Bikes Store-4U

Short Bike Rides in and around Chicago (Short Bike Rides Series) Open up a can of Chicagoland bike rides. Let ‘em spill out on the table where you make your most crucial decisions. Get a map out. Okay, where’s it gonna be? The first rails-to-trail conversion in the country? Mountain biking in Wisconsin? How about the Chicago Botanical Gardens? Maybe a city ride into the Historic Prairie District? Or down into the wonders of Hyde Park? Even better, how about a trek clear across the state for a ride along the Mississippi River? All it takes is a plan and a push. Sometimes it’s hard to get away. It’s difficult to leave all that’s going on at work and home. That’s why this book is important: it makes getting to the outdoors as easy and enjoyable as possible, getting you out the door with a plan. Each ride includes precise written directions, excellent route maps, level of difficulty, mileage, safety tips, availability of food and facilities, and vivid descriptions of points of interest. No matter what your experience level, you’ll be sure to find the perfect ride in this book!
Customer Review: Not 100% accurate but a nice compact guide to Chicago bike trails
It’s a nice book, BUT sloppily edited. For example, we just went on the ride by the Skokie Lagoons. The books says to take I-94 north to Golf Road; guess what? there’s no Golf Road exit. One has to go to Old Orchard, go west to Harms Road (which is shown on the map as Harris Rd.) and then turn south again and go down to Golf. Once there, the books says to park in the Chick Evans Golf Course parking lot. This necessitaes a 3/4 mile bike ride back to the trail-head, on a supremely busy 4-lane street, with no bike lane and hardly any shoulder.

Given that one passes parking areas along Harms Road, in the Forest Preserve, right by the trailhead, this made NO sense. These parking areas are closer and safer…so why aren’t we directed to park there instead?

I am looking forward to more biking in and around Chicago this fall, but I’ll doublecheck driving directions before I go.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 4:22 pm and is filed under Books. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.