Sunday, May 30, 2010

Day Seven, TWWS


Sunday 30 May 2010. Hadn’t planned to post on Saturday and Sunday as I don’t usually swim on the weekend, but was in Chicago on Saturday to celebrate my mother’s birthday, and toward the end of the festivities, my sister Lisa announced that the 2010 Bike the Drive was happening in the morning and did I want to join her? It meant changing my train reservation, but how could I refuse? And how could I resist writing something about it?

“Bike the Drive,” which is a fundraiser for an organization called Active Transport Alliance, runs along Lake Michigan on a 15 mile stretch of Lake Shore Drive, between Bryn Mawr Avenue and 57th Street. The Drive is closed to motor vehicles for this event and filled with bikes—how cool is that?

My sister and I loaded two bikes, helmets, and water bottles in her car and we headed downtown at about 6:30 AM. Would like to have been there for the beginning of the event, which started at 5:30, but I was her guest, and she was the driver. She had a pass to park close to the event but unfortunately couldn’t use it because the event blocked the way to the parking garage. So we spent a while looking for a place to put the car. I braced for the disappointment of having to turn around and go home, but eventually we found a spot.

Even with a good crowd attending, registration was quick, and soon we were heading south on Lake Shore Drive. The temperature was, well, just about perfect, in the 70’s and with no wind to speak of. The sun shone, though the colors of the sky and the lake were subdued by a bit of haze. The skyscrapers and the Field Museum were so stately and beautifully composed against the lake, but I must say that the volume of bicyclists was a bit distracting. It felt almost exactly like being on the expressway full of cars; one false move and there would be a pile-up. My sister and I talked some, though it was hard to relax with people passing and shifting positions. The subject of death came up, somehow—our sister who died a year and a half ago; Lisa’s best friend, who happened to have been adopted. We talked about how hard it was to know how to make the experience of someone who is very ill easier rather than more difficult.

Riding along the lakefront reminded me of an old photograph of my father by the lakefront as a young man that Lisa said she remembered when I described it to her. In the photo, he is lying on his back on a blanket. He is wearing sunglasses and his face looks sunburned. You might think he’s lying on a sandy beach, but a line on the right side of the photo shows that the surface is concrete; it was a place they called “The Rocks.” I remember gazing at that photo on my parents’ refrigerator once when my husband and I were visiting, shortly after we had a long-expected expected adoption fall through. I was weighed down with grief, and I could tell my father desperately wanted but had no to how to ease my pain. All he could think to do was take the photo off of the fridge and give it to me. It was like giving me his heart, and I still treasure that picture…

We turned around at the Museum of Science and Industry and headed back. I noticed how very smooth the road was, except for the occasional (sometimes fairly deep!) pothole. Then I noticed footprints preserved in one of the slabs. Lisa and I were psyched for future bike trips, in Wisconsin and elsewhere in Illinois, when our schedules let us.

It wasn’t swimming (though we could see water), and there definitely was no solitude or open space about it, but biking the Drive with my “twin” sister and the throng of cyclists supporting “active transportation” was quite satisfying and enjoyable.

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