I fly to San Francisco in the morning to meet Sadie and start riding down the coast to San Diego, but I started riding with my gear tonight. It’s really easy to get to O’Hare airport using public transportation in Chicago, but from my house it just takes a long time, at least two hours. But if I leave from my friend Charlie’s place in Wicker Park, it’s only a 35 minute ride on the blue line. So his place has become my go to launch pad for early morning flights.

It’s easier to bike panniers across town than to carry them, so I put the rack back on my mountain bike. I normally only use it for winter riding, and I keep the rack off to make it as light as possible. My touring bike is of course being shipped to the West Coast, from REI to REI. So, I strapped everything to the mountain bike, and headed out at about 10:30pm. Luckily, it’s no problem to leave my bike at Charlie’s for the three weeks I’m gone. It just blends in with the six or so other bikes he has laying about his apartment, not counting his roommate’s three or four. As long as he doesn’t start scavenging it for parts, that is!

I was about a mile from my house when I saw Bonnie, the trapeze school office manager, waiting at a bus stop. What a great start to my trip! I pulled over to talk to her for a few minutes. I love running in to people I know in random places about town. It makes me feel so local. Also, I needed to let her know a few things about the office from that afternoon. One less email to worry about!

It’s great to ride through Chicago at night, because the streets are pretty empty, but really well lit. Except for a few areas dense with bars, like the last mile or so before Charlie’s. Though I saw a surprising number of women in fully sequined dresses, none of them stepped out into the bike lane without looking, and no drunk bros waving their arms around incoherently accidentally knocked me on the helmet. (It’s happened before.) I’m getting used to cars stopping in the middle of the road, instead of pulling all the way over to the right.

However, note to drivers: if you’re going to rush around a cyclist and stop suddenly in front of them, i.e. cut me off, pull over all the way to the right so I can pass you on the left, like traffic normally works. Don’t leave space for me to go around you on the right! Why would I want to pass you on the right? So you can cut me off again?

I made it through Bucktown on a Saturday night, so I think Highway 1 should be a piece of cake. But, I will miss flat Chicago. I stayed in the same gear I normally ride in, even after I loaded about 50 pounds on my bike. I’m only saying that because I weighed in at 60 on the last trip. But it sure doesn’t feel like that much! I also think my rear tire may have been flat. It was sure squirrelly. But it has been a year since I loaded this much stuff on the bike and rode anywhere. It might have been me.

The 9th annual World Naked Bike ride also happened to be going on this evening. I saw one guy in a vest and nothing else turn off Damen at Clybourn. I figured it was over. But as I got close to his house, Charlie rode up behind me. He was headed for the Jewel to get snacks, but saw online that the naked ride was supposed to pass by 2 blocks up any minute. Suddenly, we heard a lot of yelling and honking. There they were. Some totally naked, others in various stages of undress or costume. Riding your bike naked looks very uncomfortable to me, but everyone looked like they were having a great time. Seeing us on bikes, many of the riders beckoned to us to join in. We just waved back. If I wasn’t riding fully loaded, I would have at least followed the parade for a bit. We even saw a few friends in their underwear.

Earlier, a speedy hipster cyclist had buzzed past me, commenting, “Serious panniers.” I don’t think he meant it positively. But I yelled back, “I’m riding to California tomorrow,” stretching the truth a tiny bit. He turned around to come back and ask me about it. A guy weaving on a wierd little motorbike asked me “What’s up?” when I gave him a bit of a stink eye. I don’t like people on the road acting inconsistently, especially when it’s hard to navigate with all that stuff on my bike. “Living the dream?” he asked, trying a little too hard and too weirdly to be friendly. “Well, I am riding to California tomorrow,” I replied. He didn’t have a pithy response to that. In a city full of cyclists, naked ones even, a loaded bike still turns heads.

It felt good to be self-contained on the bike again, and not nearly as traumatic to ride away with all that weight as when I started cross-country last spring. I have been riding a good ten to twenty miles nearly every day for a year since I’ve been in Chicago, so I feel like I’m in pretty good riding shape. At least, as long as the terrain is flat. It will be very interesting to see what an actual hill feels like!

Santa Claus on a Harley trike leaving the Walmart near my mom’s house. If I were a big old man with a bushy snow white beard, would I wear a red thermal under my overalls when I went out for a ride on my hog?

A huge semi truck stuck under a bridge on Ashland, near Cortland, with about half of its roof peeled back like a sardine can, just like in the cartoons. Insulation was hanging out everywhere, and I think the cut was about six inches deep. The truck looked so big and the bridge so short compared to it, I’m surprised he even tried. I wish I knew how they got it unstuck. If I hadn’t been on my way to work, I would’ve liked to stick around and watch.

A huge man at the doctor’s office in Kenosha wearing a black concert T-shirt, which, upon closer inspection, said, “One night only! Coming to your town! Santa Claus!” When he turned around, I saw that, on the back of the black bowling shirt he wore over the Santa tee, was an airbrushed picture of Al Pacino from Scarface, lording over two piles of cocaine. Being airbrushed, the mounds of blow could have passed for clouds, but they were at the bottom of the picture. And two friends I mentioned this to later, who have both actually seen this movie, confirmed that the character is a coke dealer. And since this man made quite a large canvas, the piles were each about the size of a slice of bread. Seemed excessive to me.

