Toll troll

My home town of New Lenox, Illinois is bracing for a huge population boom. There's your background research.

A couple of weeks ago on my trip back to the States I was riding with my step dad in his pick up truck in New Lenox. He pointed down to the empty construction-in-progress I-355 expressway as we rolled across the overpass. It was weird. This road will always be filled with cars, forever. But as I cast my view downwards, then outwards, there was nothing. No construction workers even. If you were like me and always searched out that pristine new cement to rollerblade or skateboard over, this was heaven. I saw the absolute literal view of "open road".

My step dad told me a story about when I-80 was built in Joliet, Illinois back in the '60s. He and his friend hopped on a minibike with a full tank of gas and rode as far as they could on the open highway just before the road was opened to the public. Well, they covered as much distance as they could on half of the tank that is. The story conjured up a sort of magical summer's evening picture in my mind of 2 pre-teens zigging and zagging between lanes, yelling to each other over the sputter of the motor. I imagined huge smiles across their faces.

Now, if this sort of thing sounds exciting to you, you can, in a way, go do this soon....but you can't take your motorbike. Pump up your tires, oil your chain, take off the front brake and install a EAI fixed cog (sorry, joking), and Roll the Tollway this November. All of these huge roads crossing the US are ugly and pollute the hell out of the air, but I'm going to go ahead and say that they are necessary. I think it's pretty cool that such a car culture can at least set aside a few hours to let cyclists ride somewhere they'll never ever again have a chance to ride.

As far as the $25 enterance fee goes: I was originally put off by this and it made me think how wrong it would be for the State of Illinois to take money from good-hearted cyclists. But after further research I read that the income from this will be used as seed money to build a bike trail that follows the route of I-355 from New Lenox to Lemont. I guess the money has to come from somewhere. But then again, where do all of the tax dollars go? Anyways, any bike trail, bike lane or State-promoted anit-car action is ok with me. So there's where your $25 goes. But still, there's got to be a way to crash this party.

If anyone participates in this please take some pics or at least let me know how it was.