Expect the Unexpected

If I learned anything from my ride last year, it's that very little goes as planned, even when it seems like it does. Case in point - yesterday's ride out of Chicago to Joliet, Illinois. My flight arrived at Midway airport in Chicago around 2:00 - slightly ahead of schedule (yay). Dan was there waiting for me, as planned. My bike made the tight connection in Denver and showed up the same place I did (yay again). When I opened the box, all the pieces were there AND all the tools to assemble the bike were there too. When I was done putting the bike together, I didn't even have any leftover parts and pieces. Amazing start.

We left the airport a bit before 3, which was plenty of time to get the 40 miles or so down the road to Joliet before dark. Riding through Chicago is a sketchy proposition, and we weren't even anywhere near downtown. The condition of the roads looks a bit like an urban hellscape from some apocalyptic movie. We tried sidewalks when we could, mostly to get out of the traffic, and they were no better. Nonetheless, we managed to get out of town and find a place to have a late lunch/early dinner after which, we had about 20 miles on a nice trail down to Joliet. So far, all Aces. The fun began when we started looking for a hotel in Joliet, a city of nearly 150,000 people and, apparently, no hotel rooms. We never considered this as a possibility. As Dan and I both fruitlessly tried to find a room, dusk was rapidly approaching. We decided to ride in the general direction of where all the standard chain hotels were located. As we continued to ride, it looked more and more like our best option might be a vacant lot behind a 7-11 - with no tents or sleeping bags.

Enter my awesome, beautiful, amazing wife. As a last gasp, I called her up and said the words that probably nobody wants to hear, "We need help!" She figured out where we were by tracking my phone, and then jumped online and located us the last hotel room at a Comfort Inn about 4-5 miles away. Riding those last few miles in the dark is roughly when I discovered my headlight battery was dead, and my phone was dying. Because of my current bag setup, my taillight would be useless, so using Dan's lights, we managed to get there around 9:00.

We discovered this morning from a couple of cyclists we met, that it was race weekend at the nearby drag strip, hence the run on the hotel rooms.

After last night's near colossal failure and this morning's ride, I have concluded that things I thought I knew from last year just aren't going to be the same in 2023.

Looking good - but it's still early

We were actually on a decent road at this point when the GPS directions told us to turn here. 🤔 Perhaps this wasn't the greatest advice.