Biking the Drive!

Crowds were getting sparse
as we headed south, close
to the end of the event.

Bike the Drive is pretty much a weather crapshoot every year. We’re about one-for-three: fog, rain, wind -- well, it’s early spring in Chicago and you pays your $45 and you takes your chances. Today it was drizzly, cool and overcast.

But still, it’s beyond cool to ride a bicycle on one of the most iconic roads on the immediate planet, Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive. Once a year, the Active Transportation Alliance, in cooperation with the City of Chicago, closes this major highway to automobiles for a morning and opens it to bicycles only. Thousands of cyclists take advantage: it’s a hoot and a half.

Nothin' but bikes.
How cool is this?

Mary was called away to a niece graduation in Ohio, so it was Steven and me. We left at about 7 a.m. The plan was to have lunch at Eataly, a two-story Italian market/mall on the near-north side, so we parked across the street and rode our bikes to the Bike the Drive start point at Jackson & LSD.

It drizzled on and off most of the morning; just enough to keep the numbers down a bit, but not enough to make the ride a drag. There was a south wind, so I suggested we start off going north, turn around at the north end point at Bryn Mawr Ave., head all the way back south to the Museum of Science and Industry at 57th Street, then head back to downtown. That way we’d have the wind at our backs for the final leg.

What a treat. A four-lane highway populated only by bicycles -- from $5,000 carbon-fiber racers to olde-fashioned penny farthings. Polite “on your lefts” instead of horn honking. Five-year-olds wobbling along on cartoon-themed beginner bikes with the training wheels freshly removed. Grey-haired geezers wobbling along on recumbents.Differently abled cyclists scooting along on hand-powered cycles. It really is a community that lasts for just a few hours.

Shortly thereafter, Steven and I were at the day’s first customers at Osteria di Eataly, lunching on squid-ink pasta and agnolotti, and shopping for exotic pastas. A wonderful morning.

I made a video!

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