a lot has happened since i last wrote.
most seriously, the passing of matthew manger-lynch, struck while riding his bicycle.
most excitingly, completion of my first fixed-gear bicycle, an as-yet-unnamed special road racer, at west town bikes.
most lushiously, the induction of the bikewinter 2009 co-chairs, aka myself and martin hazard, both avid midnight marauders.
i am not sure if i will deal with any or all of these in much more detail.
but today. let me tell you about sunday.
i went to pankakes, hosted by greg davies, who lives up in the boonies of kedzie and montrose. sheesh, who lives west of kedzie?! anyway, winds were fierce and i was glad to have the gears of cadence, the green ladies schwinn i've been riding since january.
the north winds helped me on my way home, aka south. and since i was so far west, i rode down kimball, which turned into homan (?!) on my way to bike polo in garfield park. i'm not sure if they went into winter hibernation, but it seems these guys will be playing every sunday from 2 to dusk, or at least 6:30, on the tennis courts a ways south of the conservatory.
i've been a spectator at polo a couple times before, and it's always a good, chill time with cool people. i played for the first time today, though, and i'm not sure how i feel about it. it seems i did a lot of riding around in circles, which i think i do enough of professionally. i didn't really hit the ball, um, but i swung at it a few times without wiping out.
well, there's a holla atcha for now. don't be a stranger.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Sunday, January 13, 2008
'da best-laid plans of bikes and men...
bicycle church spoilers
the way to the river is unclear, particularly eastbound. i adore 51st, and might hold out for it. perhaps 55th because it's fast, but the lights can fight you, plus the drivers and all their fumes stink. if i'm on 47th, though, i will definitely watch out for the CURBS.
post-river, cornell has some nasty, but in the invigorating way, traffic. 57th is one-way east under the metra tarck, on the block between stony and lake park, but i will be taking it anyway. ohmigod, was that the proper use of tarck?
post–med bread, i'm not sure if i'll prefer to hit 55th on the light (woodlawn) or the stop sign (university). if uni then 55th to cottage. waiting to see where my spidey traffic senses direct me. (wow there are like 4 churches on that little stretch alone. give it up south side.) though i usually prefer drexel to king, whenever i see church traffic on drexel it is raunchy. (of course, i've only seen the afternoon church traffic, ha.)
OH who am i kidding? when i leave hyde park, i will probably start going home on autopilot. i miiiight figure it out at 33rd and halsted, or i might actually—and accidentally—go home.
i know there are shorter routes, but this is supposed to be a tour and i will treat it as such. i mean, i might as well check out eckersall park down on yates, take a little LSD, and visit one of my favorite ladies while i'm down there, circle optional. (and no, that is not what she said. she is bronze and cannot speak.)
two-and-a-half hours until registration. yeeeeessssss.
the way to the river is unclear, particularly eastbound. i adore 51st, and might hold out for it. perhaps 55th because it's fast, but the lights can fight you, plus the drivers and all their fumes stink. if i'm on 47th, though, i will definitely watch out for the CURBS.
post-river, cornell has some nasty, but in the invigorating way, traffic. 57th is one-way east under the metra tarck, on the block between stony and lake park, but i will be taking it anyway. ohmigod, was that the proper use of tarck?
post–med bread, i'm not sure if i'll prefer to hit 55th on the light (woodlawn) or the stop sign (university). if uni then 55th to cottage. waiting to see where my spidey traffic senses direct me. (wow there are like 4 churches on that little stretch alone. give it up south side.) though i usually prefer drexel to king, whenever i see church traffic on drexel it is raunchy. (of course, i've only seen the afternoon church traffic, ha.)
OH who am i kidding? when i leave hyde park, i will probably start going home on autopilot. i miiiight figure it out at 33rd and halsted, or i might actually—and accidentally—go home.
i know there are shorter routes, but this is supposed to be a tour and i will treat it as such. i mean, i might as well check out eckersall park down on yates, take a little LSD, and visit one of my favorite ladies while i'm down there, circle optional. (and no, that is not what she said. she is bronze and cannot speak.)
two-and-a-half hours until registration. yeeeeessssss.
