Lots of sunrise drama this morning… crazy cool clouds, windy gusts in all directions & plenty of waves crashing all around!!! So much fun. So much excitement. Kinda challenging though… catching a good crashing wave photo & pedaling into the wind… seemingly in all directions?!

Colorful clouds & calm waters. Another serene morning along the lake with rippled reflections & tranquil skies. Another beautiful start to the day…

Not a cloud in the sky… clear skies & calm waters.
A quiet morning along the lakefront.

With a narrow band of clouds floating low on the horizon, it was a waiting game to see the sun this morning. And to find out if it was going to come up & illuminate the clouds with color… or just come up in front with no fun “cloud-play.” Sadly, it was the latter of the two… still pretty, but not a lot of sunrise spectacle!

There should be a skyline out there somewhere?! Let alone a horizon line!!! Welcome to a monochromatic Monday in Chicago. Lots of clouds & foggy haze covering the City. The temperature isn’t that bad yet… but the humidity!!! Yikes!!! All I had to do was LOOK at my bike and started sweating! It felt like six-thousand percent humidity!!! I was just a drippy sweaty mess!!! Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate…

Foggy, hazy., cloudy, humid, windy… your choice! We had them all this morning. So many clouds that I had pretty much given up on seeing the sunrise… and then it finally “burned’ its way through the clouds. Just enough for some great reflections on the calm & still water.

So here’s the update… and my NEW BIKE!!!

Turns out my red bike “Scarlett Don’t Care-Ah” had more wrong with it than I thought. As they were cleaning it & doing a full overhaul, they saw a “chink in the armor” where there was a chip of paint off the frame between the pedals & the back wheel on the side with the gears. When they investigated & did a “tap test” you could hear the sound difference in one area near the chip. Kinda like checking pottery for a crack & you can hear the difference… clear ping vs. dull thud. Same here. So they determined that there was a literal crack through the carbon-fiber!!! Damaged at some point over the past couple years & thousands of miles… probably from falling over onto something bad. And now it could break at any time… sending me flying off my bike as the rear wheel could detach if that were to happen. So my choices were to buy a new frame & have them “retro-fit” all of my old components onto the new frame… or buy a new bike. One choice was a week’s wait & jerry-rigging… the other was instant & new. So I went for the NEW BIKE!!! Same model as my previous one as I am always TREK loyal… just the newer model. And a new color… it was either a dark-almost-black-green color, or this ombre’ version. So now I just need to figure out a good name for my new trusted steed. Thoughts???

After a week without a bike, it felt great to get back in the saddle again this morning!
Cool temps, gentle breeze & colorful clouds. Oh, how I’ve missed you sunrise!!!

So I took my bike into the shop for a quick annual cleaning last Friday… knowing that I had a weekend art fair & poor air quality from the Canadian wildfires. Perfect time to bring it in, right?! Well, it took longer than expected… and it’s never good when you see your bike still in the stand when you get there to pick it up… uh oh…

It was a crazy mix of clouds & smoke this morning!!! With the smoke from the Canadian wildfires making it’s way to Chicago, we had poor air quality & even poorer visibility. Not much of a sunrise as it was struggling behind the clouds & smoke. There was such a smoky “fog” engulfing the lakefront…. practically obliterating the view of the downtown skyline. CRAZY!!!