Bike Lanes through Aurora connecting the Fox River Trail northern and southern sections

This past weekend we took a ride on the Fox River Trail from St. Charles, Il. to and through Aurora. Last fall (2015) one of our website visitors had told me that the city of Aurora was constructing bike lanes through Aurora so I decided to check them out.

Well, the BIke Lanes are Now Complete and are a very welcome connection of the Fox River Trail north of Aurora to the FRT south of Aurora.

The Fox River Trail runs from Oswego in the south to Algonquin in the north. One of the biggest problems when trying to ride the southern part of the trail was always going through Aurora. I had done this a few times mostly on the sidewalks on Broadway but it was always a pain.

Now, the trail goes right by Hollywood Casino ~ which is an interesting and kind of scenic area ~ then right out to the bike lanes on Downer Place, River Street (the main stretch) and North Avenue.

The bike lanes are well separated from vehicle traffic on the road and are bright green and very easy to follow.

When you are heading south through Aurora on the bike lanes you go on to Hurds Island and then back to the trail on the west side of the river. If you are going to continue south to Oswego you will want to get on the Virgil Gilman Trail Bridge to cross the Fox River and get on the east side of the trail.

I have posted some photos and information on the Bike Lanes through Aurora here. In addition to the Bike Lane information there are links to the connecting trail pages.

So now, if you want to take that really long ride, you can ride from Oswego, Illinois north to Algonquin (much easier now), connect to the McHenry County Prairie Trail and continue on to Genoa City Wisconsin!

On my last ride on the Busse Woods Trail ~ featured in my 6/1/14 blog post ~ I had an interesting and informative conversation with another cyclist that I met on my ride. This cyclist was an Elk Grove resident and we eventually started talking about the Tour of Elk Grove (TOEG). During this conversation he told me that the Tour of Elk Grove had been cancelled due to scheduling conflicts with other local events and more importantly with the Tour of Utah.

I had really gotten into the TOEG the past few years and have posted a lot of information and photos on this event to this website and I was very disappointed to hear this. You can find our article and photos on this event here on our Tour of Elk Grove pages.

Although the cyclist that I was talking to seemed very credible, I decided to check into this further when I got home. I did a Google search and sadly it was all true 🙁

The Elk Grove Village website had an update on the event  titled: Alexian Brothers Tour of Elk Grove (located here) which has all the details and a link to “An open letter was published in local media outlets explaining the decision”.

I was very disappointed with the cancellation of this great cycling event and I sent an electronic message to the Mayor of Elk Grove, Craig B. Johnson who I know is a cyclist and was very dedicated to the event. I actually sent my message through the standard online “contact us” message system on the Elk Grove Village website so I really don’t expect much of a response. If the mayor got back to me I would be shocked (but why not give it a try?).

Anyway, in my message ~ to the mayor ~  I asked why the TOEG could not be held at the same time as the Arlington Millions (which was stated as one of the conflicting events).  I know that the Arlington Millions is a huge event and has been around for a long time but I don’t see why the 2 events could not be held at the same time and maybe even complement each other.

This may be an uninformed and naïve question to ask but sometimes it takes a simple innocent question from an outsider to generate new ideas and/or actions.

Why Not?

On the lighter side, I am posting a photo that I took (or more accurately photo-shopped) a while back to show how cycling and horse racing events can be held together and even complement each other 🙂 The cyclist in the photo was actually from the TOEG.

Well, sadly, 2013 may have been the last year for the Tour of Elk Grove. It was great while it lasted (8 years worth) but it may be history now… Unless the mayor gets back to me an likes my idea 🙂

Well we had a little touch of warmer weather for a few days here in Chicagoland but it didn’t last so I guess it is still Indoor Bike Riding Season and my latest fitness bike review is still pretty timely.

