Monthly Archives: August 2009

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!