Sunday, December 23, 2007
it figures...
aaaaaw, man! i'm outside chicago for one fucking week and they're already burning car effigies without me. those jerks.
oh, the joy of BikeWinter. the full photo set is here, and future mayhem is here.
oh, the joy of BikeWinter. the full photo set is here, and future mayhem is here.
lancaster bicycle club!
turns out such a thing does exist! despite predictions to the contrary on yonder eljay, i went on a ride with them yesterday.
the course was listed as 22 miles, rolling (as in rolling hills), with a pace of 11-13 mph. now, 11-13 mph is slower than i am used to going on my bicycle. my cruising speed around chicago is about 15, faster if traffic lights and wind are in my favor. i even had my eye on the "A" rides listed on the LBC page, with a 16-21 mph speed. perhaps faster than i'd go on my lonesome (unless i was late for something), but absolutely doable, especially with drafting.
so this ride would be cake, despite the fact that i was neither well hydrated nor well rested at the start of it. a slowish pace for 22 miles? all over it.
but the hills, my friends, the hills. this was not a thing i took into account. they have some flat rides, too, and also hilly, very hilly, and mountainous. you can see terrain classification details on the bottom of the LBC homepage. i will not repost the "rolling" category here; it is kind of embarrassing.
and why is it embarrassing? because i was absolutely worn out by the ride. holy crap. i left about 4 miles before the ride's ending and took a shortcut home, accompanied by a fellow named tom (i think) who lives nearby, on spooky nook road. the shortcut was about 4 miles, though, so i don't feel like too much of a cheater. to assuage my feelings of inadequacy, tom assured me that this was one of their toughest rolling routes.
[very soon i will write about the actual ride right here.]
thankfully, the LBC rides in early january i might make it to are all flat. and hopefully biking around lancaster and getting shamed by these hills might lessen, might lessen veeeeerry slightly, the ass-whooping i will receive on Da Tour. but some riding, however pathetically i perform, is certainly better than the alternative.
...right?
i leave you with the following write-up of Da Tour, found here. emphasis mine:
Tour da Chicago
A unique winter tradition in the city is the now-infamous Tour Da Chicago. With roots set in the bike-messenger scene, the unsanctioned Tour Da Chicago draws its inspiration from the alleycat style of bike racing. The simplicity of these events endears them to their participants. There are few rules and stipulations aside from a starting point and end point, with a few twists usually thrown in for good measure.
Recent editions of the Tour have drawn many of the same names found on top of the results pages of high-profile road races in the summer. If you're a rider who requires structure and support for your events, you might consider sitting this one out. However, if you want to meet some passionate cyclists and treat yourself to a unique perspective on riding in Chicago, you should seek out this rollicking affair.
While the stereotypical alleycat racer might be found riding against traffic on State Street with his hair on fire, the reality is that Tour Da Chicago races are only as dangerous or safe as you make them. Information on the Tour Da Chicago appears spontaneously at www.tour.chicago.il.us.
the course was listed as 22 miles, rolling (as in rolling hills), with a pace of 11-13 mph. now, 11-13 mph is slower than i am used to going on my bicycle. my cruising speed around chicago is about 15, faster if traffic lights and wind are in my favor. i even had my eye on the "A" rides listed on the LBC page, with a 16-21 mph speed. perhaps faster than i'd go on my lonesome (unless i was late for something), but absolutely doable, especially with drafting.
so this ride would be cake, despite the fact that i was neither well hydrated nor well rested at the start of it. a slowish pace for 22 miles? all over it.
but the hills, my friends, the hills. this was not a thing i took into account. they have some flat rides, too, and also hilly, very hilly, and mountainous. you can see terrain classification details on the bottom of the LBC homepage. i will not repost the "rolling" category here; it is kind of embarrassing.
and why is it embarrassing? because i was absolutely worn out by the ride. holy crap. i left about 4 miles before the ride's ending and took a shortcut home, accompanied by a fellow named tom (i think) who lives nearby, on spooky nook road. the shortcut was about 4 miles, though, so i don't feel like too much of a cheater. to assuage my feelings of inadequacy, tom assured me that this was one of their toughest rolling routes.
[very soon i will write about the actual ride right here.]
thankfully, the LBC rides in early january i might make it to are all flat. and hopefully biking around lancaster and getting shamed by these hills might lessen, might lessen veeeeerry slightly, the ass-whooping i will receive on Da Tour. but some riding, however pathetically i perform, is certainly better than the alternative.
