What a fantastic first day ride. Temps were in the 60’s all day, tail wind, partly sunny, and just plain pleasant. I don’t know how we will ever beat this.
We started out with a group shot at Buckingham Fountain and then took off on the Lake Shore trail. We were on a bike path almost all day. And I am so impressed with Chicago’s bike paths. All paved, pretty well maintained, well signed, and easy to navigate. There was only one time where we stopped and really scratched our heads about exactly where to go. Remember, there are two of us ladies and nine guys. Well, we had decided where to go but several of the men kept rehashing and rehashing. I tho’t it was so funny. No one would just take off and go and I finally said to one guy, “How many guys does it take to make a map decision?”
Group shot and our leaders, Jared and Johnny. Great guys and very accommodating.
They even had cold sodas and chips for us when we got in. They got points for that.
So our group’s names are kinda unique. We have a Matt, Mark, Murray, and Alison, Allen, Al and Jared and Johnny as well as Doug, Glynn, Stephen, Richard, and Francis.
One exciting thing happened today. We approached a draw bridge and were almost on it when all these bells and whistles went off and the arms came down. A couple of us backed off and immediately the bridge started rising. It only took a couple minutes to rise up enough to let a tug boat through and then come back down. I was quite impressed.
One of our riders, Doug, has a wooden bike. Yes, a bike frame made out of three different exotic woods. It is beautiful. The bike has wood from three continents. The outside wood is Jatoba from Brazil (Brazilian cherry). The middle wood is Wenge from Zaire, Africa. This is the most dense wood in the world. The center is Appalachian Ash. The wood is musical instrument grade material. The wood is laminated together and they make them in halves. The tubes are only 3/16 thick. They are computer machine controlled to make this frame. Then they west system epoxy them to seal out water. The next step is to put an adhesive on the joints that are pressure and temperature sensitive and then put them in an oven to slowly warm it up to 170 degrees over 24 hours. At that point, the glue melts and the glue is stronger than the wood. The final step is three coats of virgin polyeurathane. Then the frame is guaranteed for life.
The name of the bike is Renobe. Check out the website.
We are camped at an RV park tonite and it sits between two busy highways. It is probably going to be almost as noisy as last night’s train noises. I didn’t sleep at all last night. Every five minutes an El train went by our window. It was disgusting. I know I never slept more than 10 minutes at a time.
16.6 miles when we rode the Lake Shore trail two days ago. 3815.7 total
57.8 miles today. 3873.5 total
BikerAl Across America 2018 