MeghanIsMe

Between Naked Bike Ride Saturday and Tour de Cure on Sunday, I rode about 80 miles in two days this weekend. I'm pretty convinced that I could do 50 miles a day for an extended period at this point. I was sore after the weekend, but those were two days of non-stop forty mile rides. If I rode 25 or 30 miles, took a leisurely lunch break, and did another 25 or 30, I think I'd feel fine. I could possibly go further than that even. So that makes me feel good.

On the naked ride, I bailed from the ride at the halfway point and headed back to Evanston. I was having a fun time, but not nearly so much as during the first two years. As we stopped for the halfway break, I decided that, with a really early day on Sunday (I was getting up at 5:30), and without the energy and thrill of prior years, it would be good to head home and get to bed. I did get an official photo taken with Danae's wonderful bodypaint; I should be able to find that and share it soon. I would like to do it again next year, but only, I think, if I can find someone(s) to ride with. That would be a blast! But otherwise, I guess I just feel like I've already ridden through downtown Chicago and up through Boystown butt naked three times now; it's nothing new. I think that without the novelty, there's much less appeal; instead, I want to seek new experiences.

Tour de Cure was a good experience, and I want to again thank everyone who donated and helped make it possible. I feel deeply positive about helping fundraise for something that's not only an objectively important and valuable undertaking, but also one that's deeply personally important to me, since my father has been diabetic since he was a boy.

The supported ride was a fun experience. Having food and drinks after each ten mile leg of the route was pretty awesome. It was also not a surprise, but still made me really happy, to see that the rest stops had things like sharps disposal containers and alcohol swabs for people who need to inject. There were also groups of people congratulating arriving riders and thanking them for riding. Lots of feel-good stuff! Apart from that though, it was basically a forty mile bike ride. The route was really pretty and wooded in parts, and wound through large farm fields in others, and it was a lot of fun to see the different sights. But generally speaking, if I want to make a forty mile ride, I can just go up to the Botanic Gardens and back on my own schedule. The additional parts of the organized ride didn't really give me a thrill. I like the idea of doing fundraising work, and I might do that again when I'm in better headspace and can be more organized about it. But doing large organized rides for their own sake seems to be another thing that, unless I have people I'm doing it with, isn't really worth it to me. Anyway, I did the forty miles in about three and a half hours, mostly finding another group of riders around my own speed and traveling along with them. I liked the brief bits of chatting I did with other riders. Maybe if I'm feeling more social I could manage to make some ride-long friends at least at these things.

One of the official Chicago Naked Bike Ride photographers (must be one I didn't pose for since my picture isn't in the collection) is posting the portraits he has from the last even on Facebook. They're censored to be in compliance with institutionalized nudity taboos, but beyond that, men's nipples are blocked out too. I love this kind of highlighting of the arbitrary nature of the sex/gender inequity!

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With that, I think Danae and I are going out for sushi, if I can figure out the public transit system here....

Naked Bike Ride was a ton of fun! It was a less novel experience than it was the last two years; I suppose I'm settling in. But it was a tremendous time regardless, and the experience let me kind of be more aware of what was going on around me. Another change informed by experience was my decision to stay on the right of the group through the whole ride rather than keep moving to where more observers were so that I'll know where to look for myself on videos of the event. I wasn't so excited by it all that I wanted to chase the greatest possible reaction from bystanders; instead, I opted for consistency instead. Some highlights:

Exchanging shouts and high-fiving dozens of people along the route.

Some wonderful tattoos. I was behind someone with the imagery from the Pioneer space probe plaque on his right calf. Later, there was someone with a huge goat head - just a regular-looking goat head with those strange eyes they have - across his whole back.

One rider saw my "This Machine Kills Fascists" sticker during a lull and concernedly asked "If we kill sprawl, how will we arrive at a futuristic cyberpunk dystopia?" I laughed and admitted I hadn't considered that angle. "You have to think these things through," he declared.

The expressions of people who were seeing the ride by random chance. Either stuck in a car at a blocked intersection, or having a nice dinner along the Magnificent Mile, as the swarm of cyclists rolled by. I saw more dropped jaws and eyes popping out of their sockets than I can count.

Comments from onlookers. I heard "There are *so* many naked people here right now," and "I've never seen so many naked people." One of my favorites was a guy yelling, partly at me just as I rolled by, "You guys are the FUCKING! SHIT!" Things like that really help make the night for me.

At one point there was an intoxicated cyclist who, as we were getting back on the bikes after the rest stop, tumbled slowly over onto the ground directly in front of me and just laid there with a big smile on his face. I checked to see if he was ok and a nearby guy said he was his brother and would take care of him. "Ok," I heard the brother say as I pedaled on, "let's get your clothes back on now."

Prior to the start, I posed for the official photographer, holding my sticker-bedecked panniers and angling my helmet to show my genderqueer colors. The sky was drizzling as the hundreds of mostly undressed people congregated around the start area, and someone had built a large fire. I spent a while standing in front of it, though I wasn't as chatty as I would have liked to have been.

There was one rider costumed like Doctor Manhattan. Naked, with blue body paint and a rubber full-head mask. I wouldn't have wanted to ride in it, but it was nifty.

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To get there, I pedaled down from Evanston along the channel path, across Lawrence, and down the Lakefront Path. I took the same route home. Combined with the ride itself, I rode about fifty-two miles.

I would not make the choice to ride home at the same time, in the same conditions, on the same route again. I left the West Loop at 12:30 or so. It was drizzling and foggy. The Lakefront Path was surprisingly quiet and contemplative. The Northshore Channel Path, however, was dark, isolated, and unnerving. Fog, rain, and water on my glasses made my vision quite limited, and if I hadn't been getting to know that path recently, I would not have felt comfortable, or even safe, on it. And that's not even taking into account the worries I had about encountering people in the darkness who I would not want to be alone in the dark at one-thirty in the morning with.

But I made it home safely, got into dry clothes, took a preventative Advil (that was definitely a good idea) and got to bed. My left wrist was quite painful by the end of the night, but I think that's due to a lot of one-handed riding while waving and hi-fiving. My legs felt like I could jump right back on a bike for another fifty miles. Apparently my aerobic conditioning is pretty good!

Fitbit says it was about a 4000 calorie day. I'm hungry!