Chicago Bike Blog

Navigating the suburban wasteland with my son

My son, who is 12, recently asked if he could ride his bike alone to Games Workshop, where he could indulge his passion for playing Warhammer, without the inconvenience of having me wait for him and tap my foot.

The Games Workshop is located in a suburban shopping center, perhaps three miles from our house. There are several major arteries that have to be crossed, as well as an interstate, but there are also plenty of signaled crosswalks, a bridge over the highway, and a number of small neighborhoods streets that I imagined could conveniently be used. So, I thought that with a couple of trial runs with me, he could handle it on his own.

I decided to follow a route along residential streets that we sometimes take to our martial arts class. With a light at Peterson and a push-button light at Devon, this route would take us about half-way there. Then, I was planning to show him the special shortcut I like through suburban Lincolnwood.

Like others, I look back with longing and nostalgia on the days when kids could easily go off on their own with little or no parental supervision, but these romantic visions don't seem to find any reflection in modern day reality that I see before me from the saddle of my bicycle. And, what I thought was going to be a fairly simple undertaking turned out to be much more complex and fraught with difficulties, partly having to do with my own nervousness, partly with my son's inexperience, and hugely with the inconsistent, unpredictable, haphazard traffic patterns, city planning, street signals and bicycle/pedestrian facilities in place on the border between Chicago and its neighboring suburbs of Lincolnwood, Skokie and Niles.

Although I have ridden the first part of the route with my son many times previously, my nervousness kicked into high gear when I realized that I was now prepping him to ride without me, to make his own decisions and rely on his own judgment. It was one thing to have him ride on the pavement behind me, and quite another to imagine him trying it on his own. Suddenly, things that I do through force of habit acquired over 20 years of street-riding experience were not so obvious. After all, he doesn't have that experience to guide him.

The frustration with the urban-planning aspect of the ride began as soon as we got to Devon. A bicyclist riding on the street is too light to activate the green light. The push-button activator for the green light was placed with pedestrians in mind. If I was riding alone, I would simply wait for the gap in traffic, and ride through regardless of the traffic signal (gulp!). But with my son, I insisted we cross with the light. Thus, we had to duck-walk our bikes onto the sidewalk to push the button to get the light to change.

Things got even worse when we turned onto Devon. With two lanes of curb-to-curb each traffic way, I had already planned to ride a few blocks on the sidewalk, thinking we would again use the push-button crosswalk signal at Cicero. Well, I am here to tell you that that is the most poorly designed set of signals in the city, and while the right-turning vehicles get their own special green arrow for the entire duration of the green light, pedestrians have to wait out a full light cycle to deserve their own signal. My nervousness increased as I was having visions of my son getting impatient, and running the light while traveling on his own, with all those right-turning cars just waiting to run him over.

We proceeded along the sidewalk on Devon over the Edens Expressway, and arrived at the very pleasant street called Sauganash just on the other side. A broad, quiet, tree-lined residential street runs on a soft diagonal through the posh Lincolwood suburb. The kind of street bicyclists dream about. If the route consisted of only streets like this, I would have absolutely no qualms about my son riding alone. Alas, after several blocks of this paradise, the street ends abruptly at Central, with no bicycle or pedestrian crossing to make things easier. There is a light half a block down at Pratt, but there is no sidewalk, and not enough shoulder for a young bicyclist to safely reach it. So, we make a run through a gap in traffic for the sidewalk on the other side of Central. But I can't have my son do this when he's riding without me!

Now, we're pretty much home-free. The sidewalk continues down toward Touhy, and curves around the shopping center to deposit my son safely at the Games Workshop. Because we are riding on the sidewalk, I still admonish him to look over his left shoulders for any cars who may be turning right out of the parking lots.

By the time my son is done playing games, and I have scoured the shelves of the local second-hand book store, I have completely revised my riding strategy. Although I have always believed that cyclists should ride with traffic and behave like traffic, I find that my convictions do not hold when the safely of my child is at stake. Sidewalks in this part of town are rarely used by pedestrians, and they might as well be used by budding cyclists. On the way back, we forget all shortcuts and finesse. We ride in straight lines on sidewalks to major intersections with dependable pedestrian signals, we make only right-angle turns, and we arrive home safely, in one piece, and with little stress.

