I Am A Camera

New video! "Opening Day, Wrigley Field, 2008 season"

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:59:43 -0500

(Are you a YouTube person? Here's the link to the YouTube version of this video.)

Greetings, humans! Spring has officially begun here in Chicago, even if the weather hasn't caught up to it yet; it means that not only bicycling season will be starting again soon, but also the goofy little cellphone videos I regularly do during bicycling season, most of which act as supplements to the various bicycle maps I've created for use in both Google Maps and Google Earth. (I'm hoping to ramp up the amount of videos I do this year, in fact; hopefully by the time Labor Day rolls around this September, I will have shot and posted 10 to 15 of them.) Here, my first cellphone video of 2008, shot on opening day of the Chicago Cubs 2008 baseball season, which happens to be the 100th anniversary of the last time the Cubs won the World Series, a historically significant occasion that has already garnered a ton of national press, before the baseball season has even begun. Unfortunately it was a crappy, rainy day today, so I don't have a lot to share from the actual opening-day festivities; rest assured that I will be shooting another video around Wrigley Field later this summer (located, by the way, a mere four blocks from my apartment), giving a better tour of the neighborhood and showing what a more typical game day in the Wrigleyville neighborhood is like. For now, I hope you enjoy.

Send to a friend

Wow, look at how many places I bicycled last year!

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 16:34:47 -0500

Jpmapsmaster

So, just a few weeks left until it's finally bicycling season again here in Chicago; long-time followers of the moblog, in fact, know that I first got heavily involved with bicycling last year, when not coincidentally I initially quit smoking. Of course, this being nerdy GTD me, I needed to invent an elaborate project for myself in order to justify all that bicycling in the first place; and this was right at the same time (spring 2007) that Google first allowed people to sign up for an account and start creating customized mashup maps through their official API, which convinced me to start doing such a thing too. But alas, because of the complexity of these maps (but more on that in a bit), I ended up doing a lot more trips than I had time to sit down and put together into a mashup; and I promised myself that over the winter I'd finally sit down and finish them, before it was time for bicycling season 2008 and yet more riding/photographing/mapping.

Anyway, it just occurred to me this weekend that I don't have much time left, so I better get started; and the first step, of course, was to sit down and look through all the photos and notes I took last year when actually on the bike trips, and determine exactly how much work I have ahead of me. The good news? It turns out that I actually biked a lot more and a lot farther than I had been remembering in my head, boding well for my chances of even longer and more regular trips this spring and summer. The bad news? I have 11 maps that need to be created, and so far only three of them "done" (and by "done" I of course mean "eh, like 80 percent done").

So, I just sat down on my other Mac (the one with Photoshop) and made a master map of all the mini-projects I'm shooting to finish by the beginning of May; this image, then, will also serve as a master map to interior pages over at the section of my personal website where you can always find the latest grand total of finished mashups. Anyway, so here we go with the descriptions...hold yr breath...

1 through 5: Chicago Lakeshore Path. An uninterrupted 18-mile bike and runner path stretching nearly from the north edge to the south edge of the city, surrounded nearly at all times by public parkland, a holdover from Edwardian times when the "City Beautiful" movement managed to get the entire Chicago lakefront declared a "public resource."

1) Lakeshore path: Lincoln Park North. Upper half of the seven-mile Lincoln Park, one of the largest city parks in the entire United States. Riding the length of Lincoln Park is a lesson in American history and architecture, in that the park was designed in regular stages from 1860 to 1960; here in the north half are the sections created between 1910 and the '60s.

2) Lakeshore path: Lincoln Park South. The lower half of the park just described, the sections designed from 1860 to 1900, containing the vast majority of the historical destinations the park is most known for.

3) Lakeshore path: North Avenue to the Loop. Want a smart alternative the next time you come into the inner city for a holiday like the 4th of July? Why not park your car on the northside and bike the rest of the way in? Although not regularly used by a lot of people, there is a perfectly safe and in fact delightful section of the lakefront path that stretches from the end of Lincoln Park to the Loop, including easy stops at Navy Pier, River North, the Chicago River and Millennium Park. It's only six miles from Montrose to the Loop by bicycle; why not try it the next time you're down there on holiday, avoiding the snarl of vehicular traffic that always forms during such events?

