Just Right, Sort Of

I’ve turned into Goldilocks the second I get on a bicycle.  I don’t want the weather to be too hot or too cold or too windy or wet.  Then why in God’s name do I live in Cook County, Illinois?  This is a place where the weather comes with 24/7 attitude.

 

Back in March, I took my venerable Schwinn Varsity to have some work done—new brakes and ball bearings for the fork, a new spoke or two for the wheels.  I fully intended to hit the bike trails sometime in April, only it snowed in April, late April.  May for sure, I said waiting for the snow to melt.  But May came straight out of the Bible.

 

It did last year, too, with a record-setting 8.21” of rain.  Well, guess what?  Last month we got 8.25” and a record-tying 23 days out of 31 with precipitation, or perhaps you call it rain.  If I didn’t get on my bike yesterday, it was reaching the point where I’d be better off selling it.  So, off to the 606 I went, fog be damned.

 

That’s right, the closer you got to Lake Michigan yesterday afternoon, the greater the chance for fog, as evidenced by the Rockies-Cubs’ game at Wrigley Field.  Me, I lucked out to the extent I avoided the soup, but that breeze off the lake, not so much.  The closer I got to the eastern end of the trail, the colder I felt.  Never did it feel so good to have the wind at my back as when I turned around.

 

I managed just over 45 miles and hardly ever thought about the three people shot—one fatally—on the trail early one morning last week.  What a waste.