Huzzah! My first summer as a Chicago bicyclist is now officially under my belt, and the benefits to my life (that I've been dutifully recording here all summer) have been enormous - I'm in better shape than ever, in better health than ever, am eating better so as to keep up my energy during the bike rides themselves, am taking a daily multivitamin now for the same reason, am more tan, have better muscle tone, am getting out with my friends a lot more, am making it to a lot more artistic events in the city, am coming across as sexier, am saving money, am smoking less (from all those twenty-minute periods waiting for the bus that I no longer have), and just on and on.

There's only one real problem, in fact, which is that I'm still smoking a pack a day, so simply can't be on my bike as much as I would like. So I've been trying not to push myself too hard, this first year of owning a bike again and getting a lot more vigorous exercise, and have mostly been using my bike for the everyday trips I make in my neighborhood. Which has been really great unto itself, don't get me wrong, because that's how life is here in Chicago - it's based around very distinct, self-contained neighborhoods, and most Chicagoans I imagine spend most of their lives running errands and doing things within a two-mile radius of their house. And this can sometimes be a real pain in the ass by foot, and of course is so expensive and takes such a long time by public transit, so that's been great on its own, to have this bike and be merely minutes away from the vast majority of my daily destinations. (Plus it's been equally nice to start getting out this summer to places farther away from train and bus stations - almost like a whole secret second city here in Chicago, that those without cars or bikes never see.)

But still, that's only two to five miles a day I'm logging on my bike these days (3 to 8 km), good in general but for me not much more than I was logging in by foot when I was a pedestrian. So once a week or so this summer I've also been trying to take a little more extended a trip as well - maybe only ten to fifteen miles total (16 to 24 km), not enough to wipe out this smoker, but still something legitimately challenging for me, and something I couldn't accomplish simply by foot alone.

Most of these weekly longer trips have still not been anything to write home about - a trip to a coffeehouse three neighborhoods away, for example, instead of one, or sometimes to meet up with friends in far-flung locations. But one of the things that I'm also hoping to do semi-regularly is to make some of these longer trips the same destinations that a lot of other Chicagoans are interested in, or that would be of general interest to the average non-Chicagoan, and to then file text and photo reports about what the trip was really like, versus the official line from the city government's bicycling program about how beautiful and easy all these trips are.

So far this summer I had only taken one of these bike adventures, a trip to the Loop during rush hour, since the city government here is always going on about how easy it is to commute to your downtown job by bike each day. But man, it was so nice here this weekend, and it was Labor Day weekend as well, so I thought I'd finally get off my ass and log my second bike adventure as long as I had the opportunity to do so. I started by biking to the lakefront, like I did for my first adventure, but this time decided to head north, and bike all the way to the end of the lakefront park, where both Lakeshore Drive and the lakefront bike path officially end. And here's a short explanation of why this particular destination is of local importance, for those who need it (and I've explained all this before, so I'll try to go fast)...

One of the most remarkable things about Chicago, in my opinion, is that a hundred years ago the city government banned private developers from owning lakefront property, leaving the entire coastline instead as one giant public park, and that a hundred years later not a single city government has reversed this decision. And so in Chicago you have this 30-mile-long park along the entire eastern edge of the city, from the southern city limit all the way to the northern one, that curves all the way around the southwest side of Lake Michigan and provides just dozens of maritime amenities that a lot people are often surprised to find at a place like Chicago (like beaches, yacht harbors, fishing, professional beach volleyball leagues, etc). And this, of course, doesn't even begin to factor in the literally hundreds of sculptures found in this 30-mile park, many of them internationally-famous pieces by world-renown artists; the zoo; the golf course; Navy Pier; the lakefront theatre; the hundreds of ballparks, soccer fields, tennis courts, skateparks and other sporting facilities; the dozen restaurants and cafes; the half-dozen major museums; and again, it just goes on and on and on.

One of the most remarkable things, though, about this already remarkable park, is that there is actually one uninterrupted stretch of pavement spanning the entire 30-mile distance, created exclusively for bikers, runners and pedestrians. And this, believe it or not, is the thing that really holds the entire park together, and makes it feel so much like a collective citywide resource; because no matter where in the city you are, and what happens to be in that particular stretch of the park, you're always going to see that strip of pavement full of bikers and runners, and know that everyone else in the city is on this path as well, no matter what part of the park they're in. (Yes, midwesterners, much like the curious pride one can feel over their local section of the Katy Trail, and that feeling of empowerment over knowing you could stay on that trail and end up really far away from where you started.)

The park does have a northern endpoint, of course, which is at 5800N, or Hollywood Avenue, which is where the city originally ended back when the decision to make this park was first made. (For those who are curious, the lakefront beaches keep continuing from here to the city limits, at 9200N or whatever it is; from here to there, however, the lakefront is private property, so of course is all fenced off from the general public.) And I've always been curious about what the lakefront path looks like at its actual endpoint, I guess like being on the yellow brick road a lot and always wondering what it looks like back there at Munchkinland, when it curls up onto itself in a tight spiral. So that's what I did last Saturday, and here following are the photos and text of the trip.