4) Lakeshore path: Loop to 57th Street. For many years the Hyde Park area of the city's southside was built up along the lakefront, but nothing else between there and the Loop; that finally changed throughout the mid-20th century, especially once a series of corporations and civic groups came in and sponsored the landscaping of vast tracts of the land. Although not as historic as the northside's better-known path, this slice of Chicago's lakefront is a beautiful and uncluttered space, perfect for lazy weekend rides as well as weekday wind sprints for more serious riders.

5) Lakeshore path: South Campus. The extreme south tip of the city-sponsored 18-mile lakeshore bike/running path, encompassing several historic areas: Hyde Park, the University of Chicago campus, the Museum of Science and Industry, Jackson Park, and the South Shore Cultural Center, spanning roughly 57th to 79th Streets.

6) Northside to the Loop, via Southport/Lincoln Avenues. Hey, city-dweller creative-class fucks! You know how the mayor and your hippie neighbor keep crowing about how easy it actually is to bicycle from your place to your office in the Loop each day? Keep wondering if it's actually true? Here's one of what will hopefully be an always expanding series of maps, looking at various inner-city routes from residential neighborhoods to the Loop, all of them lying along streets with dedicated, legally-protected bike lanes. Featuring not only the routes themselves, but various practical tips about city bicycling embedded in my photos and videos.

7) Northside to the Loop, via Halsted/Milwaukee Avenues. Exactly the same as map 6, but this time using the city bike lane on Halsted, passing through such neighborhoods as Boys Town, Old Town, Goose Island, Fulton Market, River West and more.

8) Burnham's Boulevards and the West Side Parks (north half). As part of the "City Beautiful" movement's 1909 overhaul of the city, architect Daniel Burnham recommended building a "green ring" through the most congested neighborhoods at the time, allowing not only for rapid middle-class development but also a small slice of healthiness in the middle of the most packed places in the city. At the same time, then, a group of Gilded Age entrepreneurs started a series of grand, giant public parks on the west side of the city as well (where the vast majority of the city's immigrants lived at the time); these were linked to Burnham's green boulevard system, to form a legitimate grand green circle all the way around the city's downtown, a few miles out in distance from the Loop's center. My map, then, is just of the north half of this circle; it includes Diversey Boulevard at Lincoln Park (including the Goethe statue, Hamilton garden, Elks headquarters and more), Logan Square, Garfield Park and more.

9) Northside Neighborhood Parks. It's the giant civic parks of the Victorian Age that get all the press in Chicago; but did you know that the park district here actually maintains over 550 public spaces? The vast majority of them, in fact, were created and first maintained by private neighborhood organizations, before the Great Depression and Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal consolidated all the groups into one unified government administration. In this map, a winding and detailed route that will take a bicyclist to over 65 small neighborhood parks on the northside, ranging from a mile or two in size to sometimes the length of someone's backyard; the total route lasts 25 miles, with of course many opportunities to stop for food, shopping, coffee and more.

10) Northside to the Westside, via the "Industrial District." Here, a supplemental add-on to either map 6 (inner-city path on Lincoln) or 7 (inner-city path on Halsted) for getting over to such hipster westside neighborhoods as Wicker Park and Bucktown, specifically by riding through the last area of the northside left with working factories, smokestacks and more. A fascinating route to take at least once, especially for those who enjoy photographing urban industrial areas.

11) Near South Historic Neighborhoods. Did you know that there are half a dozen nationally important historic neighborhoods all butting against each other in Chicago's Near South Side? There are! Here, a map detailing them all, including the IIT campus, Bronzeville, Prairie Avenue, the Museum Campus, Chinatown, Printers Row and the South Loop.

Whew, okay, that's it! And three of these are now "done," like I said (i.e. 80 percent done), which you can find over here for now; and hopefully by May, like I said, I'm going to have all 11 of these maps finished and online, and with downloadable KMLs as well for Google Earth (for those who like their maps in 3D and spinnable and all that shit), and with a brand-new interface as well over at the section of my personal site where people will be able to find all these. And that's it! See you later, fuckers!

Send to a friend

New video online: "A tour of Chicago's lakefront bike path, northern terminus."

