Yes, folks, it was a bee-yewtiful Sunday morning in my hometown of Chicago--the day before Labor Day--and I once again got up at Oh-Dark-Thirty to drive downtown, pay 12 bucks for parking, unload my trusty hybrid, all-purpose bike just as the first gleam of dawn was coming up over Lake Michigan and head for the beehive swarm of bicyclists in Grant Park getting registered for Chicago's annual BIKE THE DRIVE extravaganza. As you can see from the pic above (taken at around 7am at the route's first turn-around checkpoint at The Museum of Science of Industry on Chicago's South Side), the sun was brilliant, golden orange-yellow and not a cloud in the sky. Wotta day! Now I bike a lot from the arrival of spring warmth to the descent of the dreaded Chicago winter (the Cat Eye odometer on my handlebar will easily top 8,000 miles before the weather does what Chicago weather always does come late fall/early winter and send legions of worn-down retirees scampering, lemming-like, towards Florida). So why would I pay on the high side of eighty bucks to participate in something I do on my own almost every day?

Because it is SO cool!

See, they shut down the entire length of Chicago's famous and truly beautiful Outer Drive (reference the classic 1971 Aliota, Haynes and Jerimiah hit "Lake Shore Drive", which I listened to in the appropriate state of endorphin-enhanced euphoria/confusion/paranoia many times back in Ze Olt Dayz) and the cops make sure no cars can access The Drive from roughly dawn (which is when I got there) to 10am.

And then they turn the bikers loose. Thousands upon thousands of them. But it doesn't feel oppressively crowded, on account of you've got four and sometimes five lanes of beautiful, gently undulating, curving and curling highway and most (emphasis on "most") of your fellow bike-riders are aware and courteous and know enough to keep to the right a bit if they're going to dawdle. There's everything from little kids with training wheels who will be lucky to make it five blocks to the spandex-clad/pass-you-in-an-effing blur streams of SERIOUS bike gangs going just slightly slower than the speed of sound.

I fall somewhere in the middle.

Did I mention that this was as glorious and gorgeous a September morning as God and/or nature (take your pick, although I believe they're related) ever visited on this fine city. In fact, in all my years here (and I'm fifth generation Chicago), I don't believe I've ever seen a more beautiful morning. I listened to mostly classical on the first leg heading south (Boccherini's String Quartet in E Major, some Swan Lake, Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and Mascagni's somewhat under-appreciated Cavalleria Rusticana and the Franz Liszt's "Les Preludes," which, if you were paying attention when you were young and eating your Cheerios in front of a TV screen the size and shape of a large goldfish bowl, was the background music for much of the wonderful and evocative old Flash Gordon serials starring ex-swimmer Buster Crabbe as "Flash" and Charles Middleton as Ming the Merciless.

But I digress. It was a morning that, to borrow from Van Morrison, "stoned me to my soul." And with no drugs, neither! I mean, besides what I take for my aches and my feet and that thyroid thing and all the vitamins Carol keeps feeding me and...

Did I mention that, besides the gorgeous morning sunlight, it was in the low, comfortable seventies without too much wind (although I did feel it on that last leg...but fortunately from my back), and may I say that I have never seen my beloved City of Chicago look more beautiful. The light was clean and crisp and the entire Chicago skyline looked like my mom's silver service after she'd gone over every piece with some expensive, add-your-own-elbow-grease silver polish that was, in retrospect, probably poisonous and a carcinogen to boot. But who knew?

I switched to jazz music for the long ride to the North end of Lake Shore Drive at Sheridan & Hollywood--lots of big band swing from the thirties plus Fats Waller, Duke Ellington's "Take The 'A' Train" and of course Marian McPartland, who is one of our favorites. Django Reinhardt, too. Along the way, I couldn't help noticing how the near South Side looks even bigger and brighter and more impressive than the near North Side these days. And look at all the folks enjoying the parks and the lakefront and all the sailboats in the harbor and out on the lake and...

Like I said, this is a really SPECIAL city. And I've been to/lived in a lot of them, so I know what I'm talking about.

I was okay physically and mentally at the North End turnaround, but I figured it was time to switch to some rock music for that last leg. I like everything from Van Morrison to Patty Smith's "Goodbye to You" to Blondie's "Dreaming" (check out the drummer on that cut!) to The Beatles, The Stones, The Zombies, Manfred Mann--you know, all the music I nodded off to or passed out during back in my "I'll skip the salad" days.

And then, really making time on the downhills what with the wind at my back, what should pop through my ear buds but--you guessed it!--Aliota, Haynes and Jerimiah doing "Lake Shore Drive."

You couldn't script it any better!

I felt pretty damn good when I rolled back into Grant Park a little after 9am. The Cat Eye said I'd done EXACTLY 30.1 miles (how about THAT!) in 2 hours and 17 minutes (including the slowdowns through the south- and north-end checkpoints, and I figure I averaged something like 13 mph. Which is pretty good for an old goat like me. They even gave me a cheesy medal for "Doing The Thirty." See pix below (not that I'm bragging or anything...)