NordicTrack FX2.7 Upright

I have not had a chance to do many fitness bike reviews on this website lately ~ due to the work that I have been doing on my new treadmill website (more on that in a later post) ~ and I have been concerned that I need to get more than just the latest sales and prices updated.

Well, I received an email this week with a really detailed and valuable Customer Review on one of the newer NordicTrack Exercise Bikes, the NordicTrack GX2.7 Upright which motivated me to do my review of the GX2.7 so I could also post the customer review of this bike.

The reason that I found the customer review of this fitness bike so valuable and helpful is because:

1. It is very detailed (over 700 words ~ OK, so I use MS Word to track things like that 🙂 )
2. It was written 2 1/2 months after the bike was purchased so the bike has had a fair amount of use and it wouldn’t be one of those  “it’s brand new and I just love it because it’s new” reviews.
3. The author has owned a similar upright exercise bike from another brand ~ Schwinn ~ so he has ridden and had pretty good experience with the 2 brands and could make a good comparison.
4. It was unbiased and included both the negative and positive aspects of both exercise bikes.
5. It is difficult to find good, unbiased customer reviews of NordicTrack exercise bikes ~ especially the newer models ~ since they are only sold online directly by NordicTrack and at Sears stores.

The NordicTrack GX2.7 is this year’s upgrade to the GX2.5 which has been a very popular low cost Upright Exercise Bike. I know this because I have seen the volume of sales that the GX2.5 (and more recently the GX2.7) has generated from the referrals from this website to NordicTrack.

Rather than getting into any of the details of the GX2.7 here in this blog post, I’ll refer you to my latest fitness bike review of the NordicTrack GX2.7 Upright here. I have included part of the customer review and a link to the full review on our review page and you can also go directly to the Full Customer Review here.

I have had some bad bike luck lately. I had a flat tire a few days ago which was not that bad although I do not usually get a lot of flat tires. Then yesterday I had a very unusual bike break down at the end of my ride.

I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. I was just riding down a hill on a neighborhood street and all of a sudden I heard a terrible noise and my pedals would not work. I kind of thought that my chain just got hung up but there was some noise from the back wheel too. I stopped (I didn’t really have a choice about that) and took a look and my rear derailleur was bent and hitting the spokes on my back wheel.

I also noticed that one spoke was completely ripped out of the wheel and wrapped around the cassette on the back wheel. The pedals were locked and would not move. I tried to bend the derailleur back but could not get the pedals to work although I did get it so the back wheel would turn freely so I could walk the bike home. You can see the mangled spoke and where it was ripped out of the wheel in the photo.

One little side note. It was starting to rain so I wanted to get back home a little faster and discovered that I was able to use my bike as a scooter (by standing on one pedal and pushing with the other foot). This is actually a lot faster than just walking if you get stranded and if the bike will still roll.

My best guess at what happened is that maybe my rear derailleur was too close to the wheel and somehow got hung up on a spoke that might have been sticking out or something. Then when the derailleur caught the spoke it ripped the spoke out and pulled the derailleur into the wheel.

Why did this happen? I have no idea. It was a weird thing to just happen randomly after everything was working just fine for the last 12 miles.

I’ll be bringing my bike in to my LBS later today to see how much this repair is going to cost me. I suspect that this will be an expensive repair.

Now that outdoor bike riding season is just around the corner (here in Chi Town, it probably is already good riding season in other parts of the country), I have been doing some bike shopping and new bike reviews.

2012 Fuji Newest 1.0 Road/Sport Bike

One of the bikes that I just checked out at the Performance Bike shop by us is the 2012 Fuji Newest. This bike actually fits my main riding style much better than the bike I have now and although I’ll probably keep my current road bike (a Trek 1500) for now, but I would actually very seriously consider Fuji Newest for my next bike.

First off, if you’ve read the other Fuji bike reviews on this site, you know that I do like Fuji Bikes as a brand. Although they make some low end models, most of their models have multiple price/component levels and you can usually upgrade to the higher end version that comes equipped with better components.

