Bike to Work Week - Chicago Style

UPDATE: 5 things

1. Waited out the rain/lightning/thunder, started around 9am
2. 16.26 miles, house to lakefront to work (no bus.)
3. About 6.25 miles of that was city biking (stop, go, avoid being sideswiped)
4. 1:46:17, an average of 9.18 miles per hour (so says the Garmin)
5. I'm not cut out for biking AT ALL. I kept thinking about Lou's "ass pants" that she bought for her triathlon training and wished I had a pair on. Yikes! I'm taking the train and bus home!

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Guess what pals? In Chicago, the City of Big Shoulders, the Second City, the City by the Lake (oh wait, I think that's Milwaukee), it's Bike to Work Week. Quick! Everybody! Grab a bike!

Here at my job, we participate in the Bike Commuter Challenge along with a load of other like-minded people who halfway care about the environment, and we are the reigning champs for FIVE YEARS IN A ROW in the "Business/NonProfit" Category, 25-99 Employees Division. In years past, the winning groups get 3 monstrous Eli Cheesecakes (a Chicago brand), and you get to go to their factory to pick them out and everything...kinda cool, um, except it's sooooo far out, completely un-bikeable (especially if you're carrying 3 big 20-serving size cheesecakes on the return trip), and nowhere near transit...but I digress.

Last year I think we had 96% participation, with me being one of two people who didn't at least bike once to work. But tomorrow (Thursday)...my bike ride to work will be my crosstraining as I travel from the South Side (69th/Woodlawn) to the fabulous Center for Neighborhood Technology near Damen and North Avenue. (Now this means nothing to some of you.) Trust me when I say it's no small feat. I will wear my Garmin, which actually has a cycling mode, and tell you exactly how far I travel, ok?

I plan to take as much of the lakefront path as I can, and then either hop on Armitage with a semi-friendly bike lane (versus North Avenue and no bike Lane), OR take the bus from the North Avenue and the Lake over to my job, since we have these handy-dandy bike racks on buses now...and since technically, I have to ride a portion of my commute, it doesn't have to be the whole commute.

Now if my bicycle trailer hadn't been stolen from our garage last year, I could even bike the girls over to their summer daycare program, but now everything is complicated.

I hope the weather holds out. Unless there's lightning, I will be out there.