The Hilly Hundred is my favorite bike ride of the season!
It’s like the bookend marking the end of my summer riding season.
Two days of hills… two days of fun… with thousands of riders!

Some seasonal beauty from the weekend…
click on each thumbnail for a larger image.

Saturday morning was chilly – but the sun warmed it up quickly.
The day’s ride was crisp & clear – with long sleeves & gloves.
Sunday started with frost on our tents… the chilly morning
wiped out some of the few prairie flowers remaining!
But the day got warmer as we ended up riding in shorts & short-sleeve jerseys!

After a long day of riding on Sunday… it’s time for a long drive home.
Enjoyable when your view through the car window is this…

And for those of you who like to see the details…
here’s a small snipet of the daily cue sheets showing elevation gain
for each day – over 3,000 feet of elevation gain daily!

As fall settles in, my early morning bike rides are getting tougher & tougher.
Yet with a stunning sunrise like this… it still makes it all worthwhile!
And I hope that the biking season continues for a few more weeks!!!

Possibly the nicest weather weekend of the entire year…
and with today’s Chicago Marathon taking over the lakefront,
it was the perfect day to get away from the city
and go “into the woods” for some natural inspiration.
The colors & patterns. The highlights & shadows.
The rustling of the leaves. The crisp fall breeze.
All in all, an incredibly wonderful day of hiking around Rockford’s Lake Pierce… twice!

Remember… the small square pictures are just “thumbnails”…
click on them to see the full image!

October is here. Summer is over.

Fall is my favorite season – but I’m still suffering from “summer separation anxiety.” I really want summer to go on forever… and have a hard time accepting the fact that fall is here. And as the season changes, so do my morning bike rides. No longer can I get up, hop on my bike and be greeted by the sunrise. I now find that I am pedaling in darkness, anxiously awaiting the sun’s arrival before I finish the morning ride. Now it’s cold & damp and tough to roll out of bed. Plus, the long sleeves and long-fingered bike gloves have been pulled out! Yet as I am having some difficulty “letting go” of summer… I thought I would share some images from my summer of sunrises as seen during my morning bike rides.

Each of the above photos is a thumbnail.
Click on the images to enlarge them and see the entire photo.
Enjoy… I know I did.