urban bicycle journeys

The hundred miles south/north along the shore of Lake Michigan from Chicago to Milwaukee is a great bike ride, maybe one of the great urban bicycle tours in America. I rode it several years ago, but with the hot North Carolina summer staring me in the face doing it again seemed a wonderful three day option.

Arriving O’Hare Airport at ten in the morning from Raleigh/Durham I schlepped my heavy Bike-Friday-in-a-suitcase through the airport to the adjacent CTA station. The Blue Line “L” from the airport had sixteen stops in forty minutes down to the central Chicago Loop. I had reserved a room at the nearby Cambria Hotel two days hence, and they had agreed to watch my suitcase for two days.

I picked a spot on the filthy busy urban sidewalk and opened the suitcase. It took me fifteen or twenty minutes to put my bicycle together.

I left the green plastic suitcase with a clerk at the hotel’s ninth floor lobby then started cycling northbound on the left lane bike path on Dearborn Street.

Marina City, from 1963-67 is jetsonesque.

I eventually found my way to the lakefront bike path. In the summer downtown Chicago seems an actual beach town.

The beachfront path ends around Evanston and I then cycled northward along city streets. Once leaving the Chicago city limits I cycled for nearly twenty miles along the near-lakefront Sheridan Road through Evanston to Wilmette to Winnetka to Glencoe to Braeside to Highland Park. Many of these wealthy and exclusive close-in suburbs brazenly describe themselves as “villages.”

Along Sheridan Road I passed at least two Frank Lloyd Wright houses, from his Prairie Style 1900-1914.

On the south side of Highland Park IL; the Willets House, from 1901.

Around Highland Park I pulled off the road and perused my phone for somewhere to stay that night. Downtown Highland Park had no actual hotels in-town but there was a single Airbnb. I quickly electronically nabbed a studio apartment above a downtown law office next to a butcher shop. Entry instructions were a little complex.

Downtown Highland Park is lined with cutesy shops for one’s granddaughter but I did locate DeNucci’s, an apparent upscale temple to red sauce Italian. On this Monday night there was a line for a table but I snagged a seat at the bar.

My body perpetually craves red gravy and I cannot resist eating Italian seemingly every night, mostly at home in Chapel Hill or New Orleans but also on the road. Eggplant parmesan was their daily special, served with a steak knife.

Biking the next day continued safe and peaceful although through less upscale neighborhoods. In the late 1940’s there were about six competing passenger railroads across the flat lakefront expanse between Chicago and Milwaukee, each with their own trackage. Today this offers opportunities for bike paths on former rail lines.

In some stretches one takes a bike path on the street.

I like to cycle a bit before breakfast. After ten miles or so, in downtown Waukegan all I could find was Dunkin Donuts. I felt like I had eaten a brick.

The bike path continued northward. After it crosses into Wisconsin it is fully paved.

Down every road there’s always one more city. I’m on the run; the highway is my home.

I heard “I’m a Lonesome Fugitive” on the XM the other day. Merle Haggard was a great songwriter. I stopped and sang somewhere along the bike path just after it crossed from Illinois into Wisconsin.

Kenosha WI is a city that lives in my childhood memories. From 1957 to 1967 my father owned the ultimately unsuccessful Virginia Beach car dealership Marshall Rambler. He had counseled me many times that all Ramblers ever made were made in Kenosha WI. The giant Kenosha Engine plant operated on behalf of several car brands from 1902 to 2010 and was torn down in 2015. There seems to be a lot of empty lots but Kenosha WI in 2025 does not look particularly depressed.

I cycled onward towards similar sized Racine WI, population 78,000. It is thirteen miles to the north mostly on a bike path.

Racine is similarly industrial but also the home of Johnson Wax. I cycled by their headquarters in a blue collar neighborhood, its buildings designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930’s.

On an earlier trip here with Lyman we had toured the interior of the building to the left which contains the Great Workroom. This photo is from the internet.

I cycled onward through Racine.

Racine has a yacht harbor by its downtown and I had lunch at the one waterfront restaurant. Fried lake perch with choice of side. I chose “California vegetables.”

Downtown Racine has struggled but seems to be coming back. I had booked a room at a new downtown hotel called Verdant. It faces the harbor.

Later on, on a downtown block of empty storefronts was a restaurant rated one of Racine’s best. I liked its casual vibe. Just because Olde Madrid is not authentically Spanish does not mean it is still not good food. From my seat at the bar I learned the chef and creator is a Mexican-American who was inspired after being stationed in Spain for the US Navy.

My two “tapas”were not snack size at all, almost too much food. Argentinian steak and brussels sprouts salad with chickpeas. Nice.

Spanish sauvignon blanc was sold by the glass. I asked the bartender to show me the bottle.

Bars are a big deal in Wisconsin. On the walk back to the hotel there was action on the sidewalk. This video is only six seconds long.

I called my friend Tom in Jacksonville FL because I knew his father’s family was from Racine. The next morning I cycled over for breakfast to a spot Tom suggested, a place his Racine cousin Charlie is a big supporter of, The Inclusive Bean, a coffee house that purposefully hires handicapped staff. It sits in a former industrial building several miles from downtown.

Near the Bean, these likely former factory houses have no side windows!

I had a ticket on the Amtrak leaving Milwaukee back for Chicago that same day at 3:00 PM. Milwaukee was a thirty-five mile bike ride north from Racine, some of it on a gravel bike path,

I read somewhere claiming Wisconsin has the best corner bars in America. I did not even find time to enter such a bar on this trip but I did notice these spots in Racine and Milwaukee.

Nearing the downtown Amtrak station I cycled through Milwaukee neighborhoods.

In the south side Milwaukee neighborhood of Bay View I passed the Hungry Sumo and saw it was full of people eating. I could not resist stopping for lunch.

The sushi was delicious and reasonably priced.

A nearby bike trail led across multiple bridges to downtown and their new Amtrak station.

I had arrived at the station one hour early. There was time for a beer at a microbrewery two blocks away.

Most of the Amtrak trains I have ridden in the past thirty years consist of Budd Amfleet coaches built in the 1970’s. This Milwaukee – Chicago Hiawatha train had the new Siemens Venture train sets designed in Europe. The designated spot to hang a bicycle is clunky but usable.

An hour and a half later I was back cycling in The Loop Chicago, the mile or two from Union Station to my hotel.

Dinner in a big city on short notice with no reservations was surprisingly easy. The touristy looking caricature of an Italian restaurant Pittino’s half a block from my hotel was not only delicious and fairly priced, but had quite the scene of pre-theater locals at the bar with a gregarioius but professional bartender. Eggplant parmesan, once again.

My flight home to Raleigh/Durham was scheduled for eight thirty the next morning from O’Hare. I could have taken the mass transit Blue Line to the airport early in the day but wimped out with a painless Uber, driven by a friendly recent arrival from French speaking Africa.