...right?
i leave you with the following write-up of Da Tour, found here. emphasis mine:
Tour da Chicago
A unique winter tradition in the city is the now-infamous Tour Da Chicago. With roots set in the bike-messenger scene, the unsanctioned Tour Da Chicago draws its inspiration from the alleycat style of bike racing. The simplicity of these events endears them to their participants. There are few rules and stipulations aside from a starting point and end point, with a few twists usually thrown in for good measure.
Recent editions of the Tour have drawn many of the same names found on top of the results pages of high-profile road races in the summer. If you're a rider who requires structure and support for your events, you might consider sitting this one out. However, if you want to meet some passionate cyclists and treat yourself to a unique perspective on riding in Chicago, you should seek out this rollicking affair.
While the stereotypical alleycat racer might be found riding against traffic on State Street with his hair on fire, the reality is that Tour Da Chicago races are only as dangerous or safe as you make them. Information on the Tour Da Chicago appears spontaneously at www.tour.chicago.il.us.
from an e-mail to my bike&build brethren
obviously at the end of bike&build, everyone on the trip exchanged contact information so we could share pictures and general updates on life. the other day i sent an update, some of which is copied below. occasional explanations are bracketed.
[at first i talked about doing the chicago perimeter ride with anna, and linked to my post on here about it.]
ok, back to the fall. with one last century under my chamois, i was off to a new quarter of schooling! i'm almost done with my degree; i just have this huge thesis left to write, then one last class to take in the spring. my winter plans involve writing said giant paper and finding a "career" job. eep. if anyone has any ideas about what i want to do with my life, do let me know!
other than the perimeter ride, i have continued to ride my bicycle like it's my job. [a couple of other people had said in their update e-mails that they don't ride much, or at all, anymore] (sigh, i must say i'm disappointed, though not entirely surprised, that some of you now have expensive dust-collecting bicycle sculptures! get out there kids; live the dream, ride your bikes!!!)
indeed, a bicycle is definitely THE way to get around chicago&emdash;free, reliable, and it always goes exactly where you want, unlike the two-bucks-a-pop, where-the-fuck-is-the-bus, gee-i'm-here-now-i-get-to-walk-a-half-mile CTA (aka chicago public transit). and i think it goes without saying that bikes>cars... healthy, non-deadly, non-polluting, etc. you don't get legs like these pushing a gas pedal, know what i'm saying? OF COURSE YOU DO!
in the spring, i was already using my bike to get almost everywhere i needed to go, but this fall i had the added bonus of a bicycle commute to campus! for reasons of claustrophobia and money, i moved out of the UofC's neighborhood of hyde park to the adorable (cheaper!) neighborhood of bridgeport, home of the sox. bridgeport's about 6 miles from hyde park, so i had a really nice half-hour commute to class and back all fall. i definitely enjoyed the chance to clear my head and mentally prep for learning, and the adrenaline burst isn't a bad way to start the day, either.
i've been doing some bike advocacy things, too; working a lot with BikeWinter.org to plan events and whatnot. i encourage everyone to take a minute to look at the website. it has a LOT of helpful tips for staying in the saddle year-round, everything from what to wear in the bitter cold to how to keep your bicycle from getting eaten alive by salt. there's also a great calendar of events for chicago, and a couple of other midwestern towns have calendars as well.
i've been critical massing, of course. [i talked a bit about post-bike&build adventures in san francisco, and recommend fine SF establishments to two b&b alumnae who now live there]
some UofC friends and i started a smaller, local critical mass in hyde park on the third friday of every month (so as to not conflict with chicago critical mass on the last fridays). we've been getting crowds ranging from 10-40, which i consider a great success! i'd really love to see more of a bike scene happening in hyde park; a lot of folks have bikes but hardly know how to ride them, let alone do any maintenance or mechanical work to them. and just a few weeks ago, i helped a friend of mine plan and execute an alleycat in hyde park to benefit a project he's involved with. you see the flyer he made, and read more about it up on my flickr.
