Day 36, August 30: Chicagoland from top to bottom

Mettawa, IL to Portage, IN http://cyclemeter.com/85ef50859d8f1e5c/Cycle-20150830-0740
Trip distance: 80.0 miles
Total trip distance: 2060.0 miles
Average speed: 12.1 mph
Maximum speed: 20.5 mph
Riding time: 6:35
Weather: I started at 7:40 with a temperature of 65° and a dew point of 64°. It was foggy and some streets and bikeways were damp from yesterday's rain. A couple of hours later light rain fell. I took a snack break and waited it out for about half an hour. The sun burned off the fog by the early afternoon and temperatures reached the low 70s. An afternoon breeze came in from Lake Michigan, and this provided a little tailwind for me in a few spots.
Terrain: uphill 2017 feet, downhill 2286 feet. The route profile below reflects that I started away from Lake Michigan at a higher elevation, was close to the shoreline for about 40 miles, and then moved a little ways inland toward the end. The elevation of Lake Michigan is 577 feet above sea level. The elevations below are naturally a little above that, and they will almost certainly be the lowest elevations of this trip.

Chicagoland is a local name for the Chicago metropolitan area. The term is also the name of CNN mini series and is in the title of Chicagoland Vampires, a series of urban fantasy vampire romance novels by American author Chloe Neill. Below is a map of Chicagoland and below that is a map of my route. I entered the top of the Chicago metro area the day before from Wisconsin and crossed into Lake County, IL which borders Wisconsin. Today, I got to the bottom of Chicagoland, so to speak, when I finished in Portage, IN in Porter County, the one on the extreme right in the map below.

 

My Google Maps phone app chose a complicated bike route to get me to Lake Michigan to the start of the Chicago Lakefront trail. The app uses bike paths whenever possible, and this is usually a good thing, although in one instance it routed me on to some sort of limestone composition trail that caused problems for me (see below). Sometimes I prefer roads to bike trails because the roads may be in better condition.

The Skokie Valley Trail makes creative use of the space used by power lines. The path is a little wet from the previous rain, and it can't dry very quickly because of the damp weather.

Biking on this trail was a mistake. I hit a hidden puddle or two and kicked up a fine grained limestone slurry over much of my bike, the panniers, and my clothes.

I went by Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

As I got closer to Lake Michigan automobile traffic started to jam up. It turned out that the Chicago Triathlon was being held today and this caused some street closures. About 30,000 people participated in the triathlon and there were lots of spectators and volunteers.

Chicago Triathlon participants.

I got onto the Lakefront Trail at its northern end and rode its entire 18-mile length. The trail connects beaches and recreational amenities and serves as a commuting route. On this Sunday there were several thousand cyclists and pedestrians on the trail. It's the biggest group of cyclists I have ever seen, and that's not counting the triathlon cyclists on nearby roads. Most cyclists had their own bikes while some were using Chicago's blue Divvy bikes, which are part of a metropolitan bike rental scheme.

Lakefront Trail riders with tennis players in the background.

Above and to the right of the two cranes, the top few floors of the Aon Center are visible. The third tallest building in Chicago, its
nickname of "Big Stan" comes from the days when it was the Standard Oil Tower.

Creative bike parking near a volleyball facility.

On this section of the trail, the concrete slopes down toward the lake. It was a little unsettling keeping my bike balanced. It would be more challenging if the pavement was wet or had gravel on it.

I am on the lake side of the bridge over the Chicago River. The base of  Trump International Hotel and Tower is visible on the right. It is the second tallest building in Chicago. For pictures of the whole building, see the Wikipedia article.

The Chicago River shown here is the reason for Chicago's location. The river was the key part of the Chicago portage, which allowed movement of goods from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River system. The river originally flowed out to Lake Michigan, but because the filth it poured into the lake caused major health problems, the city reversed the river's flow. In 1900, the City completed a project that caused the river to empty into the newly completed Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

After I finished cycling on the Lakefront Trail, I navigated my way through residential, industrial, and commercial areas in Chicago's far south and east neighborhoods and in Hammond, IN and Gary, IN. I stopped to get a sandwich at a market on South Shore Drive, but although the store was open the kitchen had just closed. Another customer sympathized with my plight and gave me a card for Vera's and she recommended it enthusiastically. I took her advice and had a nice lunch.

I had a Chicago-style Polish sausage sandwich at Vera's in the South Chicago neighborhood.

Mural on a South Chicago apartment building.

I passed through several neighborhoods of widely varying character. South Chicago is struggling but showing signs of progress. East Chicago is a largely Latin neighborhood with tidy, well maintained homes, and Hammond has nice homes too. The part of Gary I saw suffers from disinvestment, although housing renovation here and there shows some commitment to improving the community.

Homes in the Hessville section of Hammond, IN.

Abandoned homes in Gary's Midtown neighborhood.

This picture was taken across the street from the previous photo.

The City of Gary presumably does not have the money to repair the stoplight so they put up a stop sign.

The long closed United Steelworkers Local 909 (the name is barely visible on the brick tower) office in Gary's Aetna neighborhood reflects the loss of well paying jobs.

The next four photos are of a decaying mall along US 20 in Gary's Miller Beach district. The first is a screen capture from the Cyclemeter map in satellite view showing the mall as well as the path I took while taking photos.

Aerial view of decaying mall in Gary from my Cyclemeter map.

Some reuse is evident on the left while the right side of the mall is abandoned.

First a grocery store, I think, then a paintball facility, and then the roof fell in.

What seems to be a former bank is now a private gentleman's club.

As noted in previous posts I am winging it from day to day when it comes to the turn by turn details of route plotting--I rely on Google Maps to do it for me. Mostly it's great, but they do lead me astray every now and then.

Uh-oh. Google Maps led me down this street--I'd better contact them about this one.  My detour was slight and only cost a few minutes of my time as I investigated alternatives.

Today's ride packed an incredible amount of sights and sounds into one day--way more than any other day of the trip. It was also the first riding day that I did not see a single ear of corn going back for about the last three weeks to eastern Montana. Ironically, a key part of the generation of wealth for Chicago came from turning corn into a commodity crop that could be shipped all over the US, as argued in William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West.