Thursday, May 24, 2001: East Dundee to Hammond
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Stats
Wind/Temp: NE 5-15 50-60
ET: 10:00:00
DST: 78.2 miles
AVG: 11.1 MPH
RT: 6:59:12
MAX: 33.3 MPH
Cities traveled through: East Dundee, Elgin, Wheaton, Westchester, Cicero, Chicago, Hammond
Remarks
I had to wait to leave again as I was waiting for the weather to warm up and the rain to pass. I woke up and checked the Weather Channel and once again there was a band of rain right in my area. Finally, I left around ten in the morning. The night before I discovered that there was a bike trail headed south toward Aurora. I was glad to hear that as that would give me a few miles of peaceful riding. When I was on the trail I saw a map set up and it looked like you could take trails all the way to Chicago. At first, I didn't plan on acutally going through the city but when I saw that map I figured it wouldn't be that bad. But as I road along the main trail ended. At about three in the afternoon the rain started to come down again so I stopped at a McDonalds to get out of the rain. By the time I left it wasn't raining too bad. Today reall wasn't that bad precipitation wise after all. So I left hoping to find a way to get through the city somehow. I thought there was supposed to be some trail taking you all the way through Chicago. I knew there was another trail on the east of Chicago right near Lake Michigan. I happened to find a bike shop and asked them how to get there. They told me to take 22nd Street (Cirmak) all the way there. It really wasn't a bike trail but did have sidewalks all the way. The trip through Chicago was pretty interesting and not too stressfilled really. I went through a lot of sections with Spanish billboards and everywhere I went everyone was speaking Spanish. Then I went through another section called China Town. A couple times I could look off to my left and see the big skyscrapers of the city. It seemed to take forever, but I finally made it to the path along the lake. When the path reached an end of course there was really no place for me to ride and the sidewalk disappeared so I was forced to ride in gravel, mud and grass once again. I just can't believe how few roads I have found on this trip with adequate shoulders for biking. It makes it difficult just to even average 11 miles per hour in a day. I finally made it to Hammond, IN, hoping to find a hotel. I didn't see one in sight when I first reached town so I stopped at a gas station to ask where the nearest one would be. She told me to go down this road and I should be there in "ten or fifteen minutes." Of course, she was probably giving me that time in terms of a regular motor vehicle, so for me that could mean an hour or an hour and a half of riding on gravel and grass. It was already getting dark to make things worse. The one positive is that the weather wasn't too bad at this point....no rain, just a little cool.
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