Two rides of note recently. On Friday, I did a fairly typical ride up to Lake Forest. As I mentioned I think in an earlier ride report, Forest Park has a team of robotic lawn mowers. They were going Friday and I decided to take a picture. I caught him just after he encountered the gravel path and turned around. I was just about to turn around and head home as well. 'Twas a good reminder.
On my way back though, I took a slightly different route out of Lake Forest and stumbled upon the Walden-Bluff's Edge Bridge, the former entrance to
Cyrus McCormick's country estate,
Walden. (Older peeps will probably remember McCormick as the inventor of the reaper. Whether or not this is still taught in school, I have no idea.)
It seems the bridge was saved by the Lake Forest Preservation Foundation in the 90s:
l=https://flic.kr/p/2jS8634]PXL_20201010_153056560.MP by
Skip Montanaro, on Flickr
I'm always amazed at how readily many people are to demolish historical structures of various kinds.
Yesterday, a few (non-vintage) bike friends and I rode the route of the
1919 Chicago Race Riot Route to help raise funds for Blackstone Bicycle Works. Two of the people I was riding with had copies of the guide book (I understand they are sold out), so we were able to get a bit of detail of the significance of each of the markers. Here my partners are in an obviously unstaged photo at the old Union Stockyard Gate:
The route also passed by Illiniois Institute of Technology, home to a number of
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's buildings (Mies chaired the Department of Architecture), all of which still stand. Here's a fly-by pic of the CTA Green Line running through the student center:
I'm going to have to make a point of visiting and checking out the architecture.