The Spokesrider

The Blackhawk Battlefield Park in Stephenson County, Illinois, is a favorite spot of ours, not only for its historical significance but because of the view. A gravel road leads up a gentle but definite slope to the highest ground for miles around. At the top are the graves of men killed in the battle of Kellogg’s Grove, which took place nearby.

When I ride on the deteriorating asphalt roads near home, I sometimes wonder what’s going to happen as oil and roadbuilding get more expensive. Will more roads revert to gravel? Our own county is already letting some revert to gravel for budgetary reasons. If that happens to a lot of roads I figure it won’t [...]

Ken Steinhoff’s post about Bicycle Gardens Sprouting Up All Over made me think of this scene from a ride on August 31. In this land of corn and soybeans one might get the idea that life is strictly business — agribusiness. Then one sees a bit of whimsy, like this red bike left to grow [...]

This morning I rode from Peru to Dad Joe Grove, then ended the outing in Ohio. Ohio, Illinois, that is. From there we drove to O’Hare airport, and now we’re back home. Back to work tomorrow. Yesterday I hadn’t even known there was a Dad Joe Grove. I found out about it in the motel [...]

The Illinois official bicycle maps are excellent – still the best ones I know of even though some other midwestern states have also come out with good maps in recent years. The green roads are the ones rated the best, the orange ones are good, too, and the red ones should usually be avoided. But [...]

This afternoon I stopped here, just south of Prairie Center, Illinois, because my front tire had gone flat. Earlier I had ridden along the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and now was on my way to Shabbona State Park, to revisit the scene of the “Indian Creek Massacre” of May 21, 1832. Alas, the sun was [...]

Just before my brief, aborted trip earlier this week, I got a Nikon D60 camera. Someone at work had called my attention to the fact that SLR cameras had now come down in price. The D60 was within the range I was authorized to spend, and it’s a small enough camera that it can work [...]