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 15:19:07 -0500

Northterminus

(UPDATE: Well, I can't get VOX's "embed a YouTube video" option to work, and their CMS software forbids the usual embedded objects, so I ended up having to upload the entire video again to my VOX account. Anyway, you should be able now to click on the above to view the video, or just click here to see it over at YouTube.)

Ooh, I'm being really productive today; got a new video edited and uploaded on top of everything else, for use in the series of customized bicycle maps I'm making this summer, which can be opened in both the 2D Google Maps and 3D Google Earth. This video is four minutes long and showcases the northern terminus of Chicago's 18-mile (30 km) lakefront bicycle path, the one I rode to 71st Street last week for Memorial Day. I'll be creating the map for that trip next week, as I slowly make my way through the 250 photos (!) I shot; this video was created specifically for that map, as well as the map for Lincoln Park North.

Oh, and more good news: just a half-hour ago, finally got my new URL cclapcenter.com pointing to the new website for the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP), the local arts organization I'm re-opening this week. So that's good; that'll let me get all the templates up tonight and tomorrow, and have a working new CCLaP website by Monday afternoon. Skoal! Thanks a million, Jimi!

Send to a friend

Oh crap, my legs won't work.

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Tue, 29 May 2007 09:34:04 -0500

Yesterdaystrip

Okay, so this morning I booted up the online pedometer I use, and worked out the grand total from yesterday's trip to the south side; between biking and walking, turns out I put in a total of 24 miles (or 39 km). And that's six miles longer than the distance of the "official" route, meaning that I literally biked six miles yesterday of unexpected side trails and dead ends and whatnots, never quite realizing it until adding it all up today. And hey, I've discovered something wonderful and new about the human body as well; that the day after going 24 miles for the first time in its entire life, my body has apparently decided that it's had quite enough of moving around, thank-you-very-much, and is simply not going to do so again for a little while. Yes, as in -- I'm laying in bed this morning, staring at my legs, telling them how much I would really like to go to the kitchen now and make a cup of tea, and my legs are just staring back at me and saying, "Ich spreche keine Englisch, mein überarbeiteter Herr."

It's an odd sensation to be sure, having your body just completely rebel against you; in many ways it feels like someone has taken over your body against your will, which is creepy in this existential, bad-horror-movie kind of way. I mean, I'm exaggerating for humorous effect, of course; obviously if I push them hard enough, my legs actually will take me short distances this morning, or else I would've never made it over to the computer to type this entry. But seriously, the reality of the situation is much more like the above horror story than you would expect; that even when I do end up moving this morning, it is done literally by forcing my body to do my bidding, one damn foot at a time, to great protest and creaking and pain and yet some more pain.

Oh man, I think I overdid it yesterday. Gee, Jason, you think? Fucking moron. "Ich spreche keine Englisch, mein dämlicher Freund."

Send to a friend

More biking. More coffee. Blah blah blah.

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Thu, 17 May 2007 13:52:54 -0500

I'm having an utterly unproductive day today, which I'm feeling a little guilty about -- I didn't even get out of bed and going until almost 11am, because of a late night last night, and so far (2pm) the only thing of note I've done is bike out to California Park, to get some more photos I needed for my next bike map. And now here I am the delightful MoJoe's Cafe, at Roscoe and Western, which I actually thought about partnering with last year, when I was planning on doing live events through my arts center; I'm just killing some time until my dealer gets home (who lives not too far away), at which point I'm sure it'll be back to my apartment for yet more time-wasting.

Then again, I've been awfully productive over the last week, and actually worked straight through last weekend without a break, so I guess I can cut myself a little slack. It's the weather, man, the weather -- now that it's finally warm for good in Chicago, I find myself just wanting to be outside in it during all my daylight hours, just bicycling and having cafe mochas and flirting with girls and boys, the sun on my face and the wind hopefully to my back. I promise, once the sun goes down today, I'll sit down and actually be productive, including getting back to the several dozen emails I've been blowing off in order to go biking in the sun this week instead. I promise!

More biking. More coffee. Blah blah blah.

Send to a friend

Total distance bicycled this week: 42 miles!