yeah, so alleycats are super-fun, and y'all should definitely ride one sometime. my first one was this fall, before the hyde park one. the theme was sadie hawkins, and it was partnered, though most alleycats are not. female registration was $5, and male registration was $40(!), or $10 if you had a female partner. so lots of girls asked guys to be their partner, and the guys, happy to save $30, came along for the ride. proceeds went to a local women's health clinic, which was groovy. the afterparty was one of the best parties i've ever been to ever, though the next morning was rough. maybe that had something to do with their beer pricing: the first beer was $1, and subsequent beers were 25 cents. you just turned in your empty and gave some fine folks a quarter in exchange for a new beer. makes party clean-up a snap! note to self: next time, after sprinting for 20 miles, have a more substantive dinner than a clif bar and 8 (?) PBRs.
despite the rampant cheap beer, the alleycat scene is something i'd like to get more into. there's a series of 6 alleycats called the Tour Da Chicago staring in january; i'm going to do my best in those, though i will be at a big disadvantage because of the bike i'll be using. i've taken my b&b bike to my parents' house in lancaster, PA, where i am right now. why, you may ask? i was in no hurry to expose sancho to a chicago winter, i was always paranoid about theft, and it was getting to be a pain carrying him up and down my apartment steps all the time. so he's in PA, where there are actually HILLS for all those gears. i'll probably leave him here when i head back to chicago in january, since i have a good-enough "other" bike in chicago.
that other bike is called murray, and you can also find him on my flickr page. the bike is made from cheap (aka HEAVY) steel, or steelish something, has only 6 gears, and has no clipless pedals. not ideal for racing, but i'm not exactly in it to win it. my goals for Da Tour are to ride every stage (they're spread over 6 weekends), finish every stage (no DNFs!), make at least 4 new friends whose names i remember, and stay rubber side down (aka no wipeouts).
in other related news, just yesterday i had to maintain the chain bracelet i've been wearing since amarillo, TX for the very first time. the chain was ridden halfway across the country by breanna, and had one link that was sticking. i put a single drop of purple extreme lube by the pin, and now all is well. btw, that thing makes going through airport security a blast! i beep through the metal detectors every time, tell the guards it's because of the chain on my wrist, explain that, no, i can't take it off, and then get searched. every single time, woohoo! i do kinda like the attention, though; nothing like a good pat-down before your flight! everybody wins!
whew, that's about all i got for you. with any luck, i'll be in NYC for december's critical mass on the 28th, and sticking around for new years. [here i give a shout-out to fellow rider laura, who lives in NYC] anyone else around nyc for the holidays, or pennsylvania for that matter?
FINALLY, if any of you kids ever make it out to chicago, give me a holler! or if you want to visit and need a couch/floor to sleep on, also let me know! i love showing off my city :)
now if you'll excuse me, i'm gonna go ride my bike now.
lauren
[at first i talked about doing the chicago perimeter ride with anna, and linked to my post on here about it.]
ok, back to the fall. with one last century under my chamois, i was off to a new quarter of schooling! i'm almost done with my degree; i just have this huge thesis left to write, then one last class to take in the spring. my winter plans involve writing said giant paper and finding a "career" job. eep. if anyone has any ideas about what i want to do with my life, do let me know!
other than the perimeter ride, i have continued to ride my bicycle like it's my job. [a couple of other people had said in their update e-mails that they don't ride much, or at all, anymore] (sigh, i must say i'm disappointed, though not entirely surprised, that some of you now have expensive dust-collecting bicycle sculptures! get out there kids; live the dream, ride your bikes!!!)
indeed, a bicycle is definitely THE way to get around chicago&emdash;free, reliable, and it always goes exactly where you want, unlike the two-bucks-a-pop, where-the-fuck-is-the-bus, gee-i'm-here-now-i-get-to-walk-a-half-mile CTA (aka chicago public transit). and i think it goes without saying that bikes>cars... healthy, non-deadly, non-polluting, etc. you don't get legs like these pushing a gas pedal, know what i'm saying? OF COURSE YOU DO!
in the spring, i was already using my bike to get almost everywhere i needed to go, but this fall i had the added bonus of a bicycle commute to campus! for reasons of claustrophobia and money, i moved out of the UofC's neighborhood of hyde park to the adorable (cheaper!) neighborhood of bridgeport, home of the sox. bridgeport's about 6 miles from hyde park, so i had a really nice half-hour commute to class and back all fall. i definitely enjoyed the chance to clear my head and mentally prep for learning, and the adrenaline burst isn't a bad way to start the day, either.