So, as before, my trip started with a quick jaunt down Buena Avenue, near my apartment (4200N), over to the lakefront itself. See, there's this real famous highway that runs parallel to the lakefront as well, Lakeshore Drive (or LSD - a major setting in the Illuminatus! trilogy, for anyone who's read that), which mostly runs uninterrupted right between the city itself and the lakefront park. So the only way to actually enter the park is via the official under- and overpasses regularly dotting the city; and the one in my neighborhood is at Buena, which is why I take this particular street so often. (Buena and LSD is where Peace Garden is located as well, for regular readers who remember me mentioning it.) And Buena is just like every other quiet residential street here in Chicago, as the above photo shows - beautiful, tree-lined, not what a lot of people expect when they think of Chicago. So then I turned left on the lakefront path when I got to it, and starting heading north. And about a half mile later I entered the Montrose Harbor area, a common destination for me and the subject of several past journal entries. This is the same area of the park, in fact, where this year's Kids and Kites Festival was held, which I attended earlier this summer and possted photos of; and the above photo is of the same area, but today with it hosting a youth intramural soccer league. And like I said, the park is just full of such sporting venues, one every mile it sometimes seems, and they're always being used for one type of league or another, which is always a fun thing about visiting the park here. So then I kept making my way north, until hitting Wilson (4600N). And then right past the Wilson underpass, what should I happen to spy? Why, a skatepark! I didn't even know there was a city-sponsored skatepark on the north side of the city; I mean, a lot of us know about the one on the southside, because of the interesting circumstances behind its construction (where the city basically hired a bunch of famous skaters to tell them how to design it, which made the local skating community just stupid happy), but I had no idea there was another one this close to my house. And I'm not a skater myself, of course, so can't tell you whether this particular skatepark is any good; so maybe you can take a lot at my crappy cellphone-camera photo and be able to get an idea yourself. After Wilson, the lakefront path sort of pulls away from the actual lakefront for awhile, which isn't as much fun to bike - lots of trees, lots of views of the highway, but not much else. But then right around the beginning of the Edgewater neighborhood (Foster, or 5200N), the path swings back in again, and runs parallel to the water the remainder of its distance. And that's always nice, I think, because it's just such a beautiful view - the unending coastline, the skyscrapers popping up in the distance, the half-dressed hotties on the beach and everything else. And then look at what I spied at the same time, across the highway from me - why, none other than the infamous Edgewater Hotel, at Bryn Mawr (5600N) and Sheridan. I used to live across the street from the Edgewater for three years, in fact, and was always fascinated with the place, because it's such a sad yet proud reminder of the neighborhood's past glory. See, back in the '20s when the neighborhood was first developed, Edgewater was still technically a suburb of Chicago, and mostly consisted of sandy beaches and undeveloped land. Given the times in which the neighborhood was built, then, Edgewater was originally an urban vacation spot for a lot of blue-collar Chicagoans, with all the clubs and hotels back then constructed in the popular "Miami Art Deco" style - like normal Art Deco, but with everything painted blue and pink and green, and with shit like pelicans adorning rain gutters instead of gargoyles.

Man, can you even imagine an entire neighborhood of Chicago full of these bright pink and blue art-deco grand vacation hotels? So romantic it makes my heart melt! And the Edgewater was apparently one of the grandest of them all - in fact, before they died my grandparents used to tell me about listening to NBC Radio on Saturday nights in their youth, which would broadcast live big-band concerts from the Edgewater's ballroom every week. Anyway, after World War II all the people living in such neighborhoods ran off to the suburbs, of course, leading to Edgewater falling into ruin and most of its old grand hotels being torn down. The Edgewater is one of the only ones left, in fact, and actually looks like shit when you're standing close to it, so is always both this cool and sad thing when I see it anymore.

So then, finally at 5800N I hit both the end of the park and the end of the lakefront path (and the end of Lakeshore Drive as well, for that matter). And the endpoint of the path doesn't disappoint - it actually does close in on itself in a little circle drive at the end of it all, with a giant planter right in the middle, and even with a big sign that says "THIS IS THE END OF THE LAKEFRONT PATH." (I have photos of it as well, which I'll be posting to my Flickr account at the end of the month.) And then there's this crazy-ass maze of little sidestreets here at the end of the park, to transition parkgoers back into general street traffic, with just an insane amount of markings everywhere, all over the pavement and on every light pole, like something out of Blade Runner, which I also got photos of. And then after three or four such little sidestreets, I finally end up on Kenmore, one of the 100 or so miles of Chicago streets with painted bike lanes. And I love the painted bike lanes so much here in Chicago, although always feel goofy about it because they always make me feel empowered, like I have just as much a right to be there as the cars do, and even have this little stretch of street that cars aren't allowed to drive into. So then I stayed on this street for another quarter-mile or so, straight north to Granville. And finally, my destination! This is Metropolis Coffeehouse, in fact, located in this strange little transitional zone here on the city's north side (that is, between Edgewater and Rogers Park, in this borderland area that doesn't have a name of its own), which turned out to be as great a little place as I had heard. So then I hung around there for a little while, then biked it home. Success!

And I had a little more to talk about as well, including possible destinations for my third bike adventure, but I'm almost out of space for today's entry, so I guess I better wrap it up. See you again tomorrow!