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About Bicycles > Bike Trail Articles > Bike Trail Blog 1a

Bike Trails, Bike Stories and Articles - Archive 1a*
3/27/2003 - 10/24/2003

This page is dedicated to bike trail information, cycling articles and casual bike stories, comments and articles...

10/24/2003 - Bike Mileage Competition

With the bike season coming to an end (for me anyway), I am approaching 1,300 miles on my bike for this year... I have easily beat my record from last year (being out of work helped, of course) and was just coasting along finishing up the season. I have taken a few rides with my friend Dale, who has never been much of a hard core biker until this year (he did the I&M trail with me and also wrote up 2 other bike articles for my bike site (Peninsula State Park Trail and Ahnapee Bike Trail)). Well, he intentionally did not tell me that he passed my seasons mileage record this year because he didn't want me to get all competitive (which I would have, and then would have had to at least tried to beat his mileage!). So, now with me starting work (and him still unemployed for now) it is actually impossible to beat his record... OK, congratulations to him for doing so many miles... but it was still sleazy not to tell me so I could try to beat his record! :-) :-)

10/5/2003 - How Many Miles?

Wow, what a beautiful October day today is! Sunny and in the 60s... I just did my afternoon ride and just passed another "mile stone". How many miles is that now? 1,200! Yes,  that's Twelve hundred or One thousand and Two hundred miles (in one bike season). It's gonna be hard to beat next year... I may have to do that cross country trip after all! :-)

9/14/2003 -If you ride enough... you're going to crash!...

I guess it can happen to anyone... After over 1,000 miles this year, I wipe out... for no good reason, just clumsiness and a miscalculation...

So, I'm doing my usual ride...about to cross Euclid (a busy road by us) and there are cars coming... So I do a tight loop in a company driveway that goes out to the road (to give the cars time to pass)... I don't make my loop quite tight enough and just nick a high curb on the other side... BAM! it throws me! OUCH! My bike is all bent up (nothing permanent thankfully) and I got a few cuts and scratches and am bleeding a little... I access the situation, wipe off the blood and decide I am OK to continue... Rode off and completed another 12 miles... :-)

9/10/2003 -The Orange Bat!... Misc Bike News...

Well... the orange bat and I did it today! I now have a new bike season mileage record! (I always report that here of course). My bike is a Batavus (It's Dutch, I believe) and it is orange (probably a popular bike color back in the 70s when I got it!) so there you have it! Even though I have had the bat-bike for 25 years now (since I was 25 myself! ($57.75 in 1978)) it could very well be the bats' last season... (we'll see). At least it is hanging in there for this season.

I was just wondering how many miles I have on the bat so I checked the bat-records that I had on file... (I am missing 1998 and 1999 for some reason...) and "holy 10 speeds batbike!" so far, I have over 4,000 miles on the bat (for 5 years) and who knows how many before that (I didn't have an odometer back then...)... and still going... Here are my old season mileage records:

I just remembered tonight when I was riding that last year I was trying to get to 911 miles by 9/11 (the date)... Just a symbolic thing... I was close but didn't quite make it... Well, it is 9/11 tomorrow (kind of an interesting, sad, nervous and patriotic day...) and I am way past 911 miles... I almost like to kick back a little after I make a new record, so it won't be too hard to break it again next year! Unfortunately, there is still a lot of great biking weather left, and I still love riding... so...

(OK, I wasted a little time doing my silly animated gif above... but I needed a little break and it was nice and relaxing...)

9/5/2003 -Beautiful Fall...

I just had to drop a line about this beautiful late summer, early fall weather we've been having. Yesterday, I had the most peaceful and pleasant ride in Inverness, but then it is hard to capture a feeling in words... BTW: I love riding in Inverness because of the beautiful homes and fancy landscaping and quiet winding roads... but... I really would not want to live there! It is just way too uptight looking... I don't want to "have to" drive a Mercedes! a

9/1/2003 -Four Digits!,

I just had a really nice ride tonight... and cracked the 1,000 mile mark for this year! (as you can see above)... 40 more miles to a new seasons record... It was kind of cloudy today and got dark early but it was really pretty nice... I could see and hear all of the Labor Day vacationeers rushing back home... I just thought it was nice to be on a bike...

8/26/2003 - Late Season Bike Problems,

I am so close to a new bike mileage record and now my bike is having some more mechanical problems :-( I meant to ride today, but never got out...

I usually have a hard time prying open my wallet for luxuries (like a new bike) and now that my wallet is so empty it is even harder...

8/18/2003 - 100 Miles... The New Trail Pages...

Well, as you see (above) I am within 100 miles of a new all time season bike mileage record... and it is only mid-August (this will be easy) It was a beautiful night tonight and I did a nice easy 11 miles... that was pretty relaxing after that 70 mile ride (and another one in pouring rain, that I didn't mention...). We just came out of some dog days of summer (hot and humid) so the cool evening ride was really nice...

