Category Archives: Bike Trails

Just My Rides – Spring 2010

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First Ride of the Year!!!

Sorry for the long winter hibernation (on the blog) but I didn’t have that much to write about in the off season. But it’s 52 degrees right now here in Chicagoland and I just did my first ride of the year!

This was pretty much a warm up ride to get my legs back. I walk alot (outdoors) in the winter to stay in shape but riding is a whole different thing. Anyway, I did a little 13 mile ride in the subdivisions by me since the roads seemed fairly dry.

I also checked out the trail behind our house, that connects to the Algonquin and Paul Douglas trails and it was also pretty dry. There was a lot of leaves, dirt and branches left over from the thaw but it looked pretty good so I think that my next ride will be out on the trails.

I am starting this blog post for casual ride stories (I like having a place to post this kind of blog but I don’t want my blog to be nothing but ride stories so I’ll be adding comments to this post for additional ride stories).

For those of you who don’t know, I welcome other people ride stories too but I haven’t really received any yet. I can see by my blog stats that I have quite a few people visiting this blog but not that many contributions. I understand that and that is perfectly fine, but if you would like to comment, feel free and I’ll approve/post your comments (unless they are just spam).

Well, riding season is here and let the rides begin!!!

Just My Rides – Fall 2009

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I have been wanting to post simple bike ride updates on the about-bicycles blog but I didn’t want to fill the blog with tons of bike ride stories and make it hard to find the other bike trail and bike accessories information so I have decided to create a post for just this purpose.

Better late than never! Well, it’s mid-October and there isn’t a real lot of good bike riding weather here in the Chicago area, but I still wanted to create this post and add some of my ride stories here so here it is.

Also, as with the other posts in this blog, this post is open for comments so feel free to add your own bike ride stories here as replies to this post if you like.

As for myself, since it is so late in the year, most of my rides are close to home (the Paul Douglas Bike Trail is my favorite close to home trail) so there may be a lot of stories on this trail. But then again, if we get some nice days, I still may make it out to some more exotic trails this year 🙂

OK, my first “ride story” will be a reply to this post so I  better get to it.

Bike Trail Crap

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OK, I have a great 27 mile ride today on my local bike trail (the one that goes around Paul Douglas Forest Preserve) and I just had to post an entry about something that all of us who ride bike trails encounter but is not really mentioned often. Yes, as the title of this post says “Bike Trail Crap” …and I mean it literally in this case.

In the words of the famous Forrest Gump: “It Happens” (or maybe that is the censored TV version. Well, I am trying to keep my blog G rated, so the various blog cops don’t ban me or come after me, so I will keep it that way too).

 I’ve noticed a lot of crap on the Paul Douglas FP trail and a few things just occurred to me. Originally, I though that most of it was dog crap but I have discovered that, on this trail, a lot of it is deer crap.

I am not going to go into a big rant about people picking up after their dogs. It is, of course the right thing to do and some dog owners are very conscientious while others are not. Personally, on a trail, if dog owners would at least pick up a stick and push the crap off of the trail, I think that would be fine.

Anyway, since I discovered that much of this is deer crap (the PDFP is a large area and has many deer), I have found that you will find the most deer in the areas where most of the deer crap is (duh!). BTW: I usually see a few deer on my rides on this path. So since deer are out there and they are going to crap on the trail, I guess there isn’t much that can be done about that.

Another thing that you will encounter on bike trails that also allow horses, is of course, horse crap. Horse back riders very rarely carry around plastic bags (or shovels) to clean up after their “pets” 🙂 and these piles are pretty unmistakable when you run across them. If you are riding on trails that also allow horses than these you are just going to have to watch out for these little obstacles.

And the last variation of crap that I come across quite often is goose and bird crap. If  you ride on trails by lakes or rivers where there are a lot of geese and/or ducks, this can create quite an obstacle course.

Besides for the crap, geese can sometimes have quite and attitude also. I have ridden by or through packs of wild geese pretty often and have been honked and hissed at quite a bit. I haven’t actually been attacked (although I know that they will if you are close to a nest with eggs or goslings) but their attitudes and hissing can be pretty intimidating.

OK, I think that’s about all the crap that I wanted to write about for now. 🙂

Also, just to get back out of the gutter, I wanted to mention that I also saw a large beautiful hawk on my PDFP ride this afternoon. It’s always cool when you run across something like that.

