Bicycle Adventures

Yay for summer and bicycling around the 'hood, to work, to the store, and everywhere in between. People outside the city don't understand this: biking in Chicago is not only fun, envigorating, and healthy; it is essential! That being said, since I lost my free CTA pass (I'm no longer a student) and started biking full time, I've had many adventures on the streets of Chicago. Here are just a few of them.

1. About a week ago in the morning, I was riding my bike, "Gramps" (a red banger with three, count 'em THREE, baskets--actually, don't count them in the picture above because that one was taken last summer before I got my back baskets). I was on my way to Target to buy my boyfriend-or-friend-who-cuddles-me, Geoff, some new sheets and pillows because one thing he does know is that he wants to sleep next to me, and one thing I know is that I enjoy clean sheets and fluffy pillows and I also enjoy sleeping next to him.

So I was riding across Logan Boulevard on my bike with sufficient baskets to accommodate a trip

to Target. I approached the intersection of Milwaukee and Logan, and I thought that the cars to my right had a stoplight. Unfortunately, I was wrong, and therefore pedaled across a few moving lanes of traffic, cutting off some autos in the meantime.

"Oopseys!" I thought, and kept on along down the road. Not the first time I'd made that mistake. But then, from behind me, BLIP BLIP!

"What?" I wondered. "No blanking way." It was a COP! And no, friends, not a Minooka cop with nothing better to do on a Tuesday than pull over a bicyclist, but a Chicago cop who could be arresting ill-intentioned gang bangers or investigating corporate fraud-doers.

He pulled me over, on my bike, to ask me: "Do you know that when you're on a bicycle, you are required by law to obey the same traffic signals as a motor vehicle?" I stood facing him, my hands gripping tight to my black plastic handlebars, glad I'd worn sunglasses so he couldn't see my horrified, teary eyes. My wrists shook.

He squinted at me though beady, sweaty eyes and asked, "Do you know how many bikers get HIT in this city each year?" I allowed my jaw to drop slightly and contemplated whether it would be in my best interest to start bawling or if I should attempt to defend myself.

After he stepped out of his flashing squad car, he informed me that, "Now, I'm not here to harass you; I just don't want the next time I see you to be you splatted all over the pavement." His voice was gruff with a minor paternal tinge. I wondered if he was going to ticket me. I don't have a car, no insurance, and for all he knew, I didn't carry my license on me ...

"Be careful and obey the traffic signals," he coughed out abruptly. I continued to shake, and kept my tears at the ready.

The man looked around at the square, then, at the apartments and tree-filled boulevard, and the people driving cautiously past his squad car. He sighed, sweaty forehead glistening in the sun below a close-cropped balding head of hair. He scanned the cloudy horizon, above the three-flats once more as though he were tired and disappointed with the world.

Then, he returned to his car. He graciously sped quickly down the road so if I decided to disobey another traffic signal, he wouldn't see it.

I have a great friend Melissa who was ticketed for a "BUI." What is a BUI, you ask? Biking Under the Influence. What is this world? I breathed a sigh of relief as the squad car disappeared under the viaduct, and promised myself to obey traffic signals from now on.

That promise lasted about two minutes, because one of the main reasons you ride a bike instead of a car in the city is so that you can run through red lights (when nobody's coming, of course) and laugh in drivers' faces as you speed past them, stuck in traffic unlike you, queen of the road.

2. That same day at around noon, I biked with my friend Teddie to Boulevard Bikes, a local shop right on the Square where the mechanics are a little grumpy and not the most helpful, who get your job done with an offbeat sense of humor if you are a girl, and with a bit of disgruntled annoyance if you're a boy. Geoff had ridden his bike home from my house a few nights before when his gear thingey (I'm not skilled at terminology) jumped up into his spokes and twisted right into a knot. He was depressed about not even having had his 30-day checkup before his nearly brand-new bike broke, and he was depressed about not being able to ride his bike to work. If you are a regular biker in Chicago, you understand the addiction bicycling becomes once your body is used to the adrenaline and the sun on your arms and the wind in your face from your daily rides. I wanted to help him get his bike fixed, and Teddie was the man who knew how to do it.

The rounish, cuddly-looking bike mechanic who'd helped me get a new tire and tube for Gramps before was there to help. $30 was the damage, I paid it, and we left with smiles on our faces.

3. Before returning to Teddie's to fix my boyfriend's bike, Teddie had some errands to run, so we rode across half the city. It was fun except that I was dehydrated and exhausted and had forgotten my water bottle at work the day before (dumb!). I was at a stoplight, following Teddie, and as the light turned green I was in the middle of squeezing between a large black SUV who had NO TURN SIGNAL ON and a thigh-high overpass wall when Mr. SUV decided he wanted to exit onto the highway (a right turn) and smash my bike between his car and the wall.

THANK GAWD FOR BIKE BASKETS! Because:

I came out unscathed, save a minor headache from the squeal my basket made scraping across his door and the cement wall. My baskets are so wide that he didn't have room to run over my foot or smoosh my handlebars or anything! Yay.

And this is a message to Mister-SUV-Driver-who-doesn't-use-a-turn-signal:

I hope that your right side passenger door is scratched beyond repair. Asshole.

At that point in the day, I felt that I had had enough bicycling adventures for about a YEAR. Please be nice to bikers. We are trying to save the planet, for goshsakes.

4. Then, tragically, Gramps took a poop. The pedals are loose, I can't kick any speed into him, and he's really needing a break. So, I took my graduation-from-college money and ... drumroll ... I bought a brand spanking new gorgeously green 2008 Raleigh One-Way one speed bicycle, complete with a leather Brooks saddle (which yes, you oil just like a horse saddle!) and front and back fenders. I'm in love. Her name is Jag, because to me she is the Jaguar of bicycles and I am totally infatuated with this inanimate object. View:

Apparently, when you ride a hott little speedy bike, your attractiveness-to-random-older-men-on-the-street quotient goes way up. I can't count the number of whistles or horn honks that have come my way over the last week of riding my cute new bike. Geoff thinks it's because this new bike puts me in a "primate, mountable position"--far different from my upright, innocent posture I have when I'm on Gramps.

Comments yelled at me from walkers-on-the-street or men (and sometimes, rarely, women)-in-their-cars:

1. Hooot (a toothy whistle)

2. "Bitch! Get on the sidewalk!" (When this happens, I laugh and wave, usually, unless they're running me off the road, because it's actually illegal for bikers to ride on a sidewalk, thankyouverymuch)

4. "Ride it!"

5. "Girl you are so beautiful!"

6. "Get off the road!"

7. HONK!

8. "Daaamn!"

9. "Can I have a ride?"

10. "I see you girl; look at you go!"

11. "Top of the day to you!"

12. "Nice bike. I like your hair."

13. "SMOOOCH." (I have come to learn a new language. I've learned that there are more variations to kiss-noises than there are stars or insect species or hairs within a square inch of my cat, Oliver's, body. The English alphabet is ill-equipped to tackle the numerous and varied phonetics of kisses I have heard atop my bicycle.)

14. (Out a passenger side window) "Whoa, that bike is sick."

Just yesterday, I stopped at a bike shop on Lincoln Avenue to fill my tires, and the older forty-something Latino man who helped me, just before I left, exclaimed, "Your eyes, they are mesmerising!" I think that one takes the cake.