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Recreational Resources

The great outdoors can be found within and beyond the city limits. Chicago has one of the best urban park systems in the world, an immense forest preserve, and Lake Michigan with its 15 miles of bathing beaches and 18 miles of trails for walking, jogging, biking, or in-line skating. If you want to explore farther afield, here are some ideas.

Regional parks

Chicago Park District
Web: www.chicagoparkdistrict.com
312-742-PLAY
Chicago's parks are not run by the city, but by the Park District. Those near the campus and those along the lake are wonderful.

Cook County Forest Preserve
Web: www.fpdcc.com
800-870-3666 (general information)
Palos Hills, Waterfall Glenn, Bemis Woods, Springlake Forest Preserves, and many others are part of a large group of parks and forest preserves throughout the Chicago area. They offer thousands of acres of wooded land for hikes, mountain-bike rides, and picnics. Several offer sledding, cross-country skiing, and a toboggan slide.

DuPage County Forest Preserve
Web: www.dupageforest.com
630-933-7200

Hiking and Camping

Gebhard Woods State Park
Morris
815-942-0796
This small park is used mainly by cyclists on the Illinois and Michigan bike path. Buggalo Rock, Starved Rock, and several other state parks are also found along the I & M Trail.

To get there:
Take I-80 west to Morris.

Illinois Beach State Park
Zion
847-662-4811

To get there:
Take I-94 north to Route 173 east to Zion.

Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore
Porter
219-926-7561 x225
Indiana Dunes State Park
Chesterton
219-926-1952
Your biology class may have gone on a field trip to Cowles Bog, named after Professor Henry C. Cowles, an early-twentieth-century botanist who used the Indiana Dunes and adjacent wetlands as his laboratory. It's also a great place to swim, fish, hike, and camp.

To get there:
Access U.S. 20/Indiana State Highway 12 off I-94 or the Indiana Toll Road. Or take the South Shore Line commuter train to the Miller, Portage/Ogden Dunes, Dune Park, or Beverly Shores station.

Moraine Hills State Park
McHenry
815-385-1624
Offers hiking, bike trails, and canoeing. Ten miles of the Moraine Hills Bike Trail wind through the park.

To get there:
Take U.S. 12 from Lake Zurich to McHenry.

Rock Cut State Park
Loves Park
815-885-3311
Camping, scuba diving, hiking, snowmobiling, and more are offered on more than 3,000 acres with two lakes.

To get there:
Take I-90 to U.S. 51 north.

Shabbona Lake State Recreation Area
Shabbona
815-824-2106
Nearly 1,600 acres of rolling prairie offer camping, 8+ miles of hiking and cross-country ski trails, and a 319-acre lake.

To get there:
Take I-88 to U.S. 30 in Shabbona.

Shawnee National Forest
Harrisburg
800-699-6637
The only national forest in Illinois, Shawnee has more than 275,000 acres of hiking trails and backcountry camping, as well as climbing spots, equestrian trails, and rivers and streams for fishing.

To get there:
Take I-57 south for five hours to Marion, then take Route 13 east to Harrisburg.

Mountain and road biking

City of Chicago Bicycle Page
Web: www.chicagobikes.org
This site includes maps of all the bike routes in Chicago and a detailed map of what you see along the popular lakefront bike trail.

North Branch Bicycle Trail
Cook County Forest Preserve
800-870-3666
The North Branch Bicycle Trail begins around the Jenson Slides at 6358 West Devon, near the intersection of Devon and Caldwell. You can ride all the way up to Highland Park's Ravinia and Chicago Botanic Garden. Connect to the path from the Lake Shore Drive Trail at Bryn Mawr (follow the green bike trail signs.)

Illinois and Michigan Canal State Trail
Morris
815-942-0796
This 61-mile route following the Illinois and Michigan Canal encounters numerous state parks, restored historical sites, and wildlife beginning at Channahon and running along the old towpath to LaSalle, beside the DesPlaines and Illinois Rivers.