Des Plaines River Trail Video is Up.

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I just completed editing and uploading the Des Plaines River Trail video!

I took this video last week when I rode the trail from Half Day (Route 22) to the northern end of the trail (mile 0) at Van Patten Woods just before the Wisconsin border. My trip was 58 miles (with a few extra short trips).

The DPR Trail was clear the whole way and there were no detours or flooding, which does happen on this trail occasionally. All of the underpasses were open.

I really like this trail but unfortunately I ended up with 45 minutes of original video! I edited the video down to 18.5 minutes but it is still my longest bike trail video and I like to try and keep them shorter than that. I considered breaking this up into 2 videos but decided to keep it as one for now.

I still haven’t had a chance to contact the indie musicians for new music so I am still recycling my original instrumental music for this video (for now anyway).

I think that this video came out pretty good but, as I mentioned, it is pretty long. There are a lot of major scenes on this 27 mile trip and I just didn’t want to chop it down too much.

I think that a lot of people do not ride this trail because it is crushed stone and not paved. I have ridden this trail many times with the skinny tires of my road bike and do not find that to be much of a problem but there are places where you need to slow down, of course.

OK, enough yakin. Here’s a link to the new Des Plaines River Trail Video!

You’ll need some time to watch this one (if you plan to watch the whole thing) and it may take a few seconds to load, but I hope you like it.

Chicago Lakefront Path Video is Complete

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As I mentioned in the article below, I took video of the Chicago Lakefront Path when I rode the trail earlier this week and I just completed editing and uploading the video!

I think the video came out pretty well but for some reason I did not have nearly as much video of this trail as I usually do and the final edited version is only 7 1/2 minutes. Well, that’s OK since most people don’t watch the other bike trail videos all the way through anyway.

I think that this one gets to the good stuff right away… and there is a lot of good stuff on this trail. I think that the scenes from the Shedd Aquarium area may be the best part although there are plenty of other good lakefront and Chicago scenes too.

Since I did the photos going south on the trail, I did the video on the way back so it is primarily south to north (with a few scenes that look back the other way). In retrospect, I wish that I had taken a little more time and video taped a little more but I did want to enjoy the ride some too 🙂

I think that I’ve mentioned that I am planning to try to get permission to use some indie musicians recordings for these bike trail videos in the future but I have not had the time to search and select the material yet so I am still stuck with the same old music (my own) that I’ve been doing on all of the videos so far. Hang in there though, I am hoping to do an upgrade on the music asap.

Well, enough yakin about the video, here is it. I hope you all like it.

The Chicago Lakefront Path Video!

Chicago Lakefront Path Ride and New Photo Pages

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I have been wanting to get out to the Chicago Lakefront Trail for years now and finally made it into the city to ride the entire trail. I was not at all disappointed. This trail is really pretty breath taking (literally when you do the entire trail, as I did 🙂 ). I truly believe that this is one of the best things that the city of Chicago has to offer.

I also wanted to be sure that I got plenty of photos and now video of the trail so I brought my camera and camcorder and have plenty of new photos and video for the site now. I just completed the trail and photo pages but have not yet completed the video. I will post a seperate blog entry when I complete the video.

In the past I have found it too difficult to try to take photos and video on the same trip but since I wanted to get both, and probably will not make it into the city again to ride this trail again this summer, I decided to do both. I took the photos from north to south and took the video on my return trip from south to north. It was a lot of work but worked out much better than trying to switch back and forth between the camera and camcorder.

I also wanted to get a panoramic photo of the city and managed to get a few of these also. Here is one of the photos that I took of the Lakefront Trail from the Shedd Aquarium:

Chicago Lakefront Path and Skyline

Chicago Lakefront Path and Skyline

This is actually multiple photos that I “stitched” together with one of my photo software packages. This is on the main page (that I just completed) for this trail which is: The Chicago Lakefront Trail.

OK, there are really quite a few photos out there now (at the link above) if you are interested in this trail and I would definitely recommend riding this trail if you get a chance. I am also including a little background on the ride that I didn’t include in the regular trail pages here in the blog.

Since I am currently out of work (or actually out of an income (I have plenty of “work”)), I was able to choose a weekday (a Monday) for the ride and made sure to pick a fairly warm day since anyone who live in Chicago knows, it is always cooler by the lake (in the summer anyway). I knew that this trail had potential for large crowds of people and I wanted to avoid that as much as possible. It is already hard enough to take photos and video while riding let alone trying to deal with massive crowds.