As for the Fuji Newest (which BTW, has been around for years so the name is a little odd), this bike is made for everyday road and trail (bike path) riding and/or even commuting. Although the bike is relatively light and has drop down handlebars, this is not a racing bike. Fuji calls it a Road/Sport bike and I actually think of it as like a hybrid (in many ways) with drop down handlebars (my personal preference).

Well, I have written up more of the details, specs and stuff on the new Fuji Newest Bike Review page so I don’t want to start repeating all of that here, but I will mention that this is actually a very nice bike if your riding style fits what I have described above and it is very affordable.

Well, it’s daylight savings time so that usually signals the beginning of the riding season for me! Can’t wait!

Just a quick update for those of you who may have been looking at the Livestrong High-End Recumbent Bike (The Livestrong LS6.0R Recumbent) but were disappointed to find that it had been out of stock and back-ordered for the last few weeks.

The Livestrong LS6.0R Recumbent

Our friends at Livestrong.com had posted that this bike was expected to be available again on 12/9/11. Well, they beat their estimate by one day and it is now available once again.

The Livestrong LS6.0R is an excellent recumbent exercise bike and has been on our “Best Buy Exercise Bikes” page since it came out this fall.

One of the key features of the LS6.0R is the Livetrack Interactive technology which allows you to track all of the details of your workout in addition to uploading your workout data to Livestrong MyPlate via the USB port. Unlike other fitness equipment websites, access to Livestrong Myplate is totally free.

Another very nice feature of the LS6.0R is the Mesh Seat Back. The seat back is made from durable, high quality material and provides plenty of ventilation to help keep you cool throughout your fitness routine.

For more information or to get the Livestrong LS6.0R at the lowest price see: Livestrong LS6.0R Recumbent Exercise Bike.

I just took a 19 mile ride out on the Busse Woods trail and it was so beautiful this time of year  that I just had to mention it even though I do not have photos this time (I usually bring my camera when I go on new trails or trails that I have not been on for quite a while but this was just a last minute casual ride).

Anyway, I noticed that the photos that we have posted on this site for the Busse Woods Trail, were also from October, although they were from a few years back. So see our Busse Woods Trail Pages for some nice fall photos of the trail.

I crossed the bridge in the photo below and it looked a lot like it does in this panoramic photo (from a few years back, not today’s ride).

Busse Woods Bridge Crossing

Getting back to the trail itself, as I mentioned in our article on this trail, this trail can get crowded on really nice prime time days so I really like riding the trail at off time whenever possible.

Today (Friday) is still a work day but the weather is excellent and I think some people may have been getting an early start on the weekend. Anyway, there were people out on the trail, of course, but it was not really all that crowded or congested at all.

As for my ride, I started at one of the forest preserve entrances off of Golf Road which is next to the “Black Trail” leg which is where I got on the trail. I just hate the intersection where you have to cross Higgins / Route 72 by Route 53 so I planned my route to avoid having to cross there and it worked out great.

I took the “Black Trail” to where it hits the “Red Trail” (close to the Higgins Road intersection) and then went east  from there.  I ended up doin the entire Red Trail all the way around (on both sides of Higgins (since it has a bridge to cross on the east side (by the Elk)) to the bad intersection at Higgins.

This was only 8.5 miles so rather than crossing Higgins, I turned around here  and went back the way I came. I also did the “Purple Trail” (that goes out to Alexian Brothers Hospital) on the way back for a few extra miles.

 See the Busse Woods MAP (photo) here if the route that I’ve described  is hard to understand.

So my trip ended up being 19 miles and I never had to cross an intersection (except where the bridge crosses over Higgins).

I live not too far from this trail but it is not within easy bike riding distance so I do not make it out there very often. I had forgotten how beautiful Busse Woods can be, especially in the fall, so I have just decided that I will definitely try to make it out to this trail a few more times this year (if the weather cooperates!)