Where the heck is the Weber Spur Bike Trail?!

In the last twelve years, we have walked down this abandoned trail track virtually every week. When we first moved int our house near the corner of Bryn Mawr and Kostner, there was an occasional rail maintenance car that went along the track. For many years, there has been nothing. We, and many of our neighbors use the right of way for walking, jogging, skiing, and as an access route to the adjacent LaBagh Woods Forest Preserve and Chicago River.

I have conducted nature walks with my kids along this track, spying on wildlife large and small, and picking out the native plants from the invasives.

Deer like to hang out in the clearing in the woods visible from the train track.


We have found praying mantises and their coccoons along the tracks.

Goldenrods, milkweed and native asters grow abundantly here, along with attractive but terribly invasive teasels.


A dilapidated rail bridge offers glimpses of the Chicago River.

This quiet and somewhat forgotten corridor is hardly a place of pristine and undisturbed beauty. It's strewn with broken glass, beer cans, discarded car tires and other debris that people frequently leave in places that no one seems to own. But with a little work, this route would make one heck of a bike path.

Imagine our surprise, when one day we came home to the sound of heavy machinery working, accompanied by loud metallic clanking. We went out to the track to see what was going on, and discovered that the track was being ripped out. The workmen said something about rails-to-trails, but were unable to provide any more information. They were simply hired by Union Pacific to rip out the track.

A call to alderman Margaret Laurino's office also produced no immediate insights. The person we spoke with was unaware of any plans for the railway corridor. However, she took down the information, and the next day we received a call from a representative from the Pulaski Industrial Corridor and explained that Union Pacific has lease the land it owns to be converted to a recreational trail.

I sent an email to Randy Neufeld of Active Transportation Alliance asking if he knew what was being planned. He wasn't sure, but forwarded my email to Keith Privett at the City of Chicago. Usually, bike projects create a buzz in the Chicago cycling community and among the neighbors. The proposed Bloomingdale Trail in Bucktown even has its own website, and last year, a short, one mile section of trail along the old Valley Line Rail was inaugurated with great fanfare. So, although what the lady from the Industrial Corridor said sounded really good, we were skeptical.

However, after a couple of days Keith Privett sent an email back, confirming the plans. He stated that a trail is being planned for the Weber Spur, which will run through Lincolnwood from approximately Touhy Avenue south toward Elston. He explained that Ald. Laurino herself is familiar with, and has long supported the trail project, but her office may not have known that the Union Pacific crew would be out there removing track metal already.

This is approximately where the new bike trail would be. It would give southbound suburban and northwest side cyclists access to downtown via the Elston bike lane, and northbound riders from the city access to the Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park trail.

Exciting stuff. Why aren't more people talking about it?

Brrr...

My earlier comments about the weather notwithstanding, I think the powers that be are just messin' with us. On top  of the doom and gloom economic news, the weather we've been experiencing in Chicago this spring seems designed to test the limits of all Chicago cyclists (and rent-paying bike shop owners in particular!).

Still, riding to get groceries this morning, white knuckles, and all, I delighted in the noise my tires made on the wet pavement, and waved with satisfaction to the drivers who gave me the right of way at every stop sign.

Too good not to post

If you've ever wondered who is behind the wonderful improvements for cyclists in Chicago over that past many years, read this (helmet tip to Rob Sadowsky):
Straight Dope Chicago: How come I have to pay $40 for Bike the Drive?

Down!

(Who else? Bill Watterson)

