Turtle on Wheels

In case you were wondering, I did it. This past Saturday and Sunday, I biked 120 miles in 48 hours for the Bike MS: Tour de Farms. And as I hobble around the office today, I can say that it was all worth it—the past 4 months of infernally early mornings at the gym and on the lake path, bleeding my bank account dry with purchases of bike clothing and equipment, and the aches of my muscles as they adjusted to actually being used. It was an uncomfortable, painful, and occasionally frustrating process, but I think I can say that I came out of it all the better. The Bike MS: Tour de Farms itself was great: The ride was well run and supported, the Illinois countryside was gorgeous, we had some interesting challenges along the way (thanks to a strong headwind on Saturday, as Laura put it, our kneecaps were left behind in a cornfield somewhere), and there were plenty of emotional moments as we saw firsthand who we were riding for and how much it meant to people.

Details and lots of photos will be forthcoming in a future post, because among other ailments, I somehow sprained my right hand during the ride—this means that typing is a less than pleasant activity, eating with utensils is a slight challenge, and my handwriting has temporarily regressed 20 years. But for now, I can say that I biked 120 miles and lived to tell the tale.

“Bicycle riders must behave as if two things are true: they are invisible and all cars are out to kill them. Behaving in this manner helps one’s long term survival.”

“Folks, in this city, it’s not a matter IF you will be hit by a car, but WHEN. Wear a helmet and light up your bike like a Christmas tree.”

“All of us on the road - whether on feet, two wheels, or in something motorized - need to be as conscious as we can of our own safety and that of all those around us. Never assume that the people around you are going to do what is sensible. Never assume that they can see you - never assume that if they do, they actually care. Never assume that there is nobody approaching in your blindspot. Take time, look, and be able to react. This goes for EVERYONE, not just cyclists or motorists. There should be no assumptions on the road, because you’re really only given one mistaken assumption before your friends and family are forced to see writeups like this one in the trib.”

These are just some of the 350+ comments left in response to the Chicago Tribune article about the cyclist who died a couple days ago as a result of crashing into an open car door and being thrown into moving traffic. It appears that it was the driver’s fault: the cyclist was wearing a helmet and riding with traffic in broad daylight on the far right side of the lane—following the law in every way—and then a man suddenly opened his SUV door without any time for the biker to respond.

It’s interesting to read the comments: Some are pretty extreme—there are the idiots who declare that bikers are tree-hugging anarchists who should be banned from the roads and deserve to die, and on the other end of the spectrum, there are people who argue that bikers are free to do whatever they want to ride ahead and the air-polluting cars need to move out of the way. But the saner voices mostly prevail, pointing out that there are both reckless cyclists and bad drivers on the roads, and *everyone* needs to start being more law-abiding and vigilant while riding or driving.

Getting doored is one of my biggest fears: Although I’ve learned how to ride on the streets over the last couple months and have gained the courage and confidence to do so, I am NOT a fan of street riding. I’ve been lucky so far and mostly have encountered drivers who are paying attention and slow down. But given the crazy drivers in Chicago, if I keep on riding the roads, eventually I’ll get another battle scar.

On the other hand, riding the lake front path is getting pretty treacherous too with the advent of warm weather: For instance, I went on a bike ride last Sunday afternoon and nearly landed in Lake Shore Drive. It happened on one of the worst parts of the lakefront trail, between Monroe and Navy Pier. After you bike past Randolph Street, the brilliant city planners decided to temporarily merge the lake front bike path with the sidewalk that runs alongside the LSD expressway underpass to Navy Pier. So on a 500-foot stretch of a medium-width sidewalk, there are families walking up to Navy Pier *and* bikers trying to ride down the path. Bikers can’t ride on that expressway and as far as I can figure out, there’s no alternate route outside of going way west into downtown and then back out to the lake.

Now I normally wouldn’t have been riding on the path at a super-busy time like Sunday afternoon, except that I’d been out of town all weekend, a thunderstorm had hit the city a couple hours earlier, and I wanted to get some riding in before more rain came through. Everything went relatively well until I reached that sidewalk part and a large family was in front of me. I called out “On Your Left” at them as I approached, and most of them moved to the side except a little girl, who kept skipping ahead. While both her family and me were yelling at her to move, I ended up swerving to the edge of the sidewalk to avoid her, and somehow miraculously navigated around a pole and stayed on the sidewalk. Why I didn’t stop completely? In my panic, I was completely focused on steering my bike and I hadn’t clipped out of my pedals, and unfortunately, it still takes time and visible effort for me to clip out. So a sudden stop meant I’d crash either into the family or in traffic. I certainly wasn’t an entirely innocent party in the incident, but overall, it’s a crappy type of near crash that comes up far too often on the lake front path.