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Sat, 12 May 2007 16:54:59 -0500

I really surprised myself this week, my first week of the year of daily bicycling: I ended up putting in a total of 42 miles (70 km), or an average of six miles (10 km) a day. Well, that is awfully good news; it puts me right on track for taking on the 18-mile trip I want to take on Memorial Day, from my neighborhood to Jackson Park on the southside (where the Museum of Science and Industry is), completely via the lakefront path. Given that these distances simply wouldn't happen if I hadn't quit smoking (68 days now cigarette-free and counting), and that for a long time I thought I'd never be able to quit smoking, I'm grateful for any length I can go at all.

I'm at Metropolis Coffeehouse right now, Granville and Kenmore near Loyola University and Rogers Park, finishing up my photos for my second customized bike map in Google Earth, this time of Lincoln Park North; as always when at Metropolis, I'm surrounded by sexy Loyola undergraduates, none of which I'll be taking a picture of today. Then I'll be biking back via inner Lincoln Park, right next to tony Marine Drive for two miles; then an examination of Clarendon Park at Montrose, and a check-out of a tea store near there, and then finally home. Well, for an hour -- then it's off to an art gallery in River West to meet up with my friend Patrick Welch. See you later!

Total distance bicycled this week: 42 miles!

Send to a friend

Concerning the difference between late-night and early-morning odd hours.

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Tue, 08 May 2007 10:39:36 -0500

Like many art-major undergraduates, when I was in college I kept fairly odd hours late into the night, usually not getting to sleep until 2 or 3 in the morning and then trying to take as few early-morning classes as I could get away with. I maintained such a schedule for so long, in fact, that I had convinced myself in my youth that I was naturally a night owl and destined to keep such hours; but then I moved to Chicago, started working corporate jobs and realized, no, I can train myself to just as easily be an early bird too. It's a long process, though, and a habit I don't want to lose between full-time jobs, which is why I still maintain such a schedule now -- to bed usually by 11pm or so, up around 6 in the morning.

It's funny, because the competing lifestyles have more in common than you'd think: in both cases, you are spending a certain amount of your day awake when the majority of the population is asleep, at a time when the people you do catch outside are usually there for odd reasons. In both cases, the odd hours involved are a time of quiet and solitude, a time when both the planet and most people are peacefully regenerating themselves and in a passive state. And both sets of odd hours, I've found, are good times to be productive as well, either taking place long before or long after the hours when the rest of the world wants to bother you.

As someone, though, who's now lived both lifestyles, I can also tell you that the main difference is one of context -- that when one is a night owl, these hours of contemplation and quiet happen while the rest of your community is tired and shutting down for the day; while when one is an early bird, these hours of course occur when the rest of your community is refreshed and just starting their day. It's a crucial difference, I think, at least for me, because I find my own system responding to these cycles as well -- that is, when I was a night-owl college student, many of these alone hours were spent inebriated, while tired and worn out, unable to concentrate on new work because my brain was already full from the events of the last 12 hours. As an early bird, though, the situation is reversed -- I have my productive alone time right at the beginning of my day now, at the moment of the day when I'm feeling the most refreshed, and also at a time when my brain is empty and not obsessively returning to the events that have been happening in my recent past. I'm not necessarily saying that one lifestyle is "better" or "worse" than the other in general; I can definitely state, though, that if I had realized how profoundly it would affect the amount of constructive work I can get done, I would've tried becoming a morning person a long time ago. (Of course, there are mitigating factors at work here, too -- for example, if all your friends are night owls as well, as is often the case with undergraduates, it can get awfully lonely when you're a morning person.)

Anyway, I ended up taking an especially early bike ride this morning, which is what got me thinking about the subject -- I went down to Montrose Harbor at 7 in the morning, in fact, which is where the image below was shot. (That's the entrance of the harbor you're seeing, looking south towards the Loop, which is where all those skyscapers are located that you see in the background.) This being a city of over 3 million people, of course, there are lots of early birds down at the park with you, at whatever hour you want to pick -- today, for example, I easily ran into at least 100 other parkgoers or more, just in the few square miles around my neighborhood. There exists this weird pact, too, between all the early risers -- that we are all there to enjoy the solitude and quiet, and that it would be a terrible faux pas to be loud and ruin that solitude and quiet for others. It can be weird for sure, going to a park full of hundreds of people all being silent, but kind of wonderful too -- I recommend everyone having the experience at least once.

Concerning the difference between late-night and early-morning odd hours.

Send to a friend

Prognosis: A little sore, but still good for another ride.

