path across from Buckingham fountain at the 9am hour and while sitting there up rode Jay and Alex, some friends of his, who were heading down too so they decided to join up. Then up rode about 25 other people asking if we were heading to Three Floyds. When we said yup one guy started getting in his bag and asking us to sign in and such. After a moment of confusion in which one of our little gang just signed up (weird what you can get if you just ask!) I asked a few questions and found out this was the (forgive me if I've got this wrong) Chicago Cycling Club official ride down group and we quickly cleared up that we were just heading that way on our own, which I think snapped Arman out of some flashbacks from last year's perhaps overly Keystone Kops-ish experience. He looked relieved anyway. We ended up running across that lot later during the ride, but they had some different instructions so it didn't last more than about a mile or two.
With the late arrival of Tiber, we set off. It was a pretty gloomy overcast morning but no rain, so all was well. Rode down the path and on down S. South Shore drive and continued on what turned out to be a really nicely sorted out route (click here for a PDF of the map) . Just took a largely neighborhoody and pathy/parky way most of the way down. Got my first ride on the Burnham Greenway, which was just like any other bike path except that it had a dozens and dozens of covered up graffiti spots on it (along with a few fresh examples!). Got my first flat on my year plus old Schwalbe Marathons, found out I can still do a roadside tube change (it's been a while), and with a couple of quick stops, we made it down it something like 2.5 hours (37.5 miles or so).
Some crazy biz, this Dark Lord Day. I forsee it not being in it's current location for much longer as trying to squish about 8000 drunk broheims into the 1/4 mile street of a small office/industrial park doesn't seem like the way to keep up neighborly relations. It was a pretty good scene though. I ate about a year and a half of my normal meat intake. Something like 5 sausages, a brisket taco, some more brisket and probably another thing or two I'm forgetting. Not a very veggie friendly event. Tasted some very tasty brews. Followed my buddy Andrew and his rather large posse through the Dark Lord Russian IPA buying line and helped to portage the beers safely back to the car (I got to buy in on 2 bottles for my trouble). There were some heavy bands playing in the brewery, but the overall drunky far-from-home vibe made me eventually want to head back to the cozy confines of home.
After hanging out for about 2.5 hours, it still hadn't rained and I was feeling like going to the METRA was just going to be a pain (apparently wasn't, but I felt like riding more anyway). I decided to go it alone on the bike back up into town. A couple of pounds of meat and the equivalent of maybe 4 hefty brews made this a different sort of "sport" than the way down. I did quite respectably thank-you-very-much, but was DEFINITELY feeling a bit knackered by the time I hit the Lakeshore path back in town. The map worked pretty well on the way back (Arman guided down so I didn't really have to pay much attention), but I did get off at one point and end up going through some unknown southside zone. Pretty mellow altogether, though I did get a few garbled SOMETHING-UNINTELLIGIBLE-WHITE-BOY! comments cutting through the wind. Guess it's not a well road-biked area in a few spots down there.
Anyway, a fun new trip out of town. I feel a little less intimidated by getting into Indiana on a bike now. You can really just slip right into Hammond by the back door and even in a few spots were we had to brave a bit of heavy-ish traffic, I found Indiana drivers to be pretty courteous and chilled out, at least on that particular day.
Pics!
Our Gang Burnham Greenway with blacked out graffito A VERY slow moving train in Hammond. Note awesome mid-century madness on the 2nd Baptist parking garage behind. That's some lineup (to buy expensive beer!). Several hours long. A swamp of party bros. An expensive litter display. Glad to have biked. These were ALL OVER, only set off by the occasional "PARK HERE $40" signs.
A ridiculously undetailed version of the route thanks to the crappy GPS of iPhione 3G.
In other news:
I rode to Milwaukee again today, my first completion since last Summer's aborted attempt (3 flats and a wifely pickup). It was pretty fun, only occasionally grueling. Light to moderate headwind almost the entire way and pretty chilly (low 40s in the morning up to 50-ish by the afternoon).
I can do the whole thing with only a very occasional map consultation. Actually, I might not have had to at all had part of the Wisco bike trail not been closed, but that put me back on the road sooner which speeded things up nicely anway. That gravel is SLOW!
Anyway, home to just shy of downtown, 94 miles, in a total of 6 hours 4 minutes. Probably stopped for a total of about 15 minutes en route, so riding time was about 5 hours 50. Between the gravel and some headwinds and no one to draft on, that ride is some good exercise!
Tried to tune in the Giro when I got home, but managed to just catch the exact spoiler ending 20 seconds. Groan! Anyway, Tyler Farrar finally got some.
Looks like my trusty Look KG381 and I are parting ways. There's a new (to me) frame coming down the line here in a week or so. It's been real, but I like to keep things interesting (I am bike curious after all) and I have to sell to help mitigate the costs of the new steed.