Wish I could say I don't remember when I last fell of my bike. Unfortunately, I remember it vividly. It was May 19, 1991, less than four months before my scheduled September wedding. The place: the Chicago lakefront, just north of Oak Street Beach, long before the surface was smoothed, repaved and beautified with palm trees.
I accepted an idiotic dare to hop a block of concrete from my husband-to-be, and chickened out at the last minute, executing instead a classic face plant. This resulted in a vertical line of swollen black scabs that adorned my forehead, nose, upper lip and chin for several weeks. I was so bummed out, that when I caught a kid staring at me in the checkout line at Jewel, I stuck my tongue out at him.
Anyway, that was sheer stupidity. I've never fallen in the ordinary act of riding my bike down the street. Until this week.
There we were, many years after that fateful dare, riding peacefully down Lawrence Ave., approaching a red light at Western. I gently slowed down, shifting into a lower gear in my accustomed way, when I sensed that something was wrong. Very briefly. For presently, I was airborne, and conscious of landing heavily on my left side.
Luckily, the cars were not moving, stopped at the red light.
What happened? demanded Chris.
I didn't know! It seemed like everything I did was perfectly ordinary, and yet, I knew I had made a mistake an instant before I fell.
As we dragged our bikes toward Cafe Salmarie in Lincoln Square,  I stared down at my handlebars dejectedly. And it slowly dawned on me what went wrong.

(Bracing my fingers on the handlebar, as I shift with my thumb)

My twenty-year-old bike sports Shimano Deore thumbshifters, the kind that are not really made anymore.  As I shift into lower gears, I'm actually fighting several forces working against me: I'm pushing the chain onto the largest cog in the rear, I'm stretching the gear cable to its maximum tautness, and I'm fighting against the spring of the rear derailleur. All with my right thumb. So, to give that thumb more leverage, I take the fingers of my right hand off the rear brake lever, and brace them against the handlebar.

(Braking with my left hand only. Bad idea.)

Because I'm approaching the red light, and am conscious of the need to slow down, my left hand continues to squeeze the front break. The phenomenally effective Mathauser brake pads engage the front rim, the front wheels stays planted, while the rear one bucks up, and sends Justyna sailing onto the asphalt!....
The weirdest thing is, that this is what I habitually do. As we continued riding that day (I wasn't badly hurt), I realized I did the same thing each and every time I approached an intersection.
Chris' immediate solution was to switch the shifters on my bike. But, I pointed out, with these same shifters on my bike for the last twenty years, this was the only time I fell because of the shifting problem. I'm not sure this calls for a whole drivetrain makeover.
I think the lesson learned is this. Well... two lessons. One, don't stop the bike using only the front brake. Two, it's very hard to stay really focused. When we are comfortably used to something, we relax, and let our attention drift. Maybe I should get those shifters changed just to shake things up a bit, and start paying attention.

Crazy

Yesterday, I waited for the light to turn green in the left turn lane of northbound Damen at the three-way intersection with Irving Park and Lincoln. I was on my bike, in front of a long line of cars. As soon as the light turned green and the road was clear, and I pulled out into the middle of the intersection, a driver of an SUV proceeding straight on Damen thought it fit to roll down his window to shout the words "You're crazy!" as he sped past me.

Crazy?

I have over twenty years of experience using my bike for transportation in Chicago. I am familiar with the laws pertaining to the use of bicycles on urban streets, and (with one important exception) obey those laws. I do not use any devices on my bike that distract me from concentrating on what I'm doing. I don't run red lights. I wear a helmet. I use hand signals. In all my street cycling, I try to act cautiously and predictably so as not to endanger or aggrevate others around me. And the vast majority of cyclists I see around me do all those things too.

Crazy is when you bike against traffic. Crazy is when you cycle on a street with your hands off the handlebars. Crazy is when you are in traffic with heaphones on. Or when you use your cellphone while biking.

Or driving.

And, speaking of driving, crazy is when you commit your entire life to a blind dependence on a car, and don't for a moment consider that there might be a better alternative. And even if this alternative doesn't work for you, it's crazy to make that decision for others around you. And crazy is deliberately startling a cyclist trying to concentrate on her maneuvers in the middle of one of the busiest intersections in Chicago.

Dream of independent travel

You probably often walk into your local bike shop for quite prosaic reasons. Maybe you need a tube, or you need the drivetrain cleaned, or help removing the frozen seatpost, or pedal, or bottom bracket. And we help you out with that, because that's what we are here for. But if our job description read "removing stuck parts from bikes", life wouldn't be very exciting for us, and chances are, you'd receive mediocre service.

