Upside of winter

During the past week, I have once again been in Illinois for some family business.

Oddly enough, I brought my road bike with me because we are not looking at this

normal January landscape,
but this one instead.  I know the entire North of the country

has been warm, snowless and riding around on 25 mm slicks is the new normal.
It will feel normal until some arctic clipper comes over the warm water of Lake Michigan
in a few weeks and leaves us buried under 3 feet of snow in an overnight storm.
But riding around has been great on a road bike in January and will be a fond memory
in the future.   I mentioned in an earlier post how bare the landscape is of cyclists here, but I finally
met one.  He caught up with me in a park and we talked for quite some time.
 I didn't have my camera with me that day or you would be seeing some first hand
"action" photos of Jerry's lovely titanium Salsa Fargo which I found very impressive.
He confirmed my observation that cyclists were scarce to non-existent in this town and he was eager to talk to somebody with a similar brand of insanity.
The following morning I found evidence of a dent in our theory.

First there was this lovely mixte from Belgium,

all geared up and obviously ready for serious city use.

with it's Nexus 3 spd and light system.
But then, in the coffee shop I found this

on the front page of the local paper.
A local advocacy group has made it's way into the city council and
is making a successful move to expand and enhance the the bike trail system in town.
Proof that Jerry and I were a bit too pessimistic in our judgement of the old hometown.