So, regular readers will of course know by now that I was recently the unexpected recipient of a new bicycle, courtesy of my parents seeing one on sale in suburban St. Louis and thinking of me. (Thanks again, mom and dad!) Regular readers will also know that Chicago currently has one of the most radical big-city bike plans in the entire United States; the city government, in fact, is spending tens of millions of dollars per year right now to not only convince more people to bike, but to actually get rid of their cars for good and to consider their bicycle their main form of urban transportation. As a result, the city is constantly recommending various bike trips that sound dubious when you first hear them - like their insistence, for example, that one can easily commute to one's downtown office job each day by bicycle, which when you first hear it sounds almost too good to be true. So, for my first official bike adventure in the ten years I've now lived in Chicago, I thought I'd do just that - bike from my apartment in Uptown, that is, straight down to the Loop, just to see whether the city actually knows what they're talking about.

The goal - bike from my place (near Irving Park Road and Sheridan) to the Picasso sculpture at Daley Plaza (Washington and Dearborn). Total distance: 6.5 miles (10.5 km). Time it usually takes me, when I make the trip by el and foot: 45 minutes. (That includes the walk from my apartment to the el stop, the wait for the el, the el ride, and then the walk from the downtown el stop to Daley Plaza.) Will I be able to match this time? Will I be ready to kill myself from exhaustion at the end of it? Will some oblivious motorist actually beat me to the punch along the way? Here we go!

Leg 1: Sheridan Road to the lakefront, via Buena Avenue. Distance: 0.5 miles (0.8 km). Of the entire six and a half mile trip, believe it or not, this half-mile stretch is the only street I will use that has no special city-sponsored bike optimizations; in other words, this first leg was just like riding on any quiet street in any American city. (Oh, and I should mention, the original plan was to leave around 8 in the morning, to better replicate the conditions a downtown "bike commuter" might have to face each day. But then I realized that my destination [State Street Borders] doesn't open until 10, so I took off around 9 instead.) Anyway, not much to mention here - just a nice, straight, little half-mile jaunt from my apartment to the lakefront, with hardly any traffic at all.

Riding time for this leg: 5 minutes.

Leg 2: Buena Avenue to Belmont Avenue, via lakefront bike path. Distance: 1.25 miles (2 km). I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the joy of being on the lakefront path on a warm Friday morning is almost a complete justification for living in Chicago in the first place. For those who don't know, way back in the late 1800s an architect here named Daniel Burnham was hired to design a radical restructuring of the entire city of Chicago, inspired by the fire that had recently destroyed almost the entire city. The finished proposal (the infamous "1909 Plan of Chicago," which you can actually buy a replica of at local bookstores) was full of details, of course, that never ended up actually getting implemented by the city, but you'd be surprised by how many actually did - a subterranean highway downtown just for trucks (Lower Wacker Drive - which, by the way, is where all the cool driving scenes in Batman Begins were filmed); "green avenues" (streets with enlarged grassy strips on either side) connecting all the various city parks, etc.

Another one of these proposals that actually got implemented was Burnham's suggestion that the city not allow any commercial development along the lakefront whatsoever - to keep the entire lakefront "a free and public treasure," as I think he originally put it. And believe it or not, we've actually gone 100 years now with the city government never once changing this policy, which means that the entire 25-mile lakefront of Chicago is still to this day just one giant interconnected park, holding not only dozens of beaches but also a golf course, a zoo, half a dozen boat marinas, etc etc. And one of the other great features of Chicago's lakefront is that there's one giant paved path as well, 25 miles long or whatever it is, specifically designed for bicyclers and rollerbladers and joggers and others. And as far as I'm concerned, it's this lakefront that is one of the main joys of being a Chicago citizen, and is something that can almost guarantee to put you in a good mood, no matter what mood you were in when you first arrived.

So anyway, I ended up riding the lakefront path a total of 3.25 miles (5.8 km); I could've ridden it all the way to the Loop, to be frank, but decided to mix things up along the wayjust for a little variety. This first leg of the lakefront path was from Buena to Belmont, or 1.25 miles (2 km); it was no challenge at all, not even to this pack-a-day smoker. (The photo you're looking at above is a special dog-friendly beach at Belmont Harbor; it's one of my favorite places in the city for just sitting and watching all the random going-ons.)

Riding time for this leg: 5 minutes. Total riding time thus far: 10 minutes. Total distance thus far: 1.75 miles (2.8 km).

Leg 3: Belmont Avenue to North Avenue, via lakefront path. Total distance: 2 miles (3.2 km). Ah, Lincoln Park! You can always tell, in fact, when you've hit YuppieTown along the lakefront, because suddenly there are ten times the amount of bicycles on the path you're on...and it's all people with $2,000 bicycles, too. (No, I'm not making that price up - are you starting to understand now why I've been having such a hard time finding a bicycle in Chicago?) This is one of the great ironic pleasures of exercising in Lincoln Park, in fact - watching all the people in $200 shoes, with a $500 iPod strapped to their arm, riding a $2,000 bike and sporting a $100 helmet, and then realizing that you're getting the same exact exercise as them in $20 shoes, a $60 bike, and a helmet picked up at a garage sale for a quarter. Take that, Trixie!

At this point in the trip I'm still feeling fine, but lose my breath by the time I hit North Avenue and have to stop for a few minutes. Still, not too bad - almost four miles before losing my breath for the first time, which is surprising for someone who smokes a pack a day (oh, and who huffs a WHOLE lot of pot as well).