I forgot that I didn't mention the new bike trail pages on my bike site... These are the Long Prairie Bike Trail and the I&M Canal Bike Trail south of here... (I guess it is technically "northern" illinois) but it always seems way south to me... The trails were really nice and the pages have quite a few pictures and are in the format that I have used for my other trail pages... (my trademark format, I guess you could say :-) )

8/14/2003 - New Record!

I just discovered and rode 2 new bike trails and broke a new 1 day distance record on the 2'nd one! The first trail is called the "Long Prairie Trail" and is north and west of us (around Harvard, Il.) and the other one is the I&M trail south of us along the Illinois river and canal. My friend Bob and I did 35 miles on the Long Prairie trail and my friend Dale and I did 70 miles on the I&M trail! Beating my old 1 day record of 64 miles... This is also Casey's 1 day record (we did that one together) and he wants a rematch now... sheesh, I don't know if I can do that again... let alone MORE...

I also camcorded both of the new trails, but have not yet downloaded the photos or done the official bike site trail pages. I will do this, of course, to keep adding content and value to my site, so I guess I was mixing a little pleasure with work... or was I mixing work with pleasure... or was it just exercise... :-)

I have also learned a little bit about bike GPS (Global Positioning Systems) units from a couple of friends that have them for their bikes, so I was researching them to write about them on the bike site. This has taken longer than I expected and I still have the trails to write about, in addition to some more pages that I have on my list in addition to getting going on another site let alone fixing some screens, a bike tire, getting some trees trimmed, etc. etc. I am totally back logged!

8/8/2003 - Another Trail, Photo Notes...

I found another great bike trail in northern Ill. (I did 35 miles with my friend Bob from AiC). I got a lot of the trail camcorded but haven't had a chance to download the photos or write it up yet...

Just a photo note: I really think that digital photography has done a lot to drive down the prices of film developing... As far as hardcopies go, I think that I do like photo paper prints better than all but the best PC printer prints... But for online pictures... either one will do just fine...

8/4/2003 - Working, Riding, Writing...

We just had a fantastic trip up to my nieces house in Wisconsin...  It really was nice, and I even got out to the Ellroy-Sparta bike trail for some bike site work (I love this part of the job!).

It has taken me quite a bit of time to download all of those bike trail pictures and write the bike trail pages, in addition to downloading the pictures here... But then, I ended up with 16 new, quality bike site pages! See the awesome tunnels of the Elroy Sparta trail HERE

7/17/2003 - Another 39 Mile Ride - East Dundee to Genoa City Wisconsin!

This is actually turning out to be a regular family tradition! And one that I really like too! This time it was my daughters idea to do the ride. My son and wife were really wanting to go too and I wasn't sure if we would actually "go the distance" again... but the next thing you know... We made it to Genoa City Wisconsin once again! (the ride is actually 32 miles, but we did 7 more back tracking a little). (the bike mileages above are not 100% accurate but close (aside from mine))

I really love doing this ride with the family. It is some real nice quality time and we all seem to like it pretty well (that's a hard thing to find sometimes!) I did feel a little guilty about taking the day off (from my currently low-paying startup business) but I was able to justify my day off a little better by bringing along Corinne's digital camera and photographing the trails to document for the About-Bicycles site.

It truly does add value to the site.. Therefore, I was mixing work with pleasure! It was a little more difficult stopping all the time and taking pictures, but now that I've put the pages together, I think that it really was worth it and will be a some very nice content for the site visitors (currently at over 400 per day!) Here are the links to my new bike trail pages with the photos!

Fox River Bike Trail North Trail descriptions and bike trail photos
Prairie Trail Trail descriptions and bike trail photos

Corinne's camera only holds about 60 pictures (internally) on the lowest setting and that just barely did the job, but I was able to do it with about 60... (then reducing to the best ones while putting together the pages).

Unfortunately, the place where we usually eat, in Genoa City, (Keller's) was closed (on Mondays) so we had to back track to a crummy McDonalds (in Richmond) for our after ride meal. The service at this one was absolutely terrible and it wasn't very good, but there were not a lot of choices when you are at the Wisconsin border on bikes...

6/15/2003 Breakdown...

I had a major bike breakdown a few days ago, and thought that I may end up getting a new bike for my birthday (a necessity really)... but I was able to do the repair (to my 25 year old bike) with $6.00 worth of replacement parts instead... :-) :-(

3/29/2003 - I Love Bike Riding...

Just a quick update... I just did my second ride this season. I was starting to get into my running routine (doing about 2 miles every other day) and as usual, my body gave in to the pressure... (my knee this time). I was disappointed about that, but I can still ride my bike just fine... I did 13 miles today and it was just felt great! (even though it was a little chilly). I just really like riding and I think it is almost a perfect exercise too... (just my opinion).

3/27/2003 - Only 1,039 bike miles to go to beat last years record!

* Note on Bike Article pages: Although I have tried to keep these articles sequential (chronologically), there is some overlap with the other article pages due to the fact that I have moved some of these bike articles from a multi-topic site to this site.