Took the opportunity to get dropped off at a forest preserve on Dempster near Lehigh Road. From there, biked home. The most challenging part was getting from Devon (where the park ended) to the lakefront park. There really isn’t a good route, especially on a busy Saturday afternoon. There were some streets with bike lanes, but Chicago drivers only begrudgingly acknowledge bike lanes, and bikes, so resorted to pedalling on the sidewalks sometimes to avoid being run over. Not ideal; for all of Chicago’s self-proclaimed bike friendliness, there are lots of areas of the city that are downright bike-unfriendly.
Also make the mistake of trying to go east on Devon: ended up on a 4 lane bridge just east of Milwaukee Avenue that had absolutely no shoulder, no sidewalk, and no mercy. Made it about halfway across before chickening out, and limping back to reverse course. Scary.
Beautiful along the lakefront of course, and surprisingly not that crowded. Must have been fortuitous timing. Not so good timing, though, when I ended up on the Michigan Avenue bridge (one side closed, making it even more of a cluster), merged in with the million shoppers on the Million Dollar Mile. Yikes, bad planning on my part. There really isn’t that good of a route from the lakefront bike path to the West Loop: next time perhaps I’ll try zipping over to Wells Street sooner.
Dempster back to West Loop
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Home to a stint in our personal sauna, shower, and glass of wine. Wish I had time to take this long of a bike ride every day…