In any case, I’m trying to find alternative routes to avoid this as well as to break up the monotony: there are a couple bike trails on the far South Side that I want to try, but they require riding on the roads and in one case, I’d have to ride on the border of the notorious neighborhood of Englewood. So hmm . . . I think I’ll check them out this weekend, but I’ll be armed with a lot of caution.

This weekend turned out to be my first true trial run for the Bike MS ride: Yesterday, my friend/Bike MS riding cohort Laura and I did a long ride on the North Branch Trail. The trail starts on the far northwest side of Chicago, so I biked up to Union Station and took the Fox Lake Metra train line to the Forest Glen stop. Laura met me at the station, and we biked up Elston and Milwaukee avenues to Caldwell Woods. The North Branch Trail starts at Caldwell Woods and winds its way through the Cook County Forest Preserve, loosely following the north branch of the Chicago River, and ends 20 miles later at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

After running into a few confusing dead ends (there are several entrances onto the trail from parking lots and streets, and we ended up at all of them), we finally got going and ultimately covered about 2/3s of the trail before turning around about a mile north of New Trier High School. It was one of the best bike rides I’ve done so far: The weather was glorious (sunny and in the pleasantly warm mid-70s), most of the bike path cut through picturesque woods and nature areas, and the path wasn’t overly crowded (although it had its share of leisure walkers and kids who’d suddenly stop in the middle of the path).

I also discovered one huge fact: I could ride about 5 miles faster on this inland trail compared to my sluggish rides on the lakefront. It’s because the wind off Lake Michigan is much sharper and stronger (not to mention colder), providing me far more resistance than the breezy headwind we faced on the North Branch Trail. That fact alone gives me hope that we’ll have a decent showing on June 21st and 22nd: the Bike MS ride is well inland–1 1/2 hours west of Chicago–and if the conditions are similar to Sunday’s, we’ll be golden.

Our total round-trip mileage was approximately 36 miles and with my initial bike ride to Union Station, I logged a total of 45.10 miles and about 4:30 hours of riding. After my train returned to Union Station, I then biked over to the Metra station at Van Buren and Michigan, intending to rest my legs and just take the Metra back home. But after waiting 20 minutes for the train, I was denied boarding, because apparently THIS Metra line wasn’t allowing bikers because of Gospel Fest. Thanks for the notice, #%@*$! Metra. I always thought that if there was a bicycle blackout, it applied to the entire system, not just selected lines. So when I was able to board the train to Union Station, I thought I could take a train home too. Not so. After that, a helpful station worker–who didn’t know about the blackout either, because he asked why I turned around–pointed me to an elevator to take me back up to the street, and I then biked the rest of the way home. That last ride was another 7 miles, so I clocked about 52 miles for the entire day. My muscles were pretty stiff and sore by the time I finally got home, but heating pads, lots of stretches, and a healthy dose of ibuprofen ensured that I could walk this morning.

Sunday was the culmination of 3 straight days of biking–15 on Friday, about 20 on Saturday, and then 52 on Sunday–and I’m still walking and talking. So I might just survive this ride after all. . . .

The 4-week countdown to Bike MS 2008 started last Saturday and I’m now buckling down for the most intense part of my training yet. That means 15-mile+ bike rides on weekday mornings and 3-hour+ plus rides on Saturday and Sunday. Of course, it doesn’t help that I was a flat-out lazy bum during my Memorial Day weekend trip to Austin: outside of a short canoeing trip and shopping walks around downtown, my friends and I didn’t do much more than eat and sunbathe in the 95-degree heat.

When I returned Monday night, I knew that I had to immediately start burning off the Texas BBQ. But the balmy 45-degree breeze that greeted my face on Tuesday morning sent me fleeing back inside. Thankfully it warmed up over the course of the day, so I’m back in the saddle again.

Speaking of saddles, I need a new one: the rock-hard slab of plastic and metal I’m riding on now has been tolerable so far, but I fear that I might not be able to walk again after riding on it for 7+ hours. Moreover, a fellow Cycling Sis at the group ride a couple weeks ago took one look at my seat and said, “You need a new saddle.” So I’m trolling around for sales on cushy saddles, preferably ones with the air hole slot. In my Google research, I came across a illuminating article on GORP about how women have equally important health concerns as men do on the issue of bike seats possibly damaging the nether regions of the body, and they recommend several seats that I’ll take a look at.

