A very late night ride

Directly following Thornhill Fest Day 7, Jody, Julie, and I threw 3 bikes on the back of Julie's car and rushed off to Chicago for the annual L.A.T.E. ride. The LATE ride is a 25 mile bike trip that starts off by Buckingham Fountain and travels west to Foster Ave before making it's way back north long the lakeshore bike path. Yes 25 miles of fun! And at 2am! Woo hoo:) In order to prepare myself for this trip, I made sure to jook up on as much caffeine as humanly possible. So by the time we got downtown, I was wired but it seemed to wear off quickly. Seeking free parking, we parked the car and unloaded the bikes on Lake street over near May St in the West loop. Jody guided us to our meeting spot where we were to join Alex Neukom and Todd Ackland. I almost got killed on the way as there was a car that missed hitting me by a foot. Safely reaching our rondevous point, we gathered the rest of the "registered" crew and headed to our start point to wait some more. Me and the 2 "J's" saved some cash by not registering for the ride. It wasn't a race so we really didn't feel the need to pay $40 for the t-shirt we weren't going to wear and the breakfast we didn't want to eat. We started biking at about 2am heading up roosevelt up to Elston Ave in Greek Town. As I tried to change gears on one of the hills, my chain came off so I had to pull over. Luckily, Todd and Julie called me on the cell and I was able to reunite with my fellow bikers. There were about 10,000 people biking so the streets were swarming with huffy's, treks, and schwinn's. At the 7 mile marker, we stopped at a 24 hour CVS to buy some caffeine and jook up some more. At about mile 10, Todd asked me to lead the group in a sing-a-long of "Bohemium Rhapsody." Others ended up joining us in our sing-a-long and strangely enough as we started to sing..."mama just killed a man, put a gun against his head...." we heard gun fire in the distant or at least what sounded like gunfire. At the 12 mile mark, we stop at the rest stop which looked like another Mecca for bikes. There were thousands and thousands of bikes. Lots were decorated with christmas lights, glow sticks, banners, pinwheels etc....The last leg of the trip was the best because there was at least a 1-2 mile gap of open space to ride at a more appropriate speed. The challenge of the ride was trying to ride your bike amongst 10,000 bikes on the narrow city streets. We all had to share the right lane together. On top of that, you had young kids weaving in and out and slow slow SLOW bikers all around you. It was AMAZING at 4:30am when the sun started to peak up over lake michigan. If I wasn't so tired, I would have stopped my bike to get a better look. I'm saving those "sunrise" moments to share with someone special:) While I reached the museum campus, a guy looked over at me and said "you aren't singing anymore...i really enjoyed the singing." I'm glad that me and my biking crew were able to meet the needs of one of our fellow bikers and provide some entertainment along the way. We finally finished 3 hours later at 5am. At this point, me and the 2 "J's"hobbled back on our bikes and slowly rode off into the sunrise. Despite the back and butt pain I'm feeling right now I would so want to do something like this again!