The Medio-Core Guide to Chicago

The "Year of Big Ideas" was a common topic this past Thanksgiving. I again went out to the Canyonlands National Park in Utah with my outdoor enthusiast Denverites. These couple of days out in the desert are really a time for me to hit the reset button. Since the West is where I started thinking like an adult its nice to go back and take stock of the cascade of decisions that bring my life to date. As with looking back one should not forget to look forward.

Cycling
In this spirit of looking forward, a few ideas that were mentioned are finally taking a long bicycle tour. I purchased the proper bicycle for such a trip at the end of last summer. I have Lake Michigan coursing through my veins and would like to pedal along its perimeter completely. Although If I am going to ride RAGBRAI this year too I might have to shorten that trip. Yes. RAGBRAI the week-long bike ride across pie filled Iowa.

Ride an organized criterium. I've been on a training ride so a few more of those and then the real thing. I'd really like to see if I really like it.

Climbing
I think I book-ended my summer with climbing and that was all the climbing I did. I feel I was climbing really well while having a blast too, and to not do something you have fun with is tragic. Expand beyond Wisconsin and So. Ill. to the Red River Gorge in Ky. There is also no good reason to not part of the Chicago Mountaineering Club either. I'm out with them at least once a year its time to reintroduce myself and be a regular.

Mountain Biking
The Midwest Mountain Bike Fest as always shall be attended. I believe it will be in Peoria, Ill this year. Farmdale Reservoir has some of the best trails I've ever ridden and really need to go back there. My single track crew has dispersed this past year and I no longer live near my old trail network. I need to find what the northside trails have to offer.

Watersports
I used to canoe at least once a year when I was in college. I would like to get back to that even if it is just a quick trip up the Kankakee River and back down.

Writing
On this parting note a goal of mine I have had for years is to create the Medio-Core guide to Chicagoland. A simple guide to stepping out of your second story walk-up and into nature. Just the little things that I enjoy most about the forest preserves in Cook and the Collar Counties. Hopefully I update this site a tad more frequently.

My video resume.

I realized that since high school everywhere I've worked has been in the movies.


Most recent The Art Institute of Chicago


They say its Aspen but its main st in Breckenridge.

I could only find the trailer but look for the United Airplane and thats the Museum of Science and industry. Plus great Chicago scenery.

And good ol Adventure Land with Pirates of the Caribbean.

Why we live in the city.

I live in the city of Chicago within 5 miles of the Loop (city center). My younger brother and sister live in the city as did my older sister until recently. We all have friends also living in the city within the same radius. However none of us were raised with the bustle of "L" trains. This is how I define "The City", any neighborhood with elevated trains with 2 and 3 flat houses. We all did a lot of growing up on the South Side and you would be correct in pointing out that is Chicago and is serviced by the Red Line "L", but honestly we were all told it was not a safe place for kids so it was avoided. We hailed from areas defined by tree lined streets and single family houses, suburbia or not. You would be hard pressed to find a single family home within 5 miles of the Loop or a tree lined street for that matter. The home my parents raised us in is relatively close to the south suburban towns they themselves grew up in. Never did they feel the need to call the city home. Go as far back as my maternal grandfather and you see even he grew up in a Chicago neighborhood that did not possess the traditional city hustle. A recent audit of all my friends' locale yielded a city setting weather it be in Washington D.C., Denver, Minneapolis, and they had an upbringing much like my own. So why this generational shift to metropolis? It is said "move to the city to meet other young people" "the city is where the action is so you should be close to it " and so on. Well the action has always been in the city, that never stopped suburbanites before. The grandparents of my generation came from all over to see the big bands play at the Aragon Ballroom. As a teen living in south suburban Hazel Crest I frequently made the trip to the Fireside Bowl on the north side for all ages punk rock shows. So just as the Greatest Generation, my Generation Xers found the city just as accessible. Eventually the allure of city life encompasses us. I think Sesame Street has a lot to do with it. Sesame Street is wildly popular as my generation is getting an early education. On the show we are taken to a city street that is eerily accurate to city life right down to the homeless guy living in the garbage can. My brother has a man living in his alley in real life. The alley dweller tells my brother not to work to hard as he heads off to work. It makes sense that as a child if you see grown-ups out on city stoops that when you are of age one moves to the nearest metropolis to stake claim on a life as an adult. After all isn't that what childhood development is all about, giving you a solid foundation for making future decisions. It works out well though even if it is an unintended consequence. City life guides me to make environmentally sound decisions, such as riding my bike using the farmers market and public transportation. Of course this is strictly me thinking aloud and some economist could probably debunk all of this with a few great pie charts. I digress it would just be nice to know that a few cookie loving, compulsively counting, wishy washy, gigantic monsters helped us all get to a place called 18th, Damen, Western, Fullerton, Fulton, Pearl, or whatever your Sesame St. is these days.

