Travel is mandatory in the summer time. It wouldn't be right to go through the season without a "summer vacation", and what better way to travel than by bike, so we decided on a short trip up to Milwaukee. This trip was also partially in celebration of Darrien's birthday. It is about 100 miles to Milwaukee from Chicago, and a bit further to our final destination. We would be staying with some very nice friends who were willing to lend a few couches to us for the weekend.
The crew and I left Logan Square early on a Friday morning, and headed north along the lake. The toughest part of the ride was just getting out of the city. There are segments of trail, but sticking to them isn't necessarily intuitive. We ended up riding through lots of residential areas, stopping to check the map and to wait for green lights at intersections. Somehow, we stopped long enough for me to capture what must be the most amazingly photogenic picture of the ladies that I have ever seen.
Once we escaped from the city and the majority of the northern suburbs, it was smooth sailing, more or less. We remained mostly on well-maintained, scenic, wooded trails, and a good amount of crushed limestone. It was a real treat. Three of us were riding single speed, and Darrien was actually set up fixed gear (a pretty tall gear too). Between that gearing and her skinny road tires on limestone, she really proved her undeniable toughness throughout the entire century. Everyone rode incredibly, in fact, and moral was consistently high. The weather was perfect, and I enjoyed nearly every mile.
Note the homemade frame bag above.
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A small portion of my mid-ride snack. This convenient store literally saved all of our lives, as we collectively neared the inevitable bonk in what seemed to be a nutritional desert.
Some intense fog rolled in, which made for a really cool environment to ride in. It remained this way practically untill the end.
Unfortunately, after nightfall set in, we took a shortcut to make up for lost time. The shortcut led Darrien into a giant pothole, which took the life of her front tube and made us realize that the only tool we didn't bring happened to be the most important: a 15mm wrench. We phoned the friends and got picked up at a nearby bowling alley, where we were found relaxing with some treats. We ended up getting 100 miles in anyways, and to tell you the truth, I think we were all about done for the day. The fun was running low, and we were all just anxious to be done by that point. Perhaps it's a good thing we forgot that wrench...
The next day was spent doing some touristy stuff. We checked out a neat bike shop called Corey the Bike Fixer, and made some new friends.
We happened to arrive on the weekend of the Summer Solstice festival, and so we hung out there and treated ourselves to the traditional Wisconsin grub and brew.
The remainder of the day (and night) was spent hanging out behind the bike shop, making more new friends and quickly forgetting their names. We drank our fair share of New Glarus, perhaps a bit too much considering we planned to make the second century back to Chicago the following day. By the way, you may not recognize it, but that's an All-City Nature Boy up there - The same bike that Ruthie and I rode on the trip. It had a bolt on derailleur hangar added and a custom paint job, which made it really hard to recognize at that point, unless of course you love that frame as much as we do.
The next morning, we came to the realization that maybe we did have a bit too much fun the night before, and that perhaps even the hardiest of breakfasts couldn't save us at that point. Regardless, we gobbled up the grub found on Brady Street and pressed on towards home.
We said our goodbyes to the fine city of Milwaukee, and thanked it for all of the fun it provided that weekend.
The ride home was surreal.
I told ya it was surreal...
We made it to Kenosha (halfway home), at which point we threw in the towel. We just so happened to do so about 30 minutes before the last train to Chicago arrived for the day, and seconds before finding Darrien's tire to be flat yet again. We were truly lucky. We were clearly meant to take that train home. Nobody minded taking the train home either. We got a good 150-something miles in for the weekend and had a blast.
Good trip.
(All photos taken with an iPhone and edited with the VSCO app)