i've been doing some bike advocacy things, too; working a lot with BikeWinter.org to plan events and whatnot. i encourage everyone to take a minute to look at the website. it has a LOT of helpful tips for staying in the saddle year-round, everything from what to wear in the bitter cold to how to keep your bicycle from getting eaten alive by salt. there's also a great calendar of events for chicago, and a couple of other midwestern towns have calendars as well.
i've been critical massing, of course. [i talked a bit about post-bike&build adventures in san francisco, and recommend fine SF establishments to two b&b alumnae who now live there]
some UofC friends and i started a smaller, local critical mass in hyde park on the third friday of every month (so as to not conflict with chicago critical mass on the last fridays). we've been getting crowds ranging from 10-40, which i consider a great success! i'd really love to see more of a bike scene happening in hyde park; a lot of folks have bikes but hardly know how to ride them, let alone do any maintenance or mechanical work to them. and just a few weeks ago, i helped a friend of mine plan and execute an alleycat in hyde park to benefit a project he's involved with. you see the flyer he made, and read more about it up on my flickr.
yeah, so alleycats are super-fun, and y'all should definitely ride one sometime. my first one was this fall, before the hyde park one. the theme was sadie hawkins, and it was partnered, though most alleycats are not. female registration was $5, and male registration was $40(!), or $10 if you had a female partner. so lots of girls asked guys to be their partner, and the guys, happy to save $30, came along for the ride. proceeds went to a local women's health clinic, which was groovy. the afterparty was one of the best parties i've ever been to ever, though the next morning was rough. maybe that had something to do with their beer pricing: the first beer was $1, and subsequent beers were 25 cents. you just turned in your empty and gave some fine folks a quarter in exchange for a new beer. makes party clean-up a snap! note to self: next time, after sprinting for 20 miles, have a more substantive dinner than a clif bar and 8 (?) PBRs.
despite the rampant cheap beer, the alleycat scene is something i'd like to get more into. there's a series of 6 alleycats called the Tour Da Chicago staring in january; i'm going to do my best in those, though i will be at a big disadvantage because of the bike i'll be using. i've taken my b&b bike to my parents' house in lancaster, PA, where i am right now. why, you may ask? i was in no hurry to expose sancho to a chicago winter, i was always paranoid about theft, and it was getting to be a pain carrying him up and down my apartment steps all the time. so he's in PA, where there are actually HILLS for all those gears. i'll probably leave him here when i head back to chicago in january, since i have a good-enough "other" bike in chicago.
that other bike is called murray, and you can also find him on my flickr page. the bike is made from cheap (aka HEAVY) steel, or steelish something, has only 6 gears, and has no clipless pedals. not ideal for racing, but i'm not exactly in it to win it. my goals for Da Tour are to ride every stage (they're spread over 6 weekends), finish every stage (no DNFs!), make at least 4 new friends whose names i remember, and stay rubber side down (aka no wipeouts).
in other related news, just yesterday i had to maintain the chain bracelet i've been wearing since amarillo, TX for the very first time. the chain was ridden halfway across the country by breanna, and had one link that was sticking. i put a single drop of purple extreme lube by the pin, and now all is well. btw, that thing makes going through airport security a blast! i beep through the metal detectors every time, tell the guards it's because of the chain on my wrist, explain that, no, i can't take it off, and then get searched. every single time, woohoo! i do kinda like the attention, though; nothing like a good pat-down before your flight! everybody wins!
whew, that's about all i got for you. with any luck, i'll be in NYC for december's critical mass on the 28th, and sticking around for new years. [here i give a shout-out to fellow rider laura, who lives in NYC] anyone else around nyc for the holidays, or pennsylvania for that matter?
FINALLY, if any of you kids ever make it out to chicago, give me a holler! or if you want to visit and need a couch/floor to sleep on, also let me know! i love showing off my city :)
now if you'll excuse me, i'm gonna go ride my bike now.
lauren
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
placeholder
biking in lancaster
parking in pilsen
commuting
t-shirt printing
marauder meeting
bike winter meeting
how massing saved my life?!
parking in pilsen
commuting
t-shirt printing
marauder meeting
bike winter meeting
how massing saved my life?!