After I make this (hopefully) final upgrade, it’s onward and upward with crossed fingers.

I came, I rode, I survived: I completed the 15-mile American Cancer Society Walk & Roll Chicago bike ride in about 1 hour and 40 minutes yesterday morning. There were a couple setbacks throughout the ride:

First, there was a horrible headwind off the lake: I biked from my place to Grant Park as a pre-ride warm up, and when that headwind hit my face, I knew that the first part of the ride was going to be tough.  Not only was it a whopping 47 degrees outside (thank God I decided to buy a pair of bike “knickers” pants on Saturday), but the sharp wind made it even colder and slowed people down to a crawl as we biked the first leg of the ride on the lakefront path. But we didn’t have to fight the wind for too long: We rode about 3 miles from Grant Park (which makes up the southeastern border of downtown Chicago) to Fullerton Avenue, and then we thankfully turned west to go into Lincoln Park.

But when we left the lakefront, a whole challenge presented itself: street riding. I had studied the route map beforehand and it included some of the busiest streets in Chicago. So I hoped that they would block off the street or even one lane, but nope: we were riding side-by-side with the cars. Granted, most of the streets had bike lanes and the cars slowed down with the stream of cyclists coming down the street. But all the same, it was a little nervewracking. But the major trip-up I had during the ride was due to the stoplights. On major streets like Lincoln, Randolph, and Clark, there often were stoplights at every other block. Some bikers darted across the intersection when there was a break in traffic, but not I: I wasn’t in a hurry and had no intention of getting hit in an avoidable situation. But stopping so frequently meant that a crash was almost inevitable at some point for me and my clipless pedals of one month.

I did well at first–I either slowly coasted to the intersection and willed the light to change before I had to stop completely, or I unclipped from my pedals as I approached the intersection. But then I decided that I’d be more efficient if I left my right foot clipped in, so that I could push off right away when the light changed. Ha, that worked well: About halfway through the ride, I was riding with a group of faster people (after the first 30 minutes or so, riders naturally spread out along the route and became loosely grouped together by pace) and we got to a stoplight at Wells and Grand, I think. I unclipped my left foot as I braked, but my bike started to tip the other way. My right foot was still clipped in, however, so I couldn’t catch myself or the bike . . . and down I went. But I fortunately didn’t drag anyone else down, because the guy next to me managed to scoot out of the way in time. Slightly scraped up and more than a little embarrassed, I waved off their concerned questions and got back on. I fell behind them and rode much slower for the rest of the ride.

I definitely could have done the 15 miles in a faster time, but overall, it went okay: the ride was well organized and wasn’t too crowded (although there were some other near crashes when people were blown sideways by the wind or lost control of their bikes), and I got some more street riding experience (I never thought I’d be riding through the Loop on Wabash and Clark streets). I feel more confident about riding in an event like the Bike MS–I imagine they’ll have a similar onslaught of endlessly cheery volunteers–and I did 45 miles total between Saturday and Sunday. But I’ll be on vacation next weekend, so I’ll have to fit my longer rides in the evenings this week. . . .

No, not that kind. . . . This week, I’ve started doing some bike rides in the afternoon. I initially preferred the mornings because the lake front path is usually less crowded and I’m a “morning person” who usually wakes up early without a problem. But I just couldn’t get up the energy this week to crawl out of bed at 5:30, perhaps because I haven’t had great sleep schedule: for some reason, my internal clock decided to switch to a 6-hour sleep time, so that I’ve been waking up exactly 6 hours after I go to bed. On Tuesday, I went to bed at 9:30pm . . . and woke up at 3:30am. On Wednesday I went to bed at 11 and woke up at 5. I’d toss and turn trying to go back to sleep, but when WBEZ blared from my clock radio, I suddenly couldn’t motivate myself to dress for a bike ride.

I decided I’d make up for my morning slothfulness by riding after work, and it’s worked surprisingly well: For one thing, 65-degree evenings are a lot more pleasant than 45-degree mornings, and I’m kind of fed up with wearing multiple layers of clothing or just turning into an ice cube on my bike. Also, riding after a long day in the office is a great way to unwind. The lake front isn’t as crowded as I thought in the evenings (at least on the south side) and I can usually ride for a couple hours before it gets dark. I’ve been able to explore a little more of the south side, thanks to my newly gained courage to ride on the streets, so I rode down to 83rd Street through the South Shore neighborhood before turning around.