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Sun, 06 May 2007 11:22:57 -0500

So how am I feeling, a day after making an eight-mile bicycle trip (13 km), which was not only my first long trip of the year but also now officially the longest amount I've ever bicycled in my life? Eh, not so bad, actually, besides being a little stiff and a little sore; don't forget, though, that eight-mile trip actually took me two and a half hours altogether, and I made something like 20 stops to take photos for my eventual Google map on the subject. So, it's not like I was exactly pushing myself yesterday, so it's not exactly unexpected that I'm not too worn out; but still, given it was my first long ride of the year, and was done exactly nine days after having oral surgery, and that the thought of putting in an eight-mile day a year ago when I was a smoker would've been a joke, no matter how slowly I took things, I'm grateful frankly that I could manage yesterday's trip at all, much less come out of it not too sore. (Of course, I did sleep 11 hours as well last night, which should for honesty's sake be noted. I'm such a decrepid old man, I swear.)

Anyway, I'm hoping this is all good news, as far as my plans to slowly increase my maximum distance this summer -- for example, the 16-mile trip I'm planning for Memorial Day (from my place in Uptown to Jackson Park on the southside, as well as Washington Park and the Midway); or the 30-mile trip I'm hoping to tackle by the end of the summer, from my place to the Chicago Botanical Gardens in Glencoe, via the North Branch national forest trail (and then back home by train via Metra, because you must be high if you think I can take a 60-mile bike ride in one day at this point in my life).

By the way, didn't want to let my muscles get all tight and spasmy today, so ended up taking another ride, although not nearly as long today of course -- just down to Intelligentsia Coffeehouse, via the lakefront path getting there, then a straight shoot up Broadway on the way back (total distance 4.25 miles, or 7 km). Here's a shot, for example, from the busy Belmont underpass in Lakeview, where I also shot a video for my eventual Google map; for those who don't know, one of the most magical things about the Lakeview area of the lakefront is that it was originally developed during the Victorian Age, and contains all kinds of intricate structures from that era like these grandiose apartment buildings you're seeing, most of which miraculously survived the years that Lakeview was a slum neighborhood (roughly 1950s to '80s -- post-war white flight ruined the neighborhood, punk-era gentrification saved it). Anyway, my eventual map will be getting a lot more into Lincoln Park and Lakeview's tony Victorian roots, and how elements of that spill all the way up into my neighborhood (for example, the golf course and tennis courts found near Waveland, originally created because of both activities' sudden popularity in the early 1900s), for anyone who's interested in learning more.

Prognosis: A little sore, but still good for another ride.

Send to a friend

Ladies and gentlemen, I think I have a Memorial Day destination.

nobody@vox.com(jasonpettus) — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 16:44:04 -0500

Okay, the backstory once again, for anyone who needs it...

In 2005, for the first time since college, I took possession again of a bicycle -- partly because of my first-ever trip to Amsterdam the year before, partly because of the very political and outspoken bicycling community here in Chicago, partly because of my growing dissatisfaction with the Chicago Transit Authority, partly because of my desire to get more exercise in my life. The main goal when first getting the bike two years ago was to eventually make all of my neighborhood trips and nearby ones with it, whenever the weather was nice enough; and two years later, I've indeed gotten myself into the habit almost daily.

Last month, however, I turned 38 years old, and realized that I wanted my body to be in a certain shape by the time I turn 40; this resulted in me giving myself a series of physical challenges this year, such as to finally finish up my dental work, quit smoking, gain 40 pounds and the like. Along with everything else, one of the challenges was to expand the amount of bicycling I do, now that I've quit smoking and can take on such a challenge for the first time; to not only put in three to six miles a day (5 to 10 km) on any day it gets over 60 degrees (15 C), but also every couple of weeks put in a 10- to 30-mile ride (15 to 50 km), most of the time tied to something of interest that just happens to be that far away from my apartment. (Hey, there's a lot of interesting things in a 10- to 30-mile radius of Chicago, believe me; why, the city itself is 30 miles long to begin with.) It's not a length I expect to churn out on a regular basis, at least not this summer; it'd be nice, though, to get at least six or so such lengthy rides under my belt by the time Labor Day rolls around, and for such distances as five miles or so (or from my place to the Loop, in other words) to not really even faze me anymore. And as I've discovered even at this early date, quitting the cigarettes is going to help this process even more than I had supposed.