Rapid Transit Cycleshop is often described as the "urban" or "commuter" shop. I'm not sure that this does justice to what we actually do. What we did set out to do is to enable cyclists in Chicago to use their bicycles in ways that they envisioned, without judgment or intimidation. We wanted to participate in their vision. We have also always felt that transportation was a viable and appropriate use for the bicycle. And it simply happened that in a dense urban area like Wicker Park, there were quite a few people whose vision of the bicycle included transportation.When we opened the shop in 1994, we felt that much of the bike industry at the time, including bike companies and bike shops, were unresponsive to urban cyclists' needs, so we eagerly stepped in to fill the niche.

Perhaps the urban image that has grown up around us also has to do with our name. We deliberately called ourselves Rapid Transit, because we felt that bicycles were at least as sensible and efficient at public transit. For many years, we also used the tagline "We're Chicago's Transportation Alternative". Although this further played on the idea of comparing ourselves to the urban transit system (playing on the abbreviation of Chicago Transit Authority), what it meant to us, is that we offered folks who wanted to cycle real alternatives.

A bike, of course, is an alternative to a car, or train, or bus, or traveling on foot. However, we also felt that there were very few alternatives for the cycling public among the offerings of local bike shops. We wanted to change that. We were not after defining what a cyclist should be. We wanted to open up the possibilities of what he or she could be.

For example in 1994, with one Vision R40 in stock, we became Chicago's first recumbent bicycle dealer. Every year since then we have expanded or fine-tuned our recumbent offerings, and currently stock several brands and configurations of both recumbent bicycles and adult trikes. These are not traditionally considered "urban" bikes, yet a number of our customers use them extensively on the streets of Chicago.

For several years, we tried unsuccessfully to incorporate folding bikes into the mix. There simply were no US manufacturers or distributors who were set up to sell folders through a dealer network. Fortunately, several years ago that changed, and we now offer a selection of models from several different manufacturers, that give cyclists travel options simply not available with a standard bike.

Over the past fifteen years, we have seen many trends in bikes come and go. No one type of bike can fill the needs of a huge and diverse cycling population: not hybrid, not recumbent, not folding, not fixie, not road, not mountain, not Chinese, not even Dutch. Thus, we offer many different bikes, because there are many different kinds of cyclists.

Recently, we had a chance to revisit our old tagline, and really think about what it means. What does it mean to be Chicago's Transportation Alternative? It's not just who we are and what we offer. In fact, that's only a small part of it. What really matters is what you want, and how we can help that come about. Why do you want to bike? What are your dreams?

We noticed that many people coming in to look for a bike, to repair a bike, to get back on a bike, to find a different, more appropriate type of bike, were looking, in some measure, for freedom, autonomy, intependence. Freedom from traffic, from stress, from the city, from the car, from gas, from illness or injury, from convention, from routine. They expressed a desire to escape, in bigger or smaller ways, from something that was limiting or holding them back.

And our job, the way we see it, is to help them realize their dreams of independent travel.

Grow your own. Bikes.

Rapid Transit Cycleshop has teamed up with the Waterford, a Wisconsin-based frame building company to produce RT Bikes, our own brand of durable, stylish performance machines for folks who love cycling without the fuss.

The bikes are the brainchild of Elise, who, in all the spare time she had on her hands during the winter doldrums, has dreamed up the idea of a premium, American-made frame, spec'ed out with spare, high-quality, durable components appropriate for urban riders who value quality and simplicity. After meticulously assembling the components and accessories from vendors, Elise passed the baton to our expert mechanics, who hand-build the wheels and build the bikes up from the frames with care and precision. Finally, the staff photographed the finished bikes, created fliers and spec sheets, and put together a small but informative website.

RT Bikes come in two basic models, a fixie called Icarus, and a single speed urban bike called the Go-Getter. These bikes are truly a home-grown effort conceived and created entirely through the efforts of our dedicated staff, who love bikes and cycling.