And where did I acquire this more streetwise mentality? It’s all thanks to the group bike ride I went on last weekend with a local women’s riding group called Cycling Sisters. Five of us met at the 63rd Street beach house last Saturday, and did a 15-mile(?) loop by riding up the lakefront to 31st Street, riding west on 31st street to Halsted, going south down Halsted to 47th, and then we kind of zigzagged southeast to Washington Park and the Hyde Park neighborhood. We rode on some of the busiest thoroughfares in Chicago (at least on the south side) and I found out that Chicago’s streets aren’t inevitable death traps, especially if there are bike lanes. I did have a couple mishaps with my clipless pedals, including an out-and-out crash on the blacktop while trying to stop for a red light. But I’m more fearless on the roads and it’s no more (okay, fewer) sidewalks for me!

Next up: The American Cancer Society’s Walk & Roll Chicago 15-mile bike ride on Sunday. The route is a loop that goes from Grant Park up to the Lincoln Park neighborhood and then back around, and I’ve been working my way up to Fullerton (2400 N) to familiarize myself with the route. But I’m not sure how hundreds of bikers are going to fit on that path because there is construction everywhere (a road worker stood in the middle of the bike path yesterday and made a bunch of us stop, just as if we were on a highway)–we will see. . . .

Oh yeah, this reminds me of a correction I need to make: I mistakenly stated in a previous post that I biked to 1500 North. Um, no, that didn’t happen. The Chicago Parks District messed up the street number markers on the path, and at what I believe is 100 North, they painted a bunch of numbers over each other so that it kind of looks like 1500. Figuring that out was kind of like when Buzz Lightyear realized he wasn’t a real spaceman: depressing at first, but I’m plowing ahead again with a renewed sense of how far I have to go. . . .

CHICAGO (AP) - The vital sporting goods sector received a huge boost from Bush’s economic stimulus plan this week, as people used their checks to buy much needed athletic gear for the warm weather season. Says Chicago cyclist Harriett Green, “I can’t believe how far that check went toward buying a bike computer and a jacket. It truly restored my faith in the American economy.”
In other news, the unemployment rate hovers near 6 percent, crude oil reached a new high of $121 a barrel, and home foreclosures are up 57 percent from the year before.

Whether it was the trauma of getting the clipless pedals in the first place or just plain fear, I spent the subsequent week and a half still riding with the flat side of my pedals. But last weekend, I actually put on my bike shoes and started riding clipless. After a day of just practicing clipping in and out of the pedals, I went back to doing my 10 mile rides and then started doing 15 miles today.

The first 15 mile ride was confusing more than anything: Rank amateur that I am, I’ve never biked much farther north than the South Loop. To complicate matters, construction work is being done around the Shedd Aquarium, so the lakefront path has been temporarily re-routed to go past the Field Museum. Now it turns out that there’s a hill in front of the Field that’s about as bad as the sharp drop-off by the Shedd. One moment I’m cruising along, and the next minute I’m flying down this deceptively steep hill at 40 miles an hour, alternately braking and shouting sorrys to the joggers I nearly run over. I careened through the Roosevelt underpass, which is where I usually turn to head for Target, and soon realized that I was in the city instead of on the lakefront path.

So I rode up the sidewalk on Columbus Drive instead and got plenty of unclipping practice as I had to stop at every intersection. But I finally got back on the path at Monroe and decided to ride a few more blocks north before turning around. Well, I was lulled into following the path around the harbor and before I knew it, I was standing in front of the smoky-glassed Lake Pointe Tower high rise where Oprah supposedly lives in the penthouse. I was so surprised to find out that I’d reached 1500 north that I braked without unclipping and promptly crashed. Harriett, meet concrete. Charmed.

With two new scrapes tattooing my increasingly black-and-blue legs (at this rate, I’ll have to soak my legs in cocoa butter to get them looking halfway normal again), I clambered back on Ollie and made it home just before the thunderstorm broke.

In any case, 15 miles will be the daily norm now, and I hope to get up to 60+ miles per week. Also, I’ve found a training event of sorts: I’ve signed up for the American Cancer Society’s Walk and Roll Chicago 15-mile bike ride. It’s a week and a half away, but I’m already doing 15 miles (almost) without stopping and I just need to increase my speed. So here goes nothing. . . .