To get there:
Take I-55 south to Channahon.

Illinois Prairie Path
Web: www.ipp.org
630-752-0120
One of the first rail-trails in the country, the prairie path spans 55 miles in a pitchfork shape through the heart of Chicago's suburbs. It is an unpaved hiking, biking, equestrian, and nature trail in Cook, DuPage, and Kane Counties, stretching from Maywood to Wheaton, where it splits into four spurs that lead to the Fox River in Elgin, Batavia, Aurora, and Geneva.

Kettle Moraine State Forest
Eagle, Wisconsin
262-626-2116 (northern unit)
or 262-594-6200 (southern unit)
Trails in this 50,000-acre forest are open to hikers and mountain bikers. Camping and water activities are also available.

To get there:
Take I-94 west to Route 50 west to Route 67 north to Eagle.

Lake Front Bike Path
Running almost 20 miles along the Lake Michigan shore, this bike path passes right by the heart of downtown. The path tends to get crowded, so watch out for pedestrians and in-line skaters.

Palos Forest Preserve
Its varied terrain, great single track, and proximity to the city make the Palos Forest Preserve a favorite riding spot. It's located at the intersection of I-294 and I-55.

Rock climbing
Web: www.devilslakewisconsin.com
Devil's Lake State Park
Baraboo, Wisconsin
608-356-8301
With up-to-100-foot cliffs bordering its 360-acre lake, this site is a favorite of climbers all over the Midwest. There are also canoeing, hiking, and camping. Located about one hour from Madison.

To get there:
Take U.S. 12 to 136 to Baraboo.

Hidden Peak
Web: www.lakeshoreacademy.com/hiddenpeak/
937 North Chestnut Street
312-563-9400
This bouldering gym has 24-foot-tall walls with six to eight roped climbs and about 3,600 feet of overall climbing surface.

Kayaking and canoeing

For information on water sports, check out the Web site of the Illinois Paddling Council at www.illinoispaddling.org

Chicago Area Sea Kayaking Association
Web: www.caska.org
777-1489
The Kayaking Association features evening paddles on Lake Michigan and occasional trips. A newsletter includes opportunities for Chicago-area kayakers.

The Chicago Whitewater Association
Web: www.chicagowhitewater.org
With over 300 members and a strong winter pool training/education program, the CWA offers spring trips to major rivers in Illinois and Wisconsin.

As a longtime resident and cyclist I've been to just about all parts of Chicago.  Whether for work or play i've been there, done that...  Bikes in Chicago simply make sense.  You don't have to pay for parking, gas(which is rediculous), and depending on how far you go, you can't seem to make it much farther in a car between lights.

There are virtually hundreds of miles worth of bike paths that you can ride if your in it for the fitness factor. If you are into people watching, the lakeshore is a sure bet for the beautiful people as well as for some strange characters.

Every year, the city of Chicago closes down lake shore drive to cars so that the bikers can have full use of it by themselves.

And the Footbikers

and the views of navy pier from the Lake Shore Drive bridge over the Chicago River.

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Please bear with us as we get our site back on the path.  It may take a while, but we get there just like everyone else!

Thanks For Visiting My Site

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The Latino maid asked for a pay increase.  My wife was very upset about this and decided to talk to her about the raise. She asked: 'Now Maria, why do you want a pay increase? Maria: 'Well, Senora, there are three reasons why I want an increase.  The first is that I iron better than you...' Wife: 'Who said you iron better than me?' Maria: 'Your husband said so.' Wife: 'Oh.' Maria: 'The second reason is that I am a better cook than you.' Wife: 'Nonsense, who said you were a better cook than me?' Maria: 'Your husband did.' Wife: 'Oh.' Maria: 'My third reason is that I am a better lover than you.' Wife:  (really furious now) 'Did my husband say that as well?' Maria: 'No Senora...the Gardener did.' Wife: 'So how much do you want?'

