Chicago 2014 adventure Seeking that “defining moment” feeling that I’ve seen in many high challenging faces. It was a long winter. I started this ride under-trained. Climbing High Cliff, finding no water (due to winter pipe breakages), and having to travel 22 miles down my route to Pipe Creek for a water fill up, was symbolic to the way the rest of this first day of riding would become.
 I then started Seven Hill Rd. dehydrated, sweating, and cramping, but I pushed through.  And I will say it again. “No one is ever too old to lie on the ground at the end of Seven Hill Rd. crying and holding their thighs. Another attempt to travel through Kettle Moraine failed and added miles.  This year is because a road was closed.   With severe intestinal and gut cramps I learned re-hydration after losing a water fill stop is difficult and needs more ritual attention.  I came close to what I think my dad felt in 1982 at the 11th hole at Tuscumbia, but something changed right after that memory came to surface in my tears.  A strength, pass the internal pain, that I didn’t know I had left in me.  I needed to reach my first stop on my own to hold my grandchildren to remind me why one needs to push their own envelope, higher and higher every day.  We need to make opportunities and hope look accomplish-able for others to follow and eventually pass us (plow a trail). Day two:  After a long rest and a late start I focused more on my ride.  I tried to remember that pain is only an illusion the brain creates to make the body stop.  Conserving energy was very important on this day.  To put a stop to conversations that played with my head that wanted me to not attempt to complete this in two days.  On this morning I decided to comfort those concerned, at least for a short period, around me by telling them I was not going to be able to attempt to complete the ride on this second day due to my first day problems and my second day’s late start.  I said I will find a hotel to stop at.  All the while the plan was in my head that I was going until I had to lie on the ground and wait to be lifted or I was going to make it.  My friend Tom, my final destination, called me nuts the first time he heard the plan and told me all the dangers for me in the crime ridden areas alone at night portion of the ride plus being on the road in the dark with drivers who seem to hate bicyclists (1 in 30).   But he never talked about it again once he understood during that first conversation I was going to do this and I had a plan.  My plan was to slap my thighs twice and flip into this backwards.  At least, that is what others see it as. 
 As I was riding through the neighborhoods of N.W. Milwaukee, a funeral past by me while I was stopped and tweeting some of my little tidbits and my present location.  The vehicle procession contained a polished gold Hearst and with a polish gold limo.  I did my, good catholic boy, prayer and continued.  A few blocks down I ran across a young man, about 30 years old, running from his porch area of a home swinging his arms.  He was running in an intersecting path with me, like a defensive football player does during an offensive sweep.  This person was mad and yelling at me.  I figure something was wrong so I was looking around me and behind me.  I verified that I was in the bike designated bike lane on a four lane road.  As our paths were getting closer to colliding, I heard his words and I thought this guy is going to tackle me right here on the road.  He hesitated off the curb and I was then able to pass him.  He continued to run after me for a bit.  I was happy the strong looking man at the bus stop didn’t agree with the words of this person chasing me.  This man was yelling at me, repeatedly, words that told me, with profane explicates that I didn’t belong in his neighborhood, again and again.  My first thought was that he was mentally challenged but he stopped chasing me right in front of a chapel, where the previously mentioned funeral procession was parked. Everyone at the chapel was out of their cars and staring at me but some moved toward the street I was riding along.  I was a little worried for the next 10 miles, since my outfit made me stand out in these areas.  As I past the chapel I then realized that it was just that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time for an outside type person to be located. If it was 15 minutes earlier or later, then this negative experience would have never happened.  But the hatred of differences seem to always be everywhere, it is just the timing and words taken out of context that puts us there (that is enough on string theory).  Days later after my ride I performed an internet search starting with the golden Hearst to find the back-story.  I found it was a young man killed and the attacker has not be found or been charged to the date I looked it up.  And it happened a week earlier just 3 blocks off the road I was riding. I hit the Illinois border and checked in with family while lying on the ground along the trail I was temporarily on, for 5 minutes.  As I was approaching the Great Lakes Naval Base I made a wrong turn. It took me 800 yards of travel to realize I was riding the start of a divided expressway.  It was mostly empty being the start of the roadway.  I found my way off quickly.  As I passed the Naval Station gates I turned my phone off to eliminate any inquires to what hotel I was going to stop and stay that night.  I told others that Great Lakes was the earliest start of my target locations to stop for the night.  You see I was never, not going for it.  I just verbally comforted some of those around me that worry.  I turned my phone back on when I arrived at the north end of the Chicago lake front trail.  I informed those reading my tweets that I had four more hours along with a picture of the north Chicago Skyline. Edit insertion:  During editing I was informed to the other side of my observation.  
 I thought it was important to add.  “You think we didn’t know you were going
 for it, we just hoped you would be smart enough to stop and stay somewhere.” For the past couple of years, I have been spectating and volunteering marathons and events with similar high challenge, taking pictures in the attempt to capture that single “defining moment” that one has on their face at the given moment of physical and mental exhaustion.  It is the moment where one has to decide to define the outcome of this challenge themselves or let that moment define you.  I have seen a few faces at that defining moment in my life.  Most of the time, the owner of that facial expression does win by defining that moment with their own terms, and I seen the others learn enough to define that next moment the next time they get it.  I was searching for mine.  Did I find it?  I believe one is so busy fighting the mental and physical hurdles at that point they have no idea that their non-poker face is showing.  I believe one never knows until it is over.  I believe it is far more complicated than I can put in words.  This defining moment should occur 1,000’s of times in each of our lives.  It could be athletic, business, social, or any experience that challenges oneself at any level.  I was in Evanston, Il.  I was sitting on the grassy curb area of a road in a gated, very safe neighborhood. My bicycle was leaning against the tree next to me.  It was dusk but still bright enough to see without lights.  My bike and I was outfitted with night riding lights.  I was thinking I can’t go anymore and this was the last area to find a safe Hotel before I reach my final destination.  A small SUV passes me, turns around down the street and turns around again right in front of me to pull up to the curb next to me. A woman was in the vehicle, alone, and she rolled down her window and asked if I was ok.  When I answered yes, she asked again if I was sure.  I smiled, I think my expression was a smile, and said “yes”.  As she pulled away I was thinking what a kind person pulls over for a stranger now-a-days and how lucky I was that there were people like her out here in this ugly world given some of the areas I am riding.  After she pulled away I decided to get up, and back on the seat and decided to keep going.  I might not have made that same decision if one more person asked.  It took a few miles before a thought came into my head; “what type of face did I have for this person to stop?”
 I cruised through the Northside of Chicago around soldier Field and decided to stop at a Maxwell Street walk up window food joint at 3100 S Canal.  Not a nice area, but it was my old area.  Later I rolled up next to my old park district where Archer intersects with Western Blvd.  I pulled up to the red light.  There was an ambulance, two squad cars, four cops, one group of youngsters, who belong in the area, walking away.  And another group of youngsters, who didn’t belong in the area, walking back and forth in the crosswalk, right in front of me, yelling at the cops and yelling at me, who didn’t belong according to their profanity, on my bicycle at the stop line of a lane. Another place I was being told I don’t belong.  All while my heart was feeling comfort due to the buildings and surroundings that told me, “This is where I am from.  This is where bicycling started for me.”  And also a little comfort by the trouble makers because there were always trouble makers that put people in groups and judged them negatively in order to build their own value; they just have different faces in this neighborhood now. When the cops were pulling away from an obvious cleanup of rival gang activity, I thought “hell no, you are not leaving this old man here.”  I blew both Boulevards’ red lights right in front of the squad cars and never looked back. I decided to purchase and carry a better pocket knife designed to help, triage style with seat belt cutter and glass breaking ability. It was a long ride through Chicago from the North east corner, past the middle of Chicago at the lakefront and out the southwest corner.  As I exited, I came upon Resurrection Cemetery.  It is along a dark stretch of Archer Ave just outside Chicago limits. I found an unusual bus stop bench on a corner.  What was unusual was there was no bus stop sign.  As I sat there for 10 minutes, I think.  As my eyes focused to the blackness of the night, I realized I was sitting across from the gates of Resurrection Cemetery.  I tried but was too tired, mentally and physically, to dig through the backpack to find my camera in the dark to take a picture of the gates.  For those who know the story of “Resurrection Mary” you know I didn’t feel alone out there and for those who don’t know, start Googling.  I made it to Tom and Laura’s in two days.  It was about 250 miles.  The trip was 12 hours the first day and 16.5 hours the second day. Tom woke up and sat with me when I arrived at his house at 1:30 AM for a while.  He fed me juice.  I don’t know what we talked about except that he was upset I didn’t take that photo of the cemetery gates because he knew Mary would have been on that photo. I felt safe again thanks to Pops (Tom). I recovered over the next day or two with the thanks to Laura, Tom, their family, and friends-of hospitality. Thank you 