Another advantage of doing this trail on a workday was that I was able to park for free. I drove in on Montrose and was able to find plenty of parking (at about 10:00am) right by the Montrose Harbor. This was not the case later in the afternoon when I returned.

The Laketront Trail is 18 miles one way and I was not in a big hurry since I had plenty of daylight to ride the 36 miles total (it was actually a little longer with a few side trips).

Personally, my favorite parts of the trail were the northern part of the trail around Lincoln Park, the central section where you go by the downtown area and the popular city beaches and the section by the Shedd aquarium. I was not real impressed with the southern end of the trail but there is one advantage to that part of the trail and that is that it does not seem be nearly as crowded as the other parts of the trail.

The Chicago Lakefront Bike Trail is really pretty incredible and I’m sure you can find some favorite sections of the trail on your own but I hope that the pages that I’ve posted, the video that I will be uploading soon and this blog entry will be helpful if and/or when you ride this trail.

McHenry County Prairie Trail Video is Complete

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Sorry for the delay in updates. I was in Colorado earlier this month (don’t get me started on the “mountain bike riders” out there!) and have just gotten caught up on the videos that I have taken so far this summer.

If you have read some of the previous posts then you know that I rode and video taped the Fox River and McHenry County Prairie Trails from Dundee to Genoa City Wisconsin in July. I completed the 2 Fox River Trail videos (Northern and Southern regions) earlier this month and have just now finished the Prairie Trail video.

I’m not sure of the exact mileage. I rode 32 miles from Dundee to Genoa City but I don’t know how many miles it is from Dundee to the start of the Prairie Trail. The Prairie Trail section is probably a little under 30 miles one way.

Well with the 2 FRT videos and now this (Prairie Trail) video complete, you can take a virtual bike ride from Oswego, Illinois to Genoa City Wisconsin!

OK, now that you have the background info, here’s the link to the video!

The McHenry County Prairie Trail Video

Fox River Trail Videos are Done.

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I just completed the Fox River Trail videos yesterday and have uploaded them to the About-Bicycles website and video pages.

Anyone who has been on this trail knows how long the trail is, which is why I have split the Fox River Trail (FRT) video into 2 sections. The entire video goes from south to north and the southern region video has from Oswego to just before the long bridges in South Elgin (approx 20 miles) and the northern region video has from South Elgin to Algonquin (approx 17 miles).

I have also camcorded from Algonquin to Genoa City Wisconsin on the McHenry County Prairie Trail but I have not edited and uploaded this video yet. Once I finish this one I will have video from Oswego to Wisconsin (I would estimate this to be about 70 miles 1 way)!

These videos are from 2 separate bike trips in close to the same time frame (both in July, 2009). I rode the northern section first (from Dundee to Genoa City Wisconsin and back (64 miles)) and the southern section (from Dundee to Oswego and back (70 miles))a week or so later. I recorded the southern section on the way back so all of the videos are from south to north. I took a few short side trips on the southern section trip so the 70 miles is a little higher than what it would be otherwise.

There is a break in the trail in Aurora and I went through downtown Aurora on Broadway (route 25) on the sidewalks. There may be other ways around this (like the Virgil Gilman trail) but I am not that familiar with this area so I just took the shortest distance through the gap.

There was some construction and detours on the trail, which I’ve reported in the “Trail Conditions” section of this blog but I have mostly cut out a lot of that info for the videos because that is constantly changing and I wanted the video to be what the trail is like without the detours (wherever it was possible to do that).

To be honest, the videos do not come out as nice as I would like, but since I have not found a good collection of bike trail videos (for the Chicagoland area) I wanted to get the videos completed and up on the site so people would have the option to see the trails , in a video, to check them out before riding them (or maybe even to reminisce on past trips).

I like to try and keep the action going and record while riding in most cases, but the video does get shakey especially when you are on rough parts of the trails. Perhaps a helmet cam or a camcorder with image stabilization would help, but I can not afford the upgrade at the moment and I didn’t want that to stop me from creating the videos.

I also have to keep using the same instrumental music (original songs of my own) that I have because I want to keep the videos completely legal and this gives me the option to have a music background without paying royalties or a one time usage fee. So the music may not be the greatest (I didn’t have the best recording equipment when I recorded it and it was not meant to be instrumental only), but it is quite unique!  