Anyway, figured I'd put off any 30-mile rides until late this summer, after a couple of months of working up to it; but definitely sometime around Memorial Day (the unofficial start of the summer here in the US), I thought it'd be fun to get a 10- to 15-mile ride in (15 to 20 km), probably just one way and then taking the train back home. But where to go? Hmm, hmm, hmm! And then, and then I stumbled onto some information that I had never known, not once in the entire 13 years I've now lived in Chicago; that tucked away in the corner of one of our city parks here is a full-fledged, nationally-known historical Japanese "stroll" style garden. Wow! Did you know that Chicago has one of the larger and more historically significant Japanese stroll gardens in America? I certainly didn't, even though I'm a huge fan and annual visitor of one of the other largest in America, which happens to be down in St. Louis where I grew up, at the St. Louis Botanical Gardens. (They throw an annual gala Japanese Festival, in fact, that my family used to attend each year when I was growing up.)

Chicago's Japanese garden, in fact (known officially as Osaka Garden, after one of our sister cities -- but more on that in a bit), has this long and utterly fascinating history to it, leading me to wonder even more how I could've gone this long without ever hearing of it. Turns out that the entire thing is a grand leftover from the World's Fair of 1893, held at the same exact spot (Jackson Park, that is, down on the south side of the city, where the current Museum of Science and Industry is located); Japan, in fact, was the very first foreign country to financially commit to the World's Fair, in return for getting a large chunk of the "wooded island" being planned for the south side of the fairgrounds. (This yield was a bit contentious, in fact; the island had been originally designed as a place of refuge and peace for frazzled fairgoers, and was only given over to the Japanese after Daniel Burnham himself stepped in and made the deal go through.)

As these things happen, the Japanese garden ended up sticking around after the World's Fair, as did a handful of other structures (such as the building the museum is now in); it generally fell into disrepair, though, as America's relationship with Japan soured as well, leading to a vandal-caused fire on the eve of World War II. That plus white flight of Hyde Park after the war pretty much turned Wooded Island into an abandoned section of the city; the once fabled Japanese garden was quickly taken over by nature again, forgotten by the citizens who lived so near to it.

In the 1960s and '70s, though, a series of efforts to revitalize the communities brought the parks of the area back into focus; partly because of a series of famed bird walks through the island, the abandoned structures of the Japanese garden were rediscovered by the neighborhood locals, and eventually reclaimed by the Chicago Parks Department. This happened to be at the same time that Chicago was getting serious about its now-famed sister-city program; in particular this was when a lot of cooperative work was being done between it and Osaka, Japan. As a result of the partnership, the Asian city ended up donating over $250,000 in fauna and structures to the garden; in gratitude, the Chicago city council renamed the site "Osaka Garden." And apparently the garden's been a hot destination ever since; in fact, in 2002 the entire area went through yet again another major facelift.

Myplacetojacksonpark

Anyway, the garden is only 15 miles from my apartment, once you factor in biking over to the el stop afterwards; at my current biking rate, that's roughly a 60- to 90-minute one-way trip for me, not too taxing at all. If I did it in the morning, then, I could make a whole day out of visiting the two big parks down there (Jackson and Washington), including Osaka Garden, and maybe catch lunch with my friend Carrie Golus who lives in the neighborhood. Hmm! It's not a bad plan, to tell you the truth; just far enough to challenge me, not far enough to overwhelm me, with no long return trip to dread at the end of the day, and with a chance to visit a major Japanese stroll garden I never even knew existed (and with me being a big fan of Japanese stroll gardens already). And with lots of photos I'd get out of such a trip, and my first excuse to finally make a Google mash-up map, and a chance to get a lot of sun and exercise, etc etc.

Yeah, yeah! So okay, I think I'm going to make this my official Memorial Day trip, so as to actually have an excuse to get out of my house on the holiday, and to kick off my official summer of bicycling a lot more than I ever have before. Oh, I think I'm excited!

More:
Osaka Garden
Jackson Park
Washington Park
Chicago Park District (official website)
Chicago lakefront bike path (maps)
Chicago lakefront bike path (tips)
1893 World's Fair

Send to a friend