Yesterday Kurt and I rode to the McHenry County Prairie Trail bike path and rode from Crystal Lake to the north side of McHenry and back. Total distance was over 31 miles for the afternoon -- my best ride yet in terms of distance. The terrain was more challenging than the distance itself...
The Prairie Trail goes through Sterne's Woods on the north side of Crystal Lake and you would not believe how hilly that area is. There are some signs suggesting that bikers get off their bikes because it is too steep -- but we carefully rode down those hills. Going up was another story. I am experiencing an issue on my Trek where the smallest chain-ring won't engage (it just goes clickyity-click) so I can't get into the granny gears. That made it a LOT harder to try and pedal up the hills and there were two of them that I made it half way up and then every push on the pedal was lifting the front wheel off the ground! I finally got off and walked up the rest of that hill as it was nearly straight up! Luckily, the hills were not too long -- just too steep! I think we could have easily added another 10 miles to our ride if we didn't have the extreme hills.
Most of the people you see on the trail are moving faster than us on this day as we're just trying to pace ourselves and not get worn out 15 miles away from home! There was one guy that we passed three separate times. The first time we were stopped getting a drink of water and he rode past but did not stop. Instead, he shouted "Is this the way to Ringwood?" I said yeah.... and 50 feet later he shouted the same question to Kurt who was just ahead of me getting a drink from his water bottle. I guess he didn't believe me. A couple of miles later we catch up to this guy who isn't going all that fast. I asked him where he started his ride from.... Ringwood, of course. Then he went on to tell us of the times in the early 80s when he used to ride on this same trail... with his car. That is until he got busted. It gets even more bizarre. He also started telling us about the time when he was in high school and took two girls (at the same time?) and parked his car on the trail to have sex with these girls in the back of his car but the cops showed up. It was an unlikely story to say the least. What made it funny was the way he emphasized that it was GIRLS he was busted with, so we wouldn't make the mistake of thinking he was taking his boyfriends there. After this bit of the story I laughed and then we decided to start pedaling harder and leave this guy and his stories in the dust.
We crossed over IL-120 and wound our way around on the trail and came to Peterson Park in McHenry. Peterson Park is on the shore of McCullom Lake. Its complete with a nice beach and some picnic areas. It also had a Gatorade vending machine that Kurt was interested in, however it did not accept $20 bills, only $1 and that's all we had between us. Kurt would later get a bottle of Gatorade at a gas station on the way back into town and downed the whole thing in about 5 seconds. Quite an accomplishment indeed! As we were riding back south towards IL-120 we once again saw the guy on his bike who for a 3rd time asked us -- "Is this the way to Ringwood?" Lets hope he found his way home eventually. :)
Since I'm writing this the day after the ride, I can report that the only ill effects from yesterday's ride is a little bit of stiffness in my neck -- but otherwise i'm A-OK. Maybe it was thanks in part to the steak dinner and ice cream from Coldstone that we enjoyed last night!
Total distance: 31.03 miles, ride time: 2hr 58 min, avg speed: 10.46
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