Pleasant surprise this morning:

We’re having sales conference at work this week, which means that I have to drag out my business suit from the back of the closet. I put on the skirt this morning and guess what? For the first time in  I-hate-to-think-how-long, I didn’t have to suck in my stomach to zip it up! And there’s a little extra room in the waist!  Maybe my desperate optimism will be fulfilled and I’ll be able wear the shorts and summer skirts that I’ve been hanging onto all these years. . . .

Well . . . 1 near bike death, 1 bloody knee, 3 rain showers, and I-don’t-want-to-think-about-how-much-money later, Ollivander (my bike) and I are slightly traumatized, but we finally have clipless pedals. Work ended early today and since my weekend is busier than I anticipated, I decided to go up to the bike shop this afternoon. Now I mentioned that I had taken Ollie to Blackstone Bike Works for a tune-up, but they’re a pretty low-key community organization that doesn’t carry clipless pedals, so I had to go downtown to Chicago’s major chain bike store, Kozy’s Cyclery.

The store nearest to me is in the South Loop and requires 2 buses to get there from Hyde Park. I considered biking up to the Loop, but given the looming storm clouds, I ultimately decided it would be best to just take the bus. But there was one problem: I had never put Ollie on the bus bike rack.

The bus bike racks always had looked a little rickety for my taste and I was nervous about Ollie falling off. Moreover, the CTA just settled with the family of a woman who was crushed by a bus last December while trying to take her bike off the rack. But I knew I had to learn sooner or later, so I read and re-read the rack loading directions on the CTA website all day. Then at around 4 o’clock, I flagged down a #6 bus at 60th and was able to load Ollie without too much hassle. The bus driver was really nice and reassured me that my bike wouldn’t fall off.

Five blocks later, however, I saw Ollie suddenly lean dangerously over the front of the rack and I leapt up to the front of the bus. The bus driver said that I could fix it at the next stop, but a few seconds later, he fell off the rack and under the bus. The bus driver thankfully skidded to a halt, and I ran out the door to retrieve Ollie’s remains. I dragged him out from under the bus’s front bumper–he was scraped up but otherwise looked okay, but that was it. “This is hopeless,” I thought and I tried to wave the driver on.
But the driver wouldn’t leave: she asked where I was going and I replied Roosevelt. She then parked the bus, got out of her seat, and helped me put Ollie back on. This time, we secured the bike correctly–it turned out I hadn’t put the front wheel handle on the wheel all the way. I got back on the bus–embarrassed that I had held up the bus, especially since I’ve been annoyed before by inept bikers like me–and then I nervously watched Ollie like a hawk for the rest of the ride.

Miracle of miracles, he didn’t fall off again on LSD and when I got off at the museum campus, I reconsidered whether I should try getting on the Roosevelt bus after all. But I didn’t feel like hiking up that big hill between State and Clark, and moreover, I discovered that the stinging pain under my pants leg was a nasty knee cut I must have gotten when I picked up Ollie off of the street. Fortunately, I again got an extremely nice and patient driver, and this time I made sure that Ollie was secure. He survived the short ride over to Jefferson and I then rode/walked the 3 blocks north to Kozy’s.

The rest of the night went much more smoothly: I bought the Shimano PD-M324 pedals, which I had picked out from Kozy’s website earlier. They definitely were on the pricier side, but I liked them because they’re dual pedals–clipless on one side and flat on the other. They’re a little heavier than most other clipless pedals, but I don’t mind because I don’t plan to do serious racing–I’ll need the clipless for long rides, but will use the flat regular side for everyday commuting and short rides. I also bought Specialized’s Body Geometry Riata Sport MTB shoes: I had my eye on another pair of Shimano shoes that were cheaper than this pair, but this branch of Kozy’s didn’t have them and at that point, I was in no mood to run around the city to look for the best deal on shoes. So yes, I bought the shoes pretty much based on convenience: I decided that I’d rather do the entire thing right then and there–have the store mechanic install the pedals and the shoe cleats, and then learn how to use the pedals and shoes on my bike in the store’s trainer–than lose more training time (which is decreasing quickly in general) in the clipless pedals by extended comparison shopping. But all the same, I feel pretty good about this pair of shoes, because they felt good on my feet and the sales guy said that style was one of their best-sellers and highly rated.
Anyway, that’s that and aside from perhaps buying another jersey or two, I think I’m pretty much good to go. So the training starts in earnest now. . . .