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Tony Adams
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50 Mile Commute
For the first time today I rode the bicycle both ways to (and uh, from) Wheaton.

I'm pretty tired now.

I love how riding in direction one all the time, you can just totally miss stuff. Like a trail I discovered this morning through a little section of forest on the Des Plaines from Thatcher in River Forest over to Madison at the River. Coming from the west it is not at all obvious. I might have never seen it if I always took the bike on the train every morning. The trail replaces a few blocks of nasty riding on Madison. The forest there was refreshing. It seemed so much healthier and free of beer cans and crap compared to the river trails north of belmont.

Then, on the way home, with less of a schedule to worry about, instead of following the east/west trail I traveled in the morning, I kept going north along the river (sort of). It remained beautiful, but the best part was yet to come.

After crossing Washington I stumble upon the Thatcher Woods Savanna.

it was quite different than most of the cook county forest preserve woods, which are nice enough, but don't seem particularly healthy or "natural". This joint was really nice. And then, as if the savanna was not cool enough, at the northern end of it, some actual topography. There are some fairly serious ravines. I keep going and I stumble out onto the Union Pacific West line tracks, onto a road that I've seen many many times from the train.

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