Biking for wimps

My morning began with a slap in the face.
In my previous post, I had imprudently revealed myself as eagerly awaiting the arrival of spring, and being tired of the trudge of winter. A reader took advantage of this weak moment, and accused me of having a "delicate constitution".
Humph.
I jumped up from the computer and took a few indignant paces across the living room. I must defend myself. I must protest and set the record straight. After all, not only do I have years of all weather commuting under my belt, I also have a proven track record of turning other people into...
But then the coffee kicked in and my brain started working again.
Where is it written that cycling is something that can only be practiced by people with strong constitutions?
Like it or not, the majority of people in this country still view cycling as a fair-weather activity whose purpose is primarily recreation, rather than transportation. There are many reasons for this, chief among them perhaps the long tradition of cheap, accessible and abundant fossil fuels, resulting in extravagant urban sprawl. Because of deeply ingrained habits and social conditioning, changing people's views to accept the bicycle as a viable form of transportation has been a bit of an uphill battle.
This battle has been fought on several different fronts, through advocacy, street happenings such as Critical Mass, even fashion. It has also been fought day in and day out in forward thinking urban bike shops, such as my own Rapid Transit in Chicago.
For the past fifteen years, we have been engaged in the battle for the hearts and minds of cyclists young and old, would-be and practicing, new and experienced, timid and die-hard, fair-weather and all-weather. And we have come to the conclusion that you can't win that battle with shock and awe. Chances are you will not entice a new cyclist by painting visions of snot icicles, foggy goggles, blue fingertips and admonitions about the importance of layers. You will not smooth the way for him by describing the joys of your 40-mile daily commute. I do not mean to deny that there is a contingent of folks who do find this appealing and fun. But if the point is to create more cyclists, than this is not a winning strategy.
The truth is that few people are warriors, and even fewer are warriors every day.
Most of us (including myself, my earlier indignation notwithstanding) are wimps. Different things is our lives make us wimps: habits, children, distance, weather, aches and pains, fear, sometimes age, sometimes youth, winter colds, whims, moods, barometric pressure, stress. And frankly, while the heroic feats of others may sometimes inspire us, they probably won't motivate us on a daily basis. If the bar is set too high, we won't even make an attempt to reach it.
So I make allowances. Bike a little. Bike when the weather is nice. Bike when you feel like it. I would rather have a million wimps rejoicing in biking one mile, than feeling guilty about not biking at all.

Related posts:
Biking goals
Some of us are wimps. Others - ninja warriors.
Bike if you want to
How to get more people on bikes
50 ways to leave your car
Riding motivation

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Art credit:

Staff Bikes: Elise R. (aka "Miss July")

Not what you thought bike shop employees look like?

We didn't either. Especially since we see Elise every day hunched over the receiving desk, or waving mislabeled warranty parts in front of our noses. But here she is, gracing the July page of the TyK Pinup Calendar* featuring Chicago's women cyclists in their Technicolor brightest.

But I bet you really want to know about Elise's bike.

Elise's bike, the "Rossome", is a veritable scrapbook of Rapid Transit employees, past and present. Elise built it herself from scratch with the help of (mechanic) Kevin H. when she first got the job at the shop. The frame is a Ross Signature, which she got from Working Bikes. Ross is a department store brand, with the exception of their Signature line that ran one color per year from the late 70's through the 80's. Elise's believes her bike, which is maroon, dates from '84.

At first she built it up cheap with some old mountain cranks from our (salesman) Brent O., Surly wheels  and a saddle contributed by (colleague) Deb. But she has since replaced a lot of the parts with top quality ones. Cotton tape, Japanese brass Crane bell, vintage matching maroon fender w/ racing stripes, Brooks B17 women's saddle in honey, vintage 70's Japanese reflector with custom fabricated mounting bracket that (mechanic) Jimbo made for her, Sugino cranks, MKS track pedals & Shaggy top tube protector. The wheels were hand-built for her by (mechanic) Chris S. with Suzy hubs on super tough DT Swiss RR 1.1 rims, that have never needed to be trued in the 3 years she's ridden them everyday.

"I love my bike!!" says Elise.

How could she not?
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* The TyK (Thought you Knew) Pinup Calendar is scheduled for release in time for Valentine's Day, with a limited print run to be sold at the 2009 Bike Winter Art Show. In classic 1950s pinup style, emphasizing the art of the tease and the allure of suggestion, each month features one lady with her bike, rendered into a world of Technicolor fantasy. Accompanying each pinup image are a series of black and white photos of that same woman as the world sees her every day. Proceeds from all sales of the TyK Pinup Calendars go to The Chicago Women's Health Center.