OK, now that you have ALL of the background scoop on the videos, here are the links to the videos!

The Fox River Trail – Southern Region

The Fox River Trail – Northern Region

I hope you like the videos!

Bike Ride Info: Use Local Weather Radar

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Here’s a very helpful bike riding hint/tip that I use all the time now and wanted to pass along: Check your local weather radar if you are concerned about rain before your next ride.

Many of you may already be aware of this or use this service regularly but for you riders out there that haven’t looked into checking your local weather radar before your rides I wanted to pass this on.

Checking your local weather radar before a fairly short ride (up to an hour or two ride) is extremely helpful. For longer rides (like most of the day), you’ll need to depend mostly on the local weather forecast or maybe check the radar for a much wider area.

This helps on a cloudy day or when it looks a little like rain and the forcast predicts some percentage chance of rain but you just don’t know if you will get soaked or not.

Checking the local weather radar is not 100% accurate at picking up a few sprinkles here and there but it is very accurate at locating heavier rain clouds. If you see a large area of green, yellow or red heading towards the area that you are planning your ride you can be pretty sure that you are going to get very wet. You can also judge how fast the rain is moving into your area by animating the radar map and checking the time frame of the updates.

On the other hand, if it is 100% clear on the radar you could still get a few sprinkles but you can be confident that you can take your ride and that you will not get totally soaked or probably not even get wet at all.

On some days, I have checked the radar and seen rain heading toward the area where I was planning to ride and have predicted, with great accuracy, when the rain would start. I could plan how far and how long I would ride  based on this information. I don’t mind a few raindrops on my ride but I really don’t like getting totally soaked to the point that I have to wring out my cloths after my ride!

I live in the Chicagoland are so I prefer the Chicago Tribune Weather Radar. You can also use the Weather Channel Website Radar  for just about any other location or you may have your own local or personal favorites. You’ll probably want to check a few weather radar websites out to see which ones are best for your area.

If you haven’t tried this before, give it a try. It really is quite helpful. Enjoy the ride…

Fox River Bike Trail Conditions – 2009

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We just did a 64 mile bike ride on the northern end of the Fox River Trail(FRT), from Dundee to Algonquin and including of the McHenry County Prairie Trail (PT) from Algonquin to Genoa City Wisconsin, yesterday.

This post is for the conditions on the Fox River Trail. There is no construction, flooding, detours or washouts in the northern part of  the FRT (from Dundee north) at this time.

7/30/09 – Update

I rode the remaining southern part of the Fox River Trail (from Oswego to Dundee) yesterday. There is no flooding at this time but there are a number of detours and pending construction plans that you should be aware of.

The main construction and detours that you should be aware of as you go from south to north are:

Bridge Construction in Aurora – There is some major highway work being done on a bridge that the trail passes under near Aurora. The trail is open and the construction is fenced off but it looks like they could close it temporarily if necessary.

Trail Closed and Bridge Out, South Elgin – The stone bridge that goes over the river and under

Stone Bridge Closed

Stone Bridge Closed

 the train tracks around South Elgin has a big section missing and the trail before and after the bridge is closed. I went through the closed section to explore and was able to get by (very carefully) but this could change at any time and I can’t recommend going through this because it could be dangerous. There may be an easy detour around this but I didn’t take the detour so I can’t say.

Detours in St. Charles – There are some detours as you go through St. Charles but they are marked and not that much more difficult than going through St. Charles without the detours.

Detours in Elgin – There are some detours as you go through Elgin but this is pretty typical and the detours are marked.

Trail Closures for Stearns Road Bridge Project – There are large signs just north of the long bridges in south Elgin that say that they are building a new highway bridge over the Fox River and that parts of the trail will be closed from the end of July 2009 through December 2010 (all of next summer!). There may be a temporary detour but nothing specific was mentioned.

Stearns Road Bridge Construction

Stearns Road Bridge Construction

The signs refer the www.stearnsroad.com website which I visited and it gives a lot of information on the roads but nothing specific about the bike trail. There was also an email address posted and I have sent an email to this address requesting more information about the “temporary detour”. I will post an update here if/when I receive anything on this. The website said “The Fox River bike trail is set to be closed from South Elgin to the John J. Duerr Forest Preserve beginning 8/3/2009.”

I don’t get out to this trail all that often so if anyone has updates please feel free to add comments to this post.