The Windy City... and the windy state!

Our ride into Chicago on Friday went surprisingly smoothly. It could’ve been a lot worse. Coming from Indiana, we had to go directly through South Side Chicago, which isn’t the safest place. 

Luckily, Indiana came through again with its awesome trail network. We were off and on three different trails in Indiana, and we took a more southerly route because there were no good biking paths on a more direct route into Chicago. We could afford to add a few miles because the entire day ended up being only 53 miles: a piece of cake for us by now.

Route from Chesterton to Chicago

This way we also bypassed Gary, Indiana, which we’ve heard isn’t in the best condition. I was bummed because Gary is where The Music Man takes place and I must’ve watched that musical a hundred times in elementary school – our music teacher was obsessed with it.

We crossed the state line at mile 34, and much to our dismay there was again no state sign :( We were prepared this time, though, because I Google-street-viewed the area and warned the team not to expect a sign. We asked our hosts and they said the only state signs were on the interstates, so unfortunately, no state sign picture for us. As we passed through the mile marker we knew was the state line, the road surfacing changed, and we asked a random guy walking on the side of the road if this was Illinois. He said yes!

Once we were in Illinois, we had to navigate the South Side and get up to the lake, where we would take Lakefront Trail all the way up to where we needed to cut into the city. We stayed on bigger roads and figured we’d be fine in groups of 5-6 in terms of safety. Unfortunately, we encountered not one, but two major road closures on the fly. Road closures are our biggest issue because there’s no way to predict them and it’s hard to reroute when we already have 25 riders on the road. However, our vans took care of the reroutes before we even got there, did an excellent job chalking, and we got through fairly smoothly.

Well, not without one bump in the road: literally. There was a giant hole, except I wouldn’t really even call it a hole; it was more like a huge random gap in the sidewalk. My group was cruising along, with me bringing up the rear, when all of a sudden I heard from the front, “HOLE!!!” followed by a quick BUMP and a loud hiss…. as Chelsea’s tire immediately went flat. There was one navigable path through the hole, and Chelsea didn’t have time to react before going straight into it. I was able to stop and clip out in time, avoiding the same fate happening to me.

The chalked warning we made after falling in the hole 

Chelsea changed her flat in the slightly sketchy area and then we got the van to chalk “Giant Hole” in front of the offending beast. We also posted in our team’s group text message about it. Unfortunately, even though the later groups got the message, one person fell in it and another got a flat!

After what seemed like forever in the South Side, we finally made it to Lakefront Trail, which was a welcome relief. As soon as we got a good view of the Chicago skyline, we stopped to take some awesome pictures.

It was a little tricky getting off the trail and into the city. Chicago lies somewhere on the bike-friendly spectrum between Pittsburgh and Columbus. (In case you missed my earlier blog posts, Pittsburgh was our worst nightmare and Columbus was basically a haven for bikes). There are plenty of bike lanes and bike-friendly roads and signs, but the city isn’t as spacious as Columbus. This means that while you do get your own space, you have heavy traffic on your left and parked cars on your right, presenting the hazard of getting “doored.” Along with all that, you still have to navigate directions, stop at all the red lights making sure you don’t lose team members at red lights, and navigate road hazards. This part of the ride was stressful, but it was only about three miles.

Arriving at the host, we were thrilled with our arrangements: we had suite-style dorms at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and every rider got not only their own bed… but their own room!! We also had linens and towels, so it was basically like a hotel. I knew that it was going to be like this because I set up this host, but I left it a surprise for the other riders.

Single rooms at University of Illinois-Chicago

Lol, they thought we were the Portland Biker Conference...cute anyway :)

That evening we went to a dinner in the suburbs of Chicago, hosted by a UMD alum, Nichol James. Back in April, I decided to contact the UMD alumni clubs across the country to see if they could help us out… that’s when I found out that UMD alumni clubs don’t exist in the entire Midwest. However, there was one in Chicago. I didn't think an alum would agree to feed a team of cyclists, but I gave it a try anyway. When Nichol answered the phone, she was THRILLED to plan a dinner for us.  It turned out that her daughter was a friend of 4K alumni Anne Smedinghoff, who was killed in Afghanistan recently, and the day I called was the day of her memorial service. It was a very strange connection.

We battled brutal Chicago rush hour traffic to get to Nichol’s house, but once we got there it was amazing! Along with feeding us a ton of food, Nichol invited the members of the Chicago UMD Alumni club, as well as the Johns Hopkins alumni club. 7 of our riders go to UMD and two go to Hopkins. A few of the things we had in store for us:

•       Indoor pool
•       Indoor hot tub
•       18 pizzas
•       Garrett’s popcorn (famous in Chicago)
•       Multiple cakes and brownies
•       Snacks and hummus
•       Fruit galore
•       Fancy bar
•       Use of her washer and dryer, which we took full advantage of with 4 loads of laundry
•       Customized Hershey kisses with Maryland, 4K and Hopkins logos on them
•       Lots of great company with UMD alums

The night was great, and we loved hanging out with UMD alums from the 70’s to the 90’s. They were a lot of fun to share stories with.

