The way points of this bicycle route:
Well, Chicago's roads and major city size make cycling difficult, despite being a bike friendly city. Here's a route up to the Northwest suburbs and back. It allows many variations.
Granville is a bike route, and despite being narrow, people are nice.
Right on Ridge, a wider, less congested way up to Pratt.
Pratt is a great way to get away from Rogers Park's dense roads.
Okay, Kedze is great, but we need to get to Pratt on the other side of the channel. Either way is fine.
The bike path here is really poor quality, though above Touhy it's fine. I'll take McCormick to get on with it.
Of course, I haven't ridden them all, but Pratt from here to Central is the very best inner city street I've seen. Enjoy.
Continue across Cicero and 94 with relative ease.
Left on Central, a nice quiet neighborhood.
Jog around to get on Leigh, Northbound.
Leigh is a smooth way to get into Morton Grove, where the roads get much better overall.
Jog around to Ferris.
Left on Dempster, to get back on Leigh.
This short stretch of Leigh is the finest road I've encountered in Chicagoland. New pavement, wide, double bike lane, off to the side from the vehicle road. Amazing. I could ride back and forth here for sprints or intervals just to bask in the lack of potholes, cracks and lights.
Beckwidth is also wonderful, in either direction. It leads to Church to the right, but we'll see that later. Let's go left.
This light is almost unavoidable. Keep going to Shermer.
You can jog up to Ponto, if necessary.
Right on Shermer.
Lake is an enjoyable road in either direction, despite the traffic. We're going right to Patriot.
Left turn lane here.
You can take West Lake here to Shermer again, or stay on Patriot.
Left turn lane here.
Back onto Shermer.
Nice small town here, and Walters is a great bike road.
Left turn lane, Walters is welcoming.
Right on Saunders. Pavement gets a bit rough here.
Left on Dundee here, despite the traffic. The road, and especially Portwine coming up, are much better than Saunders, which isn't bad either, for a loop or variation.
Portwine is a total payoff here, and not to be missed!
Left on Riverwoods, another great road - too bad it took 20 miles to get to the good roads, though.
Half Day (22) is a variation here, but Everett is another payoff, ahead.
At nearly two hours to get this far, due to all the stopping, Everett looks pretty good. A variation is to go left.
Good quiet places to stop here, if necessary.
Alternatively, Fort Sheridan is nearby.
Generally, I don't like bike paths - playing chicken with hapless pedestrians isn't my idea of being a roadie. Skokie Valley bike path is an exception, and a quick way to get down to Lake-Cook.
This is a major intersection, and the path unfortunately spills you right into it. Do your best to get over to go Southbound on Skokie Blvd, which is a good road.
Sunset-Ridge is the reason we came this way - it's another payoff after all those bumps and stops. You can fly all the way to Lake from here.
Harms is another payoff, and this would be the last big interval.
Golf is the least bone-jarring way to get onto the other side of 94 here.
Skokie is probably best here, getting down to Oakton.
Oakton here is nice, and leads us back to McCormick
High traffic here, but get over to Kedze.
Kedze is a great way to avoid McCormick and get us back to Pratt.
Back to Pratt, and still 3 miles to go.
Back in more than record time. Due to all the extra stopping, I figure this mileage takes an extra hour in Chicago (4 hours, rather than 3).
Welcome to Bikely, take a step by step tour of this path:
Press Start Tour - then use the navigation buttons below to move along the path.
Tagged with: Training, Onroad, Smooth, Difficult, High traffic, Rough, Urban, Scenic
