1 post tagged “jackson”
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.
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