The customized Hershey's kisses

Name tags for the UMD alumni

Terps napkins! Nichol had every type of Terp gear imaginable.

Garrett's Popcorn!! 

Celebrating Gina's 20th birthday

The next day was our rest day in Chicago. Everyone slept in and then congregated in our ride directors’ room for breakfast – bagels, cream cheese, and fruit that Nichol had sent with us! We then split off into groups and explored the city. Some went sightseeing, some went out to eat, some watched the Cubs game at a bar. 

And some got pedicures. Princess included, of course!!

I went shopping with a group of girls. We set off to see the Bean and go to Forever 21, which were about 3 miles away from the dorms, and just shopped along the way. 

Chelsea and Julie eying the travel-size items at a beauty shop.

We passed the filming of a BMW commercial! Not sure why they were using a Mercedes, though...

At the Bean we ran into Paul, Porter, and Maroun, who had biked there!

I made 3 important purchases:

- Nail polish remover swabs – to get the sharpie off my legs in future days!

- Self tanning lotion – for my upper legs… this is something I thought I’d never buy, but IT’S NECESSARY!! Trust me you’d sympathize if you could see my mid-thigh tan lines D: Amidst the team, no one cares, but out in Chicago I was very self conscious!!

- A dress from Forever 21 – obviously I could not leave this store without buying a dress because girl code.

Joanna getting a spontaneous cartilage piercing at Claire's

We also went out to eat at a Thai restaurant.

We were beyond excited to be looking at menus and eating with real forks!!

It was a fun, relaxing day. We also got to briefly meet up with members of Team Seattle, who arrived in the city in the afternoon. We weren’t really ready to leave Chicago… but it was time to go.

UIC welcomed Team Seattle too!

The next morning started with a few complications when we realized we couldn’t get the van out of the parking lot because the lot wasn’t yet open for the day. Eventually we managed to get the parking attendant to come in and unlock it for us, but we got off to a later start than we planned.

There were pros and cons to it being a Sunday morning. For one, getting out of Chicago was relatively painless. There was almost no traffic, so the biggest annoyance was the stoplights. Since we were staying on the east side of the city, we had to go 13 miles before we were really out of Chicago, and we also had to go through west Chicago. We again stayed on main roads, and it being Sunday morning at 8 am, we didn’t run into any problems.

Coming out of the city, we ran into the con of it being a Sunday morning. We were on a trail for almost 30 miles going through the Chicago suburbs, and we found that, not surprisingly, the trail was a very popular weekend activity. There were tons of cyclists, runners, walkers, and families out on the trail. For a group of cyclists trying to go 16-18 mph, the situation was less than ideal.

At one point on the trail, Julie ran into a pole and Dave ran into her. I looked back with just enough time to see them both tip over at the same time…they fell slightly into a creek. They had no scrapes or bruises and came up laughing, and it was such a hilarious scenario that the whole group laughed for about the next 5 miles.

We ran into some trouble when a section of the trail was closed and we had to reroute yet again on the fly. Each group decided to do something different, with one group trucking through the closed section… an adventure that apparently involved walking across a long section of deep mud and climbing a couple fences. They looked filthy when we saw them at the water stop, but they said it was fun.

After we got off the trail and into the middle of nowhere, Illinois, aka endless cornfields, we encountered the worst headwinds anyone had ever seen. 

Headwinds blowing through the grass

Each pedalstroke took a lot of effort and it was very difficult to ride through. Not only that, but it was also hot, in the upper 80s with the sun beating down on us, and the wind was not much of a relief. We did our best to stay in a close line to block the wind for each other, but the wind was so strong that we all had a hard time anyway. It was also kind of scary because the wind pushed and pulled my bike around. I had to hold on tight and keep my weight balanced, or else I felt like I may have been pushed off the road. We also couldn’t talk to each other due to the exertion and the wind, making for a long, dragging ride.

After pushing our way through the lunch stop, we came upon the highlight of the day: the 25 burritos the food van managed to get donated from Chipotle!! YAY!! But it gets better… I tweeted from the 4K account thanking Chipotle, and they tweeted back!! I was a little starstruck :)

My Twitter interaction with Chipotle

After lunch came the fun part of the day. We were starting to notice a gloomy gray on the horizon when we heard updates on our phones. We stopped to check our group text and saw our ride director announcing that a storm was approaching that was expected to bring penny sized hail and 50 mph winds.  The water stop was 7 miles away. We continued riding, but we were riding straight into the storm.

Read my next post to read about our storm experience!