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Labordayroute

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.

Halstedinnercity

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Good morning! For those who don't know, I'm trying a little experiment today as part of the "Getting Things Done" time-management system I use in my life, which I'm calling a "No Downtime Day" -- where I try to go 16 hours in a row without any "vegging" activities like television, goofing off online, etc. I thought it'd be fun, then, to occasionally throw up posts here at my blog as well, letting everyone know how the experiment is going and what I've been doing over that particular chunk of time. If this is successful, then, I'll add such an activity to my GTD system on a semi-regular basis; not just daily processing and a weekly review, that is, but maybe a monthly No Downtime Day as well.

Anyway, it's 7:30am as I write this, and I've been up for about an hour now; I've spent that time reviewing about 300 of the 400 websites I try to scan each day (via RSS feeds). Since I hardly ever post links to other things, in fact, I thought it'd be fun today to run a list of each and every item I ended up clicking on and reading in detail; here we go...

Today's "Penny Arcade" comic strip.
The Criterion Contraption reviews "The Last Temptation of Christ."
The Onion AV Club explains why "Edison Force" sucked.
The Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York buys its own freakin' zip code.
New report says that we should declare tobacco a controlled substance and regulate it under the FDA.
People will be able to pet stingrays at the Brookfield Zoo this summer.
FOX is making a movie of "The Sims." No, seriously.
CHUD.com explains why "Insomnia" and "Cradle Will Rock" were both disappointing movies.
Screenshots from Wednesday's "Lost" finale.
The San Francisco Chronicle's take on the "Lost" finale.
YouTube: Tom Snyder interviews a bunch of Star Trek people in 1976.
A 17-hour marathon of all six "Star Wars" movies has been showing overnight at the LA Convention Center.
The Chicago Tribune's take on the "Lost" finale.
"Lost" Easter Egg proves that flash-forwards happened on April 5, 2007.

Okay, so that's it for now; more computer work to do at the moment, then around 9:00 I'm going to get on my bike and start making my way to the Loop. Or, er, maybe...actually, the weather here in Chicago today is shittier than I expected, so maybe I'll put off the long bike ride for another day.

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I'm trying an experiment tomorrow, that I'm calling a "no downtime day" -- in other words, a day where I spend every moment from waking up to going to bed doing something productive, with no "downtime" spent on things like television, goofing off online, etc. If it's successful, then, I'll add it on a semi-regular basis to my usual "Getting Things Done" time-management system; a customer-created supplement if you will, where on top of your usual action lists and project lists and daily processing, something maybe like once a month you try to go an entire 16 hours without any "vegging" time at all.

Now, note that this is not the same thing as an "all-go-go-go" day; there will be certain times tomorrow when my pace will be slow, for example when sitting around on my ass getting various online things done. But there will also be very active parts of my day tomorrow, too; 9am to noon, for example, will be dedicated to traversing the route of my fourth in a series of bike maps for Google Maps/Earth, this time from my place in Uptown to the Loop, using only inner-city designated bike lanes (i.e. not the lakefront path). It's a ten-mile round trip for me altogether (16 km), basically being done to show off the interior of the city, and also to detail what one can expect when making a long ride within Chicago itself among vehicular traffic. (I've done the trip to the Loop before, actually; the downtown area can admittedly get a little scary, just from the sheer volume of large industrial traffic, but certain tips I'll be sharing can make the whole thing both safer and less nerve-wracking.) So you see what I'm saying; a normal day like always, with its normal ups and downs, but just while trying to cut out all non-productive activities. I've never tried such a thing before, so we'll see how it goes!

Anyway, just thought I'd mention it because I'll probably be posting a few live updates throughout the day tomorrow, via my Palm Treo and the excellent mobile client VOX provides its users. Here's hoping everything goes well.

Funny story: Today I was riding my bike as usual, the daily 6 miles (10 km) or more that I'm trying to do this summer, but the wind just felt like it was literally knocking me backwards, even while pedaling. And the whole thing was just so exhausting, and I was thinking the whole time, "What has changed about me today, so that I can't handle a windy day nearly as well as before? I can't be getting less healthy, can I? Hmm, knowing me, maybe I can (sigh)." And then I got home and checked out the weather, and found out that the wind was blowing in my neighborhood at the time at 48 miles per hour (77 kph). Yeesh.

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As always, a quick recap first for those who need it...