Saturday, September 8, 2007
baby's nth century: chicago perimeter ride!
this century went around the perimeter of chicago. that's perimeter, not to be confused with perineum. that ride would have been much more painful!
it wasn't painful, though, at least not for my badass, already accustomed to long days in the brooks. some folks started complaining about their bums at about mile 60, though they were in street clothes. bike shorts make a huge difference, people. as does ass lube.
at the time of the ride, all of my butt'r was in a box somewhere between san francisco and chicago. why? well, a summer of daily use (and occasional abuse) of my rolling suitcase left it with some large, NSFF holes. (not safe for flight. duh.) also, bikes are hellof awkward when they're in boxes, and i did not want to be wrestling with a sketchy rolling suitcase, a messenger bag, and a bike box, and i especially did not want to be wrestling to get all these things onto the CTA. so i shipped most of my shit, traveling with only my bike box, the bag that fits on my bike rack, and messenger bag. and believe you me, i got some weird looks as i reassembled my bicycle at baggage claim! and then i had a great 7ish-mile ride to my new home in bridgeport.
but back to the ride. fortunately, my ass was not lubeless, because anna brought some over! anna, one of my fellow bike & builders, goes to grinnell college in iowa. i lured her to chicago with, "hey, you're from the midwest! come to the perimeter ride!! i KNOW you want to do another century this summer—seven is definitely not enough!!!" she drove over with her friend jasmine, who doesn't really bike but is cool anyway.
i had some other friends on the ride; martin "safety" hazard and andy "the professor," two of my midnight marauding friends. the lot of us met for breakfast at the hollywood grill, where i met a few more folks. after a delicious breakfast (broccoli and feta omelet for me!), we rode east to the lakefront. and then we went waaaay south (the idea, after all, was to ride the perimeter—"live on the edge," as the cue sheet instructed us), stopping first at the mussolini pillar near soldier field. once down south (95th? maybe?) we stopped for lunch (homemade mexican food sold from a trailer), then rambled on west...
obviously the most important thing about long bike rides is food, so the next thing i remember clearly is an ice cream stop at the original rainbow cone, on 92nd and western. i had never heard of the place, but apparently everyone loves this place, and everyone eats rainbow-flavored ice cream cones at the taste of chicago. i suppose i should clarify that it's not a rainbow flavor, but rather a rainbow of colors in the cone. however, i invite you to pause now and consider what a rainbow would taste like. and if your answer is something lame like "water vapor," i invite you to use a little imagination next time, ok?
i don't have my cue sheet, but i think the next big thing was a jaunt out to the suburb of berwyn to see the spindle, possibly for the last time. you can check out some spindle-saving press here. and yes, we ate there, too, at claude's favorite fast food "restaurant."
then it was off to superdawg very very conveniently located directly next to a liquor store. we're probably at mile 70 or 80ish at this point, which was close enough to the end of the 100 miles that most of us switched to a different sort of hydration. i stopped avoiding beef for long enough to have a famed hot dog, which was decent but definitely no hot doug's.
the bonus hydration made our next stop, the leaning tower of niles, some other suburb, lean juuuust a little more. after that, we had a bit of a haul to the lake. it seemed extra super long to me, since all that hydration had me looking for a poorly-lit bush or tree on the side of the street. places to drop trou and take a piss are few and far between, though, when you're not in middle-of-nowhere, USA. (which is probably one of the weirdest things i'll miss about bike & build: stopping anywhere—anywhere!—to pee, walking 2 feet off the road/highway, declaring, "this spot is perfect!", and popping a squat. early in the trip, mind you, we were much more vigilant about finding cover. it was probably the change in terrain to ranches and desert, combined with pure laziness, that caused our drastic shift in modesty...)
i shared my overhydration with vic, whose name i've seen online plenty but had never met before. very familiar with evanston, which we were riding east to at this point, vic knew the planned route to the lake, and volunteered to wait up for me. we soon passed a suitable empty park with some suitable unlit shrubbery, and the remainder of my ride to the lake was much more comfortable.
and then it was naked time! and by naked time, i mean some marauders may or may not have opted to rinse off the day's sweat in lake michigan's pristine waters. i was sure anna would join us, but she took a nap instead.
