2 posts tagged “adventure”

So we've finally gotten to Labor Day, which in America is the unofficial end of summer -- the holiday after which most schools start their terms, most pools close, many amusement parks shut down, etc. And just like I promised myself way back at Memorial Day (America's unofficial start of the summer, back in May), I'm indeed making one more big bike adventure today, and shooting lots of photos and video for the eventual customized Google map I'll be creating on the subject. But alas, gone are my original plans for making some giant-ass 30- or 40-mile trip out to some far suburb like Glencoe or the like; as a bad knee injury and a mild case of hemorrhoids taught me earlier this summer, when you suddenly go near the age of 40 from unhealthy to physically active, there's only so much your body can take, with that "so much" literally being less than you could take at even 25, and for me in particular with 30-mile day trips being far outside my "so much" comfort level. And that's just how it is, and there's nothing to be done about it -- that you simply cannot do as many physical things as a middle-ager that you could as a youth, and that only a fool would try to deny it and wreck their body instead.

So instead I'm making another inner-city day trip, something that relies on taking the train in one direction, so that the total distance is something a lot more manageable. And today, in fact, I'll be visiting the historic neighborhoods of the near southside -- I'll be taking the train to 35th Street, to be specific, hopping off across the street from where the White Sox play, then meandering my way northward until finally hitting Harrison Street in the South Loop. And believe it or not, this ten-mile (16 km) route will take me through six different areas of historic interest in a single afternoon...

--The campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), much of it famously designed by Mies van der Rohe and other Modernist masters in the 1950s;

--Then historic Bronzeville, the very first neighborhood in Chicago for middle-class blacks, much of it razed over in the 1970s to make room for a cutting-edge urban revitalization project;

--Then Chinatown, not as famous as New York or San Francisco's version, but still a very interesting destination;

--Then over to the Prairie Avenue district, which was the first neighborhood in Chicago for upper-class whites, and which still contains several historic grand mansions from the period (which because of the Great Fire of the 1870s, which missed this neighborhood, also happen to be the oldest set of buildings in Chicago as well);

--Then northeast into the tourist-mecca Museum Campus, a unified and very contemporary green space (built just a few years ago, in fact) linking together three of the city's most popular museums (the Field, Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium) along with Soldier Field, McCormick Place and others;

--And then finally, due west into the historic Printers Row neighborhood, which is where almost every book and newspaper publishing company used to be headquartered in the 1800s and early 1900s (back when a whole lot more book and newspaper companies used to be headquartered in Chicago in the first place), which was then transformed into a residential area after World War II, and is now a popular haven for the creative class.

Zow! It's pretty amazing, all the cool things packed into this small area of the city, once you get to thinking about it; I'm anticipating a very fun trip, accentuated by the fact that it's a public holiday and therefore a ton of other people will be out as well (especially in the more touristy sections of this route). And this should provide for a really great, information-rich map when I'm done as well, which of course is why I picked this route in the first place. Anyway, I'll be taking off in just another half-hour or so, so wish me luck, and make sure to stop by this site throughout the day for small real-time updates during the trip itself.

Oh, and then the trip home is going to provide material for yet another new map; because of it having a dedicated bike lane its entire length, I'm going to take Halsted Street almost the entire distance from Printers Row back to my neighborhood of Uptown, a total length of seven miles (11.25 km), for a total bike trip today of 17 miles (which coincidentally enough is just around 17 km as well). And that will be fun, I think, because it gives me a chance to make a map more for locals than locals and tourists together; a map showing a particularly bike-friendly route for getting around the city itself, featuring all the interesting everyday things found along that route. And Halsted should be particularly interesting when it comes to this subject, I think; this particular section of the street first runs through the expensive River North neighborhood, then across the formerly industrial Goose Island, then through the tony Old Town and Lincoln Park neighborhoods, before then becoming the spiritual center of the infamous Boys Town gay neighborhood, up in Wrigleyville which is one neighborhood south of mine. I'll hopefully be coming across all kinds of interesting things along the way today, stuff that will hopefully make for a good and entertaining map afterwards.

Anyway, like I said, wish me luck, and pray to the bicycle gods that this adventure be yet one more where I don't get hit by a car. First update coming in just a little bit!