Riding time for this leg: 13 minutes. Total riding time thus far: 23 minutes. Total distance: 3.75 miles (6 km).

Leg 4: Lakefront path to Wells Street, via North Avenue. Distance: 0.5 miles (0.8 km). Okay, so my first mistake of the morning - I get off the lakefront path at LaSalle instead of North, and end up on this scary-ass highway exit full of rushing cars. But no problem - since I'm on a bike, I just hop over the grassy median and am suddenly on North Avenue, where I'm supposed to be. This is part of the 100 miles of "recommended" bike lanes I was talking about the other day - where extra space was added on each side of the street for bikes, but the city simply hasn't gotten around yet to legally designating it as an official bike path. Again, not too much to report here - just a quick sideways jaunt over to my next main street.

Riding time for this leg: 4 minutes. Total riding time thus far: 27 minutes. Total distance thus far: 4.25 miles (6.8 km).

Leg 5: North Avenue to the Loop, via Wells Street. Distance: 2 miles (3.2 km). Okay, so I've finally hit the part of the trip I was most worried about - riding alongside cars on a busy downtown street. Thankfully, Wells is part of the 90 miles of Chicago streets that does have a bike lane - as you can see in the above photo, it's basically a little three-foot strip of concrete on either side of the street, specially painted with bike-lane markings, illegal for cars to drive into or park. And how was it? It was...a little scary, don't get me wrong, but surprisingly not as much as you might think. The secret to riding on one of these bike lanes, now that I've done it myself, is simply to be extra attentive to what's going on around you - despite it being illegal, for example, I came across eight cars in two miles that were double-parked right in the middle of the bike lane, along with half a dozen oblivious car-parkers who opened their front doors right into the bike lane at the same exact moment I was riding by them. I was never in any danger, however - by paying attention to all these distractions, I was able to safely swerve around them with plenty of time and distance to spare. Don't forget, Chicagoans, that you are considered a motorist here when you're on a bike - which, yes, means that you have to stop for stoplights too!

Riding time for this leg: 11 minutes. Total riding time thus far: 38 minutes. Total distance thus far: 6.25 miles (10 km).

Leg 6: Northwest corner of the Loop (Wells and Lake) to Daley Plaza (Washington and Dearborn). Distance: 0.25 miles (0.4 km). Good Lord, I made it! And with only getting winded two times the entire trip, too, which amazes me more than anyone. Once at the edge of the Loop, of course, things start getting tricky for the amateur bicyclist; think of the idea of biking in midtown Manhattan, for example, to give you an idea of what biking in the Loop is like. Thankfully the Loop isn't actually that big, so once you park you can pretty much get around by foot to your destination and not have to worry about all those crazy cars and cabs and busses going every which way but loose.

The city has basically designated four one-way streets in the Loop as "bike-friendly" (that is, where the motorists are required by law to yield to you); Clark is the southbound one, so I simply hopped on that at Lake Street and rode it two blocks. That got me to Washington, at which point I simply walked the bike on the sidewalk an extra block to Dearborn, my final destination. Huzzah, my friends!

Riding time for this leg: 2 minutes. Total riding time for trip: 40 minutes. Total distance: 6.5 miles (10.5 km).

As a matter of fact, I only had one problem during my entire bike adventure today: namely, once I got down to the Monroe red-line el stop, where according to my map there is free indoor bike parking, there was of course no free indoor bike parking. And in usual CTA style, the conductor at the stop didn't have the slightest clue what I was talking about. (I even showed him my special CTA bike map, which clearly shows an icon at the Monroe stop that says "free indoor parking." His response? "Where'd you get this? I've never seen this map before." God bless ya, CTA! And you wonder why the state government doesn't want to give you any more money?)

But again, no problems - believe it or not, Chicago has over 10,000 city-funded bike racks (with an average of 700 new ones being installed every single year), including one right in front of the State Street Borders (where I am currently writing this entry). So I simply locked up, grabbed my removable seat, and here I am! Adventure completed!

So what did we learn today? Well, we learned that it took me 40 minutes to get from my place in Uptown to the Loop, at the tail end of rush hour, a trip that takes me 45 minutes by el and foot; so, the city's right when they say you can commute faster by bike than you can by public transit. (Oh, and forget cars - between the traffic and finding a parking place, you're talking at least an hour during rush hour between my place and the Loop.) We learned that the trip hardly tired out even me, a guy who smokes a pack a day and also imbibes WAY too much THC - and if I can do it without much effort, pretty much anyone can. We learned that the trip was much safer than I was expecting as well, as long as you step up as a bicyclist to your legal responsibilites, and simply take care to notice the things going on around you. And at least I learned what an amazingly empowering thing it is to travel a decent distance by bicycle - this entire morning in the Loop, in fact, I've wanted to run up to strangers and yell, "I biked here from Uptown! Can you believe it! I actually biked here from Uptown!"

Conclusion? The city government is right! Not only is it possible to commute to your downtown job via bicycle, but it's faster and cheaper than either cars or public transit as well. And meanwhile, you're getting a lot of great exercise, you start your morning with the sun on your face and the wind at your back, and you avoid that depressing crush of cheap suits and Starbucks cups and folded-up newspapers that usually constitute the nightmare known as "riding the el during rush hour." If like me you've always been curious about the idea of riding your bike to work instead of training it or driving, you now have my unreserved recommendation for trying it out.

Happy bicycling! Talk with you again on Monday!