I'm usually the last person to see these things, if that's so, I apologize for posting it, but there must be other virally challenged people like myself. This thing is pretty, pretty funny.
I tried to ride to Milwaukee today again with my pal Zac, but I had some serious "mechanicals" as they like to say in the biz. Namely, 3 FLATS! What the!? Well, in the name of training for the HHH100 ride, I wanted to ride my fancy pants bike and the Michelin Race 2 tires that were on there were sort of coming apart, so I am in the midst of replacing them with some Vredesteins, but they were not here yet, so I put on the older Conti Gatorskins I had taken off of my Surly a couple weeks ago. Now, this was sort of dumb because I had gotten a couple of flats on those, which is why I replaced them, but I also thought I was sort of over reacting and maybe they weren't totally shot. Now I know that they are! Anyway, Zac was riding the same tires as I'm getting and he had no problems all day, so that makes me feel better! To be fair to the Gatorskins, I probably put 600+ pretty hard city miles on those without one flat and I had gotten them used on a bike to start with. They are good tires.
Fortunately, our support car (i.e. my wife, who was driving up to Milwaukee to visit her Grandma) came and picked us up in Racine (Thanks again iPhone, you overpriced albatross. Score one for you!) as she was just on her way past us anyway on the highway. We "abandoned" and just went and ate a big lunch. Still got 63 miles in and didn't get lost in Racine this time. We were doing a pretty smoking pace too, riding along at circa 20-ish mph on the gravel paths even. I was wheelsucking most of the time as I'm in the ballpark of old enough to be Zac's dad, but I was hanging in there alright! It's so rare that I have anyone to draft off of that I had to take advantage. We also got rained on for a good half hour, always a fun time. Gotta go give some TLC to my filthy bike now.
Well, I did the ride to Milwaukee. There was a group ride going on Saturday via the Chainlink, but it wasn't good timing as we went to the PItchfork Festival followed by a housewarming party on Friday night, so I decided to go it solo on Sunday. My lovely wife's grandmother resides in Milwaukee (St. Francis actually), so we had a plan for her to drive up to visit and for me to meet them and catch a ride back.
I poked around on the internet and found a route on mapmyride.com which was someone's route all the way to Door County, but it was free of any sorts of cues or landmarks, etc. Searching around I found chunks of information on the trail system that gets you there, but I kept coming across this pesky book that seemed to be just about how to ride your bike on the trails from Chicago to Milwaukee. Really?! A whole book? Seems like the kind of info that any bike loving human would just want to share with anyone. I know I do. I'll do my best here, but there was some ad hoc poking around here and there and some kindness of strangers involved, so you have to be a little self-motivated and remember which way north is.
One good move I made Saturday was to go on a recon ride with my wife and my friend JBI to check out the Chicago trail that starts the whole odyssey. It's the North Shore Trail (not to be confused with the North Branch Trail which is in the Cook County Forest Preserve District). This trail basically runs along the north branch of the Chicago River. Consequently, it's quite stinky for a lot of it's length. We rode back and forth past it a few times before finally picking it up quite a ways north of it's actual origin and I saved myself a lot of time by later riding back down it to discover that it begins on Francisco just north of Lawrence Ave. This is a little one way street south between Kedzie and California and you just ride up it the wrong way past a beautiful old sanitary district pumping station (they really don't make them like they used to!).
Francisco basically ends and the street veers right and it is at this corner that the trail begins. There is a point a few miles north where you get dumped off onto Kedzie again, but just go up to Devon and hang a left and you'll hit it again at the NE corner of the next intersection. Here you'll find a nice windy asphalt path with a miles long sculpture garden built right in!
This is the part that leads all the way up to the Ladd Arboretum in Evanston. The path turns to the first section of many, many miles of crushed gravel pathway here. I found myself debating the merits of staying on these paths a number of times during the day. They are a bit slower to ride on, though not like something you need a mountain bike for, any reasonable road bike tires work just fine.