Looking for an Adventure

Over Thanksgiving last month I pulled out a story that had moved to the back of my repertoire. I don't know how that happened as it is one of my favorites. I've told a ton of stories about my livin' out west and how it inspires me in the middle west. Well my first adventure in the Midwest came long before my western days and has more ties to Florida than anywhere else. I remember it being spring however it could have been fall and a few years after the turn of the century. I was at home in the south suburbs of Chicago after my Thursday night class at the local community college. Months earlier I was living in Florida, where it was spring break every night and I was feeling pretty lame about to turn in at 9pm. Out of the blue I received call that took my night on a most memorable tangent. My Hoosier friend Jeremy, a buddy from my Florida days had driven up with another guy to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. I met them at I-65 and I-80 where we hung out at a Denny's for a few hours and decided to "make a night of it". After driving back to the burbs to get my sleeping bag we drove back to the dunes and parked on a 2 lane highway just outside of Gary. Parking near the visitor's center would have been a dead give away as to our presence and getting caught would have meant a night in the clink for sure. We grabbed our gear and flashlights and headed in to the forest. Jeremy was wearing a headlamp and I had never seen one before. Every time his head would move it looked like a spotlight piercing thorough the darkness. As we hiked we spooked deer and other nocturnal creatures. To this day I've never seen a deer leap as high or move as fast. The elevation began to increase, the terrain transformed from dirt to sand. The forest canopy disappeared as we came to the crest of the dune. The wind off of the lake howled as the waves crashed down below at the beach. By now the time was around 3am so we prepared for the cold in the coming hours before sunrise. The three of us retreated into our bags that would slowly slide down the dune at different rates throughout the night. We appeared out of our bags to the majestic site of the sun creeping above a cooling tower for a local power plant to the east and a golden hue on the Inland Steel smoke stack to the west.


OK imagine the scars of industry aren't there....now its majestic. With our bed rolls up we headed back to Route 12 to see if our vehicles had been towed in the night. They were not and just like that our adventure was over. Jeremy and his friend headed south to catch a class at noon at IU in Bloomington. I headed home with no classes on Friday to reflect on what three guys starved for adventure could accomplish.