Because of my looming 40th birthday, I've decided to make a number of big changes to my lifestyle this year; among other things, I've decided to try biking between 3 and 5 miles (5 to 10 km) on every day this year it gets over 60 degrees (15 C), and every couple of weeks to put in a longish bike ride in order to build up my endurance. By the end of the summer I'm hoping for such rides to be 30 to 50 miles in length (50 to 80 km), but for now I'm shooting for more like 10 to 15 miles (15 to 25 km); so one of the things I'm doing these days is thinking of various fun trips in the city I could make that would be that total distance, either one-way or round-trip. (Bikes are allowed on all city trains and buses, making one-way bike trips quite easy.)

Anyway, an upcoming promotional event from one corner of the literary industry has inspired what I think is going to be my first longish trip of the year; it's happening this Saturday, in fact, where I will bike all over the north side of the city to celebrate national Free Comic Book Day. I worked out a route on Google Maps, in fact, that lasts 12 miles total, that would not only take me to three comic-book stores participating in the promotion, but up almost the entire length of Lincoln Park as well, including such landmarks of heavy interest as the zoo, the conservatory, the Lorenzo Taft sculpture of Lincoln, the last grave left in Lincoln Park (from when it was a cemetery in the 1800s), two museums, a historic belltower, a mysterious totem pole and a lot more. And such a route of course is especially cool for two reasons:

1) Because I'm actually excited about Free Comic Book Day this year: instead of the usual exclusive collection of lame superhero comics specially given out in the past, this year includes such indie favorites as a Victorian detective story from Eddie Campbell (From Hell), a collection of never-before reprinted Peanuts strips, and more;

and 2), ever since Google introduced the ability to build highly sophisticated custom maps -- ones that can not only have text, photos and videos embedded within the route, along with mile markers and multiple colors, but can also be exported en-masse as a Google Earth (.kml) file -- I've wanted to make one! But to make one, I need to actually go out and ride the route of the map I want to make, and take all the photos and videos that will be in the mashup.

Anyway, like I said, the full route takes me a total of 12 miles (20 km), and takes me by enough interesting stuff to add at least a dozen and a half points to my finished Google map afterwards. The rough breakdown is shown below:

Mapfreecomicslincolnpark

*) My home, Uptown; start/finish.
1) Chicago Comics, 3244 N Clark. Total distance: 1.25 miles.
2) Graham Crackers Comics, 2562 N Clark. Total distance: 2.45 miles.
3) Brainstorm Comics, 1648 W North Ave. Total distance: 5 miles.
4) Southern tip of Lincoln Park: Chicago History Museum, Taft sculpture and more. Total distance: 6.85 miles.
5) Historic Art Deco cafe at southern edge of zoo. Total distance: 7.45 miles.
6) Conservatory. Total distance: 7.8 miles.
7) Chicago Nature Museum. Total distance: 8 miles.
8) North Pond Cafe. Total distance: 8.3 miles.
9) Elks national headquarters and veteran memorial, a ridiculously magnificent structure that must be seen to be believed. Total distance: 8.6 miles. Also in this section, Goethe sculpture and garden.
10) Back officially on the lakefront path, in this case at Diversey. Total distance: 9.1 miles.
11) Start of Belmont Harbor. Total distance: 9.6 miles.
12) "Dog Beach" at Belmont Harbor. Total distance: 10 miles.
13) Mysterious totem pole, near Addison. (I'll explain where it came from in my eventual map.) Total distance: 10.35 miles.
14) Waveland Clubhouse and Bell Tower, recently restored to its original historic condition. Total distance: 10.65 miles.
15) The mysterious "Peace Garden" at Buena Avenue, beautifully landscaped but with almost no official information existing concerning its origin. Total distance: 11.25 miles.
*) Back home. Total distance: 12 miles.

So anyway, like I said, I'm going to try to very slowly make such a trip this coming Saturday, on national Free Comic Book Day; in fact, I asked my oral surgeon today during my check-up if it'd be okay to do such a thing, just a week after my latest bout of surgery, and he said sure. Then I'll upload the photos to Picasa (owned by Google), and the video to YouTube (also owned by Google), so that I'll be ready to import it all into my custom Google map, which will eventually be imported as a whole into Google Earth. Whew, that's a lot of synergy! So wish me luck; and of course if you live in Chicago and want to join me for part of the trip, or a coffee/drink somewhere along the way (I'll be spending the entire day to go its length, so obviously will be taking it easy and making a lot of stops), just drop me a line and let me know.

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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

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