saturday: c-u across the prarie!

This Saturday, 14 August, the Prairie Cycle Club will host C-U Across the Prairie, the group's annual metric century ride.  That's 100 kilometres... or 65 miles for those of you who prefer freedom fries.

It's a supported ride, which means there'll be a sag-wagon in case you, um, can't find potable water for four hours during the century and then try to get some from a public park near Monticello but then it's probably not potable anyway and you have to do the last twenty miles thinking you've ingested a parasite.  Not that that happened.

Anyway, C-U Across the Prairie also features 35- and 17-mile rides for those who'd like to bike it but don't want to do the full 65.

The ride departs from Mahomet this Saturday morning and breakfast and lunch will be provided.

You can register here.

flatville fixie ride

(A secret ride, no less!  Now that it's over, I'm totally violating the organizer's imperative not to mention it on any forums or blogs, macro or micro!)

This morning, a group of The Bike Project's volunteers and friends rode 20 miles to Flatville from Urbana on fixed gear bikes.  It turns out Flatville's aptly named.  Its wikipedia page even has a flat tone:

Flatville is an unincorporated town in Compromise Township, Champaign County, Illinois, USA.

 ...and that's it.  But it's got a Lutheran Church, which kindly offered us sanctuary... and water.

The ride's organizer made some great corn-and-soybean spoke cards, to commemorate basically all of the scenery on the way:

Thanks Fred for organizing the ride and thanks everybody who rode along!

nyt video report from ragbrai

tbp at ragbrai

Bike Project volunteer Emily's riding in Ragbrai next week and plans to blog about it here. 

Ragbrai's a "tour of Iowa," a state which I'm told is much more topographically interesting than Central Illinois. 

Good luck Emily!

tbp century ride

Saturday, a peloton of The Bike Project's volunteers completed a century: 100 miles in a loop from Champaign west to Clinton Lake, southeast to Monticello, then back to Champaign.  It took us 11 or so hours, albeit only six and a half in the saddle.  We stopped pretty frequently to ward off heat exhaustion; the weather advisory even suggested this was a bad idea:

HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LINCOLN IL
308 PM CDT SAT JUL 17 2010
HIGH TEMPERATURES IN THE LOWER TO MIDDLE 90S WILL COMBINE WITH
HIGH HUMIDITY LEVELS TO PRODUCE AFTERNOON AND EARLY EVENING HEAT INDEX VALUES OF 100 TO 105 DEGREES.

Plus, we had to ford a river near Monticello...

...after Google Maps lied to us about a washed out bridge.  But I'll give Google Maps a chance to redeem itself; here's our route:



We made it back safe and we all learned something.  I, for one, learned that my saddle sucks.

Congratulations Carl, Michael, Vince, Chris, Joel, Emma, Emily, Phil -- and me! -- for making it back alive!

vets' cross-country bike ride arrives in c-u today!

Sunday's News-Gazette included a story about a group of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans (and others) trekking across the country on bikes.  C-U will welcome them today, with a ceremony taking place at Hessel Park beginning around 2pm:

A group of exceptional bicycle riders, many of whom are wounded Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, will be in Champaign-Urbana this week as part of a 3,696-mile tour.
The riders, whose trek is called Sea to Shining Sea, have undertaken the effort to pay tribute to service men and women and challenge perceptions about how Americans see disabled athletes. Some of the 19 cross-country riders have prosthetic limbs, while others with spinal cord injuries or without legs are using specially designed hand-powered bikes. They are from all branches of the service. Among the riders is Paul Bremer, the former diplomat who oversaw Iraq’s provisional government in 2003 and 2004.

They are scheduled to arrive in Champaign around 2 p.m. Tuesday. A welcoming ceremony will be held between 2 and 3 p.m. at Hessel Park in Champaign.

For more info, visit their website.

taco ride

Here's a fun ride: Champaign to Tolono.  10.2 miles south on First Street.  Once you reach the railroad tracks, turn right on Tolono's Main Street, which snakes through the interesting little town.

South of Champaign, First Street passes by UIUC and private farms, past some actual lakes and ponds (no doubt manmade, but I've learned not to be picky), past some out-of-place looking pre-fab housing in Savoy, then through soy- and corn-fields.

Best of all, there's a fun destination: the Taco Shack, which local renaissance man Seth recently reviewed for Smile Politely:

It's on Route 45/Neil Street, and you can reach it on Main Street after passing through Tolono.

If you'd rather not ride the 10 miles back up First Street, here's a 27 mile loop from Champaign to Tolono to Philo to Urbana.

c-u fruit map

I already wrote about this here yesterday, but in an article about tomorrow's Tour de Fruit, Smile Politely featured a really great Champaign-Urbana fruit map, made collaboratively using Google Maps.  Here's what it looks like:

Here's a link to the interactive, reality-augmenting C-U Fruit Map.  Even if you can't make Saturday's group ride, the map's a good guide for other, well, fruitful bike rides around town!

saturday: tour de fruit

This Saturday, 19 June, C-U will host an impromptu Tour de Fruit, departing from the space outside The Bike Project's U-C IMC shop at 6:30pm.  Details from an email announcement:

Join local bicycle riders and fruit lovers as we excursion through the area. We'll visit a variety of fruit trees, including pears, apples, paw paws, persimmons, plums, apricots, peaches, mulberries, cherries, and juneberries.  Each stop on the route will have time for activities and discussion, and will end with a delicious snack at the end. The purpose of the ride is to share knowledge of trees, identify native edibles, engage with the community, and talk about new ways of navigating our landscape.

The group ride will begin at the IMC Bike Project and end at La Casa, a co-op house where the residents are working on a permaculture food forest.  

3-4 mile ride. Bring a helmet and containers to collect fruit.

Here's a link to the blog entry announcing the Tour. And here, some pix of fruit from around town.

(Update: Smile Politely just posted a C-U Fruit Map!)