This path ends at Green Bay Road. If you go left along Green Bay Road and get to the north side of it at Lincoln, you begin seeing signs that run you through a very posh neighborhood. This route leads through Wilmette, where it turns into a proper bike path through downtown, then through Kenilworth and eventually you will get to the Green Bay Trail. This is a pretty decent asphalt path along the Metra tracks along Green Bay Road. This path goes for several miles and (if memory serves) it eventually turns to crushed gravel up around Ravinia (you go right through the back of Ravinia actually). After some time you end up being put a wide sidewalk that takes you past Fort Sheridan and is the beginning of the McCrory bike path. This sidewalk is pretty irritating as the squares of concrete have all begun to settle and have a fairly significant bump between each of the hundreds of them you have to go over. (City planner types, FYI, it's MUCH better to make an asphalt path, concrete sucks and I'd think it's got to be more expensive to put down.) This cement world gives way back to gravel then ends up on another sidewalk along a highway-ish road that approaches the Great Lakes Naval Training Center. Here, look for a sign across the road that says "McCrory bike path north" which will indicate that you need to go across the road (at 24th street) and take a loop under the highway to another little industrial road to the west. Here's a pic of the intersection:
Which reminds me... NOTICE THE LITTLE CIRCLE WITH A SLASH THROUGH IT PAINTED ON THE SIDEWALK!!! This seems to be the universal sign for the bike path, at least on this route. It kept me on track many, many times throughout the day. This little sign is the breadcrumb trail to follow when signs are not appearing before you.
This dead ends into a messy torn up T intersection that looks into a factory and a little service drive. Go across here and you'll see the path on your left. This heads a back into crushed gravel world and this is the path that goes straight to Wisconsin, and I mean straight!
North of this area, you finally get back into something like small towns that aren't super posh suburbs. Here is an old closed high school I came across in Zion (I reckon from the name of the school anyway).
You'll just go and go crossing a big road every so often until you finally see a trail sign after Russell Road that says Kenosha County trail-something. You're in Wisconsin!
This trail goes on again for some time and eventually dumps you out on 30th street in Kenosha. Follow this road for about 5 miles (stop in at the nice little Southport Rigging bike shop you'll pass if you need anything!) until you see Gateway Technical College. On your right you'll see the Gateway Cafe. After this landmark, take the next right (at the light) and about a half mile down, the path starts again. This path goes straight to S. Racine. At this point of the day, I'd been doling out some Clif bars and some tasty little energy gummies, but I was bogging down pretty hard in between Kenosha and Racine. After averaging something like 16 mph for the first half of the trip, I was slogging down to 12 or 13 here for some miles. I thought maybe I was in trouble, but I think I was in a food lag. It is SUPER important to eat before you are hungry on such long rides. I was also drinking every 10 to 15 minutes.
In Racine you are dumped onto West Blvd. Follow this north and go right on Kinzie (you'll be in a large cemetery area here). Take Kinzie around (it bends north-ish), go right on W. 6th St., left on Memorial Dr. and then a right onto State St./38. At this railroad tracks right after this turn, you should pick up a path again that goes on out of Racine. I got a bit lost during this Racine part, but came by a fire station and figuring those guys know about some town geography, stopped for advice and got put right by a local fireman (sorry for interrupting the Brewers game!).
This trail takes you up into the hinterlands south of S. Milwaukee. At the end of the trail, go west (left) on 6 Mile and take a right onto Douglas Ave/32. This is your road for quite some time. After hours of being on the gravel, it felt VERY good to be back on a roadway! I suddenly found my third (?) wind and was bombing along around 20-ish mph for miles and miles.
32 turns into S. Chicago Road as you come up into S. Milwaukee. Most of the time the shoulder is nice and wide and is a pretty nice ride. Drivers were uniformly courteous and scooching over even when it wasn't really necessary. Thanks Wisconsinites! One up into S. Milwaukee (the city of), you jog over on Marquette to stay on 10th Ave./S. Chicago. This eventually turns into Packard and I took this up to S. Kinnickinnic Ave. and headed up that to my final destination. I was SO VERY hungry by this last 4 or 5 miles, that I was basically sprinting to get to food, running for miles around 23-24 mph. I felt like I was on a solo breakaway on a Grand Tour stage!
I made it to the St. Francis Brewery having ridden for a total of 5:45 (including stops) for a total of 81.6 miles. I probably ate about 2500 calories in an hour. (St. Francis Brewery has delicious food and a great Kolsch Beer BTW!) My average was something like 14.5 mph, but that includes about a total of 20 minutes of stopping for "natural breaks" (in the parlance of race announcers) and a few directions checks and photo ops. Not bad for this almost-40-year-old on my longest ride to date.
For those heading all the way up into Milwaukee, there are a few other ways/paths up into town. More info can be reverse-engineered from this route , which is from Milwaukee to Chicago. This is an enjoyable ride. You can do it on a road bike, but just make sure you have some fairly sturdy tires. I rode my steel Surly Pacer with Continental Gatorskins and I think I'd have gotten at least one flat if I was on my Look with the Michelin Pro 2s. The gravel is quite well packed and smooth, but it's just a long ride with a lot of odd rocks and things you can hit. Also, take at least a couple bottles of water and 500 to 600 calories of grub. It's a very mellow ride and I hope to do it again soon.
For a little packet of images of the route that I put together from Illinois trail maps and Google maps, click here