Why we Miss Rodney Dangerfield.... Because he said | .....  My wife only has sex with me for a purpose. Last night she used me to time an egg. It's tough to stay married.  My wife kisses the dog on the lips, yet she won't drink from my glass! Last night my wife met me at the front door. She was wearing a sexy negligee. The only trouble was, she was coming home. A girl phoned me and said, 'Come on over. There's nobody home.' I went over. Nobody was home! A hooker once told me she had a headache. I went to a massage parlor. It was self-service. If it weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all. I was making love to this girl and she started crying I said, 'Are you going to hate yourself in the morning?' She said, 'No, I hate myself now.' I knew a girl so ugly that she was known as a two-bagger. That's when you put a bag over your head in case the bag over her head comes off. I knew a girl so ugly... they use her in prisons to cure sex offenders. My wife is such a bad cook, if we leave dental floss in the kitchen the roaches hang themselves.. I'm so ugly I stuck my head out the window and got arrested for mooning. The other day I came home and a guy was jogging, naked. I asked him, 'Why?' He said, 'Because you came home early.' My wife's such a bad cook, the dog begs for Alka-Seltzer. I know I'm not sexy. When I put my underwear on I can hear the Fruit-of-the-Loom guys giggling. My wife is such a bad cook, in my house we pray after the meal. My wife likes to talk on the phone during sex; she called me from  Chicago last night. MY FAVORITE: My family was so poor that if I hadn't been born a boy, I wouldn't of had anything to play with.

Hi Guys,

"Big Bopper" Here!!  I'm the DJ that plays the tunes at the bike shows at the Tilted Kilt in Woodridge.  Thought I might add this page since I'm already on HotRodDeals.com.  I am also an avid biker who is a member of 3 motorcycle clubs in the Chicagoland area.  I am a long time member of Star Touring, with dual membership in Star Chapter 104 (When you hear the roar it's 104!!), and Star Chapter 394 (Sweet Home Chicago!!).  Both clubs have full riding schedules on weekends, but unfortunately with the DJ business I can't ride as much as I'd like!!  
I am also a member of ABATE of Southern Dupage.  That group is continuously hard at work keeping us free from the constant barrage of stupid laws coming from both Illinois as well as federal politicians!!  They also have some very entertaining events during the year that we enjoy participating in.  Hopefully I will be able to download pictures of my bike, and gain some good friends from being on this site.  Keep the shinny side up, and see you at the KILT!!!!

Hi everyone.  I'm a computer nerd that loves photography of cars and nature.  I've been taking pics for a few years now, but I have quite a bit to learn.  I'll be posting pics from various car shows on this site from time to time.  I hope everyone enjoys the pics as well as I enjoyed taking them.

The bulk of my photos are on my flickr account, which can be viewed via the following address:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chorwedel

Hello everyone!  Thanks for visiting my pages on hotbikedeals!  If you don't already know me, I'm the guy who takes all the photos of your cars and bikes at the car shows in the Chicago Suburbs every week.  I used to do it just as a hobby but have found this site to be a fun place to post my pictures from week to week!

Check out my pictures, I only have a couple videos which come from friends....  But check em out!  If you like what you see and would like an 8 x 10 of anything let me know.   For $10 bucks I can make you a high resolution copy which you can frame on your wall.  Just send me a message via the contact me link....

Don't you just love my Tilted Kilt Ladies?

My Old Honda VLX What a nice bike for riding around town.

<img src="http://ccollins.us/drupal/?q=gallery&g2_itemId=1163" alt="honda">

Video Uploads are very simple.  Just click on the Upload my Video link at the top right of the My Videos page (when you're logged in).  A Small window should appear with a flash form.  Click Browse, select your movie file, and click upload. 

Watch the progress bar on your page.  When it is finished uploading, it will process your video into our system.  DO NOT CLOSE the window!   When you see the form to upload another video re-appear, the process is done!  If you have more videos to upload, select another video and start uploading it.

