"trail"

A few posts back I put up a photograph of what the locals in Tardree consider to be a good trail. Downhill on a 30% gradient, barely wide enough between the trees to fit your handlebars, and since that's not enough of a challenge, they added dropoffs and jumps to make it more interesting.

After work today I used the Chicago Bike Trails website to find a trail and keep up my training. I know the cliche says they do everything bigger and better over here, so I was hoping there'd be something within my skill level.

When I got to the start of the trail I remembered some of the other cliches about the US of A.

There's the story about an American who visited Belfast, couldn't find the Highway, so he had to drive down some back street called the M2;

And there's the Texan who took three days to drive across his ranch in his car. (I had a car like that once).

This bike trail was wider and better surfaced than most of the main roads round where I live. It was also unbelievably flat. Where I'm staying is on the Great Lakes Plain, so the whole area is flatter than a flat-footed flat-cap wearing flat bloke with a flat tyre in a block of flats. It's flat. No hills.

It was a pleasant ride though. lots of trees and squirrels and deer, sunshine filtered through the leaves and not a soul out but me.

where to now?

One of the reasons I wanted to go to a bike shop was to get advice on where best to ride. I knew the hotel was in the middle of a forest, but I've no idea about laws regarding haring off between the trees - and coming from Ireland, I'm also pretty ignorant about wildlife. We don't even have moles, voles, weasels or toads in Ireland, never mind snakes, bears or brown recluse spiders.

Again my colleagues helped me out. Tim directed me to http://www.chicagobiketrails.net/trails.htm which has a trail going right past the hotel door!
He also reassured me that I am unlikely to be mauled, poisoned or eaten alive by the local beasties. That's a relief.

Howdy folks!

I’m in the USA now, staying in a hotel. A picture says a thousand words, so this picture is my explanation of why I don't like hotels. I had to come here for work for two weeks. You’ll be thinking I’m a real jetsetter with all these journeys abroad, but honestly I’m not, and I was worried it’d really upset my training schedule.

Work offered to hire a bike for me if it didn’t cost "too much", so I phoned GlenBrook cycles and got prices.

1 day - $40,

one week - $150,

two weeks - $300.

Apparently, because the car rental costs less than half that amount, $300 falls into the “too much” category.

The dude in the shop (I’m going all American after only a week here) said I’d be far wiser to buy a bike for $300 and dump it when I’m done, so I came planning to do something like that – maybe find a second hand one or something.

People here are really nice; especially when you consider that they’re training us up so that we can take their jobs from them.
When I got here, Sheri, with whom I’m working, phoned her husband and said “Is yower baiyke ay maowntayne baiyke?!” Apparently his response implied that he believed his cycle would meet my requirements and she brought it into work the next day.

It’s a mountain bike only in the very loosest sense of the word, probably cost about $70 when it was new, but it’s not costing me anything, and it’s well set up and it’s been well maintained (read “never used”)I should have taken a picture of it, but I didn't, so here's a photo of the bikes that are dotted round the company for people to use when travelling between buildings.