Turkey in the Desert

The view from the campsite

My friends out west invited me to come along for a bit of a Thanksgiving tradition they've had going for the past 4 years or so. Hiking in the high desert of Utah. This also comes along with some cold weather camping. I forgot how much I enjoy off season camping. The fire is a necessity not just entertainment. Sleep is work and the predawn coffee can never be too hot. I've had cold summer nights out in the open but not since my teenage years have I intentionally crawled into a seeping bag for a night of below freezing temps. It makes you earn the experience. Of course if I hadn't borrowed a 15 degree bag my musings might have been a different story. There's a saying "there is no bad weather, only bad clothing" and I'll put a whole bunch of stock in that. The earned experience was one that I won't soon forget. Mostly due to the people it was shared with, even though the setting was second to none. I have yet to meet an Iowan I didn't like. This trip was no different. 4 top notch boys from Iowa, a gentleman born in Japan but seems to have grown up all over the States, and one of the coolest girls I've met who is super sweet and from Colorful Colorado. The seven of us set out on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to Canyonlands National Park just south of Moab, Utah. We pulled in to the best campsite the Needles District had to offer. After listening to Alice's Restaurant on Thanksgiving day we set out on a mild hike to Confluence Overlook. We got back early enough to start on our own Thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, complete with a 12 pound turkey cooked in a cast iron Dutch Oven pot with all the fixins'.
On Friday 4 of us set out to climb a desert tower called South Sixshooter however time was not on our side so after some bouldering and backseat driving on for the climbers ahead of us we bailed as not to hike out in the cold darkness. The second night in a row I ate better in the great outdoors than I do in my apartment. Our final hike was Saturday and about 15 miles out to Chesler Park. Our last night at camp was spent burning all the wood and exchanging stories of our misadventures, with great hilarity I'll add.

The crew

Cryptobiotic Soil. Don't bust the crust, Don't hurt the dirt.

I believe this is Confluence Overlook

Sunset over the Needles

Magic Hour

Mushroom Tops

Balancing Rocks

Sunrise the morning we hit the road for home.

It was a damn fine vacation with some excellent travel mates. I'm glad I didn't miss it this year. Being Thanksgiving and all I'd like to say thanks for the invite and picking an Illinoian up and dropping off him off at the airport over the busiest travel weekend of the year. Thanks guys.

National Parks

Thomas Cole: A Distant View of Niagara Falls

The latest Ken Burns documentary is airing on PBS this week (all the past episodes are viewable at pbs.org). The 5th episode is on tonight and I have been glued to my TV set all week. I am amazed and impressed that the unifying argument for creating such areas of the country was "we don't want another Niagara Falls". This was code for anti commercialism and private companies preying on tourists. This is made evident in Thomas Cole's Distant View of Niagara Falls from 1830 (on view at the Art Institute of Chicago: American galleries). He created this painting because as early as 1830 the view was already ruined and wanted to view it as the natives did. The Midwest is really a blessing and a curse as far as the parks are concerned. While located at the center of the country we are relatively close to all of them however none are in our backyard. There are really only 2 National Parks in the Midwest, Isle Royal and Mammoth Cave. Mammoth Cave being the closest at 6hrs from Chicago and Isle Royal is closer to Canada in the middle of Lake Superior. I consider myself to be well traveled I have been to every region of the lower 48 and Alaska along with 4 of the 7 continents. In my adult life I have only been to 2 of our national parks Y0smite and Denali. However watching this series I feel as though I know all of these parks I've never been to. Last nights episode explained why. There was a chapter called Going Home that stated that these places are where we are from, we live in cities but we came from the wilderness so visiting the parks is like going home. A philosophy that maybe a stretch for some. I refer to Shawnee National Forest as my happy place and while climbing is great, the forest speaks to me on a higher level. Last nights episode also talked about collecting parks. A subject of conflict for me. There is an urge to see these places and see them while young. My first National Park was Denali in Alaska. Candidly speaking to a Ranger I was enthusiastically welcomed and told to enjoy this place "while your young". A closer look around revealed a sea of retirees. At the age of 23 I had a good head start that came to a screeching halt when I returned to the Midwest. The day I left Denver for Chicago, 4 years ago this month, my friends invited me on a trip to Moab I was literally at a crossroads. Had west been the choice versus east many more National Parks would likely have been in my future. This makes the hidden gems of the Midwest all the more pertinent. As an Illinois resident I can't help but feel the National Park Service failed my state. As we were busy saving so many majestic places from logging and private investors we let the namesake of my state disappear. Why did the prairie not have an advocate from the plow? Well at least we saved the remaining Indiana Dunes from the steel mills. I hope to see more of my National Parks but for right now the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore will have to do.

Jackson Falls

My happy place was featured in Climbing Magazine this month. Check it out.