Willie Nelson in concert! My friend Bob, whom I have known since the first grade, is a harmonica player, and has made the acquaintance of the harmonica player in Willie’s band. That’s Bob’s story to tell, but suffice it to say, Mickey offered Bob comp tickets to their performance in Waukegan at the gorgeously renovated Genessee Theater (I’m also sorry I don’t have pictures of that!), and I was lucky enough to be invited along. Willie Nelson is a cultural icon! And relatively current in the news! And who doesn’t love On the Road Again?

So, Willie is pushing 80, we think, but he still looks just like Willie, scraggly grey braids and red bandana rolled up around his forehead, and he still sounds gravelly like Willie. That kind of voice just gets more so as it ages.

Willie would start out most songs on his own, so he sort of sounded like he was talking, maybe telling a story, but then he’d strum a chord, or whatever it is guitar players do, and then the band would jump in and you’d realize he was singing, not chatting. Bob had mentioned the band had been playing together for some forty years, and they don’t rehearse. I wondered if they also don’t play with a set list. Maybe they just knew the music so well, Willie would just start a song and they started playing when they knew what it was, which was quickly.

Whether that was the case or not, they barreled through his songbook! Sometimes it sounded like he hadn’t finished one song before he’d start another. He didn’t even pause as he’d tear off his red bandana and toss it in to the audience, nor when he replaced it from a small pile of pre-rolled and tied bandanas sitting in front of the drummer.

On the way there, I told Bob I was excited to see Willie, as he is a cultural icon, but I felt bad that I couldn’t call to mind too many of his songs. But when he played, I pretty much knew them all. In fact, I couldn’t remember a time when I didn’t know most of them. I’m certain that I never had heard the one with a chorus of, “Whiskey for my men, and beer for my horses!” before, but by the end of it, I felt like I’d known it forever too. (Though the story of that song seemed to be valorizing vigilante justice, which I do find questionable.)

Summer nights and thunderstorms. Spring was awesome! It came early. Everything bloomed early. I’d forgotten how green and beautiful it is, and how wet and fertile spring smells, and how the smell of spring rain makes everything else smell better, too!

So summer’s early as well, and it’s amazing. Especially when it stays warm at night and you can bike around and play in the park, and between the city lights and the longer days, it takes a really long time to get dark, so the sky just gets deeper blue. I did try to get a picture of this:

On our first weekend out, two older women stopped by to see what was going on. Terry, in the green, was disappointed not to be able to try the trapeze, due to her health. She mentioned that she always loved to do out of the ordinary things, like bike across Europe!

She told me how she rode around Europe in the 1950′s for 5 months. She had such a terrific adventure. Of course, her mother was sure she was going to be kidnapped or murdered. But everyone she met was so friendly. Many people invited her to stay in their homes. Most were very excited to meet an actual American.

I told her how my mother thought the exact same thing when I decided to start traveling by bike. Of course I meant to write down our whole conversation right away, but I waited a few weeks, and now I’ve forgotten most of it. What remains is how awesome it was to meet a kindred traveler.

To which I would also like to add: Look mom, she was doing this in the 1950′s! She’s way crazier than me!

The changing of the seasons was one of the things I most looked forward to in staying in Chicago, and it did not disappoint. I loved it! Every day that I rode my bike, especially, the crisp air and the colored leaves filled my heart with joy! The yellow leaves in particular enchanted me, and the way they stand out against the sky that only gets that color blue in fall.

Is there something about the air quality in fall that makes it look blue in that way, or is it only because of the contrast with the yellow leaves? I kept trying to take pictures to capture the colors, but they don’t really do them justice.

Whether it was the thrill of living in a new place, after 15 years in San Diego, or a remembered imprint of the weather where I spent the first 23 years of my life, autumn felt right to me. October was the first month where finally I stopped telling people that I would probably be gone by the end of the month.

I kept busy in September and October working in the office at the Trapeze School New York in Chicago. When I wasn’t there, I was probably doing Acro Yoga. You can still find me every Monday night at class at Urban Lotus.

Practicing “Mermaid” on Mondays

The outdoor trapeze season came to an end at the end of October as the weather became wetter and more unpredictable. We packed up the rigging and stored it away for summer.

Meanwhile, progress on getting the school set up in an indoor space continues to move forward, albeit at a glacial pace. As of this writing, we will be opening soon in the Armory on Broadway, though there is no date set yet.

The most notable thing, however, that happened in October is that my nephew, Travis Jax Melnick, was born! My brother Ben and his wife, Becky, are proud parents of the cutest baby in the world, and I get to be the weird aunt!

TJ and I on Halloween

It’s pretty terrific that I am living this close to this much of my family for the first time in years, just in time for this momentous occasion!