a short and uneventful ride to the handlebar followed. there were $5 margaritas. incriminating photos exist. the end.
it wasn't painful, though, at least not for my badass, already accustomed to long days in the brooks. some folks started complaining about their bums at about mile 60, though they were in street clothes. bike shorts make a huge difference, people. as does ass lube.
at the time of the ride, all of my butt'r was in a box somewhere between san francisco and chicago. why? well, a summer of daily use (and occasional abuse) of my rolling suitcase left it with some large, NSFF holes. (not safe for flight. duh.) also, bikes are hellof awkward when they're in boxes, and i did not want to be wrestling with a sketchy rolling suitcase, a messenger bag, and a bike box, and i especially did not want to be wrestling to get all these things onto the CTA. so i shipped most of my shit, traveling with only my bike box, the bag that fits on my bike rack, and messenger bag. and believe you me, i got some weird looks as i reassembled my bicycle at baggage claim! and then i had a great 7ish-mile ride to my new home in bridgeport.
but back to the ride. fortunately, my ass was not lubeless, because anna brought some over! anna, one of my fellow bike & builders, goes to grinnell college in iowa. i lured her to chicago with, "hey, you're from the midwest! come to the perimeter ride!! i KNOW you want to do another century this summer—seven is definitely not enough!!!" she drove over with her friend jasmine, who doesn't really bike but is cool anyway.
i had some other friends on the ride; martin "safety" hazard and andy "the professor," two of my midnight marauding friends. the lot of us met for breakfast at the hollywood grill, where i met a few more folks. after a delicious breakfast (broccoli and feta omelet for me!), we rode east to the lakefront. and then we went waaaay south (the idea, after all, was to ride the perimeter—"live on the edge," as the cue sheet instructed us), stopping first at the mussolini pillar near soldier field. once down south (95th? maybe?) we stopped for lunch (homemade mexican food sold from a trailer), then rambled on west...
obviously the most important thing about long bike rides is food, so the next thing i remember clearly is an ice cream stop at the original rainbow cone, on 92nd and western. i had never heard of the place, but apparently everyone loves this place, and everyone eats rainbow-flavored ice cream cones at the taste of chicago. i suppose i should clarify that it's not a rainbow flavor, but rather a rainbow of colors in the cone. however, i invite you to pause now and consider what a rainbow would taste like. and if your answer is something lame like "water vapor," i invite you to use a little imagination next time, ok?
i don't have my cue sheet, but i think the next big thing was a jaunt out to the suburb of berwyn to see the spindle, possibly for the last time. you can check out some spindle-saving press here. and yes, we ate there, too, at claude's favorite fast food "restaurant."
then it was off to superdawg very very conveniently located directly next to a liquor store. we're probably at mile 70 or 80ish at this point, which was close enough to the end of the 100 miles that most of us switched to a different sort of hydration. i stopped avoiding beef for long enough to have a famed hot dog, which was decent but definitely no hot doug's.
the bonus hydration made our next stop, the leaning tower of niles, some other suburb, lean juuuust a little more. after that, we had a bit of a haul to the lake. it seemed extra super long to me, since all that hydration had me looking for a poorly-lit bush or tree on the side of the street. places to drop trou and take a piss are few and far between, though, when you're not in middle-of-nowhere, USA. (which is probably one of the weirdest things i'll miss about bike & build: stopping anywhere—anywhere!—to pee, walking 2 feet off the road/highway, declaring, "this spot is perfect!", and popping a squat. early in the trip, mind you, we were much more vigilant about finding cover. it was probably the change in terrain to ranches and desert, combined with pure laziness, that caused our drastic shift in modesty...)
i shared my overhydration with vic, whose name i've seen online plenty but had never met before. very familiar with evanston, which we were riding east to at this point, vic knew the planned route to the lake, and volunteered to wait up for me. we soon passed a suitable empty park with some suitable unlit shrubbery, and the remainder of my ride to the lake was much more comfortable.
and then it was naked time! and by naked time, i mean some marauders may or may not have opted to rinse off the day's sweat in lake michigan's pristine waters. i was sure anna would join us, but she took a nap instead.
a short and uneventful ride to the handlebar followed. there were $5 margaritas. incriminating photos exist. the end.
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