What challenges should one attempt?  Are they too easy or too hard to accomplish?  Should one make choices where they fail at attempting once in a while? Your answer could be, All the above, but never plan to fail.  The challenge could be developed from those around you or from those you strive to mimic.  The decision could also come from your elder mentor’s words and his eyes, the ones that are like second parents to us. 

My family joined me Saturday after this ride challenge to do our annual ride at 
 Chicago’s bike the drive event.  We attended a friend’s graduation party (family-like 
 friends) for their daughter.  My wife, who has always worried a lot about my high 
 threshold to fear and how I handle, being told “I can’t,” was telling Mr. D (my father 
 like figure) how crazy it was for me to ride the Chicago neighborhoods alone through 
 the night, with the city’s present highest shooting rates in decades.  I am betting 
 she was hoping he would talk to me and agree with her. But his answer went 
 something like this:“It’s Larry, he knows the neighborhoods” Those short words mean so much.  A man, who has known me since I was 5 years 
 old, still has never told me I couldn’t achieve what I set out to do and has never 
 doubted me.  That is a word selfie “WOW!” I didn’t let my wife see I had a tear in my eye when she told me the story of the words Mr. D told her, while driving home that night.  All that pain, all that strong-will to complete, now has come to another value.  Love you Mr. D. and thanks for a lifetime of support, guidance, and confidence to go out and “do.” Did I find what I was seeking on this ride?  Yes.  You never know how close you came to quitting until the next day.  If you do quit, you can always call it a rest or recovery period whether it is 5 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 years or even longer!

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