While the uploads window is working, you can go and work in other parts of the site.  Including the My Videos page.  Here you can select any video from your list and set file permissions, access groups, content rating, video category, as well as the title and description.  Click save and, it's done! 

Photo and Video albums are very easy to create.  First you need to click on the MY Photo Albums link on your menu to the left.  Then click on "Add New Photo Album". 

In the form, give your photo album a title / name.  Then Type the author.  Next set the Default Permissions (this will determine who is allowed to see your pictures and videos).  Next, type a description for this photo album.  It could be a trip you took, a car or boat you're selling, a funny thing that happened or whatever.  Then save your album information.

Now, for the whichever album you wish to add pictures to, Click the "Add Multi Photos Form" link.  A separate Popup like window will appear with your title and description in it on the left side.  On the right side, a Java Applet will open which will allow you to select either full directories/folders or many individual files.  You can select up to 100 mb of pictures in a single upload.  The Java Applet will resize all the pictures on your computer and then upload them to the server.  Wait for it to complete on it's own.  Do not close the window.  You can leave it working in the background while doing other things.  Upon completion, it will most likely say, Document Contains No Data.  This means it worked!  At this point, if you want to add more pictures to the same album, you can select and send more pictures. 

Close the window, click on the My Photo Albums link to refresh the My Photo Albums page.  You should see your pictures appear here.

You probably wanted to see what would happen if you typed in our domain name with http://www.HotBikeDeals.com/NickName/ attached to the end of it.  Well, yep you guessed it!  You wound up here at our System Example MySite Page.  If you have a nickname or a boat name or some other kind of identifying name that is special to you, it can now be a part of how your friends find your pages within our system.  Any nickname you choose, will work with all of the Hot Media Deals websites.  All you need to do is open your preferences page in all the websites you want to be found in. 

Each of the different websites can have different albums, photos, videos and pages specific to each site.  So get creative! 

With our built in HTML editor, you can arrainge your pages with tables, and many other HTML elements.

If you need any special images to put on your pages, they also can be hosted here as well.  Just click the image list link above the editor and it will load all your images with the full url path included.  You then click the insert image link on the toolbar, paste the image address into the URL field, set the width and height, and then click OK.  You're done putting in your own images!

Want a smiley face on your pages?    There is a smiley button on the toolbar which you can use to put up as many smiley's as you need.  We're sure that you'll find the HTML Editor More than Helpfull to building your pages!

Have Fun!

Hey, I used to be a biker, but I had an accident back in 1995 on the Suzuki GSXR pictured below.  It was a fast bike which I loved very much.  I had logged nearly 50k miles on it, but one day I went out for a ride with a couple of buddies, one of which kept his bike in my garage down at school (EIU).    What I didn't know was that he had just spent the night before in the town lock up for smoking dope in the city bowling alley and getting busted.  The next morning he went to another friends house, got stoned again, and then came over to my house to go for a ride.  20 minutes into the ride we were in the middle of nowhere with farm fields everywhere.  My roommate on a similar bike as mine and he kept stopping and racing each other.  The last time they did that my roomate when blasting by and the other guy came around me and immediately slammed on the brakes, swerved across the lane into my path and took my front wheel right out from under me.  The bike high-sided flipping me off.  My friend who was a bit down the road said he could see me flip flopping down the road head over heel a few times.   I then woke up in the hospital.  I heard that the guy who hit me fled the scene and showed up at the hospital 10 hours later saying that he heard I was in an accident and wanted to see how I was.   I never saw him again...

The bike I had before the 88 gsxr was a 1986 Yamaha Fazer (2nd from the left).  The guy next to me to the left, on the VMax and I switched bikes for a little ride close to home one day.  He was showing off with mine swerving in and out of construction horses and clipped one of them.   He was only doing about 20 or 25 when that happened so he was able to kind of jump off and roll and not get too hurt.  He then took off to get his truck leaving me there to cry over my wrecked motorcycle.  It was almost kind of funny how many people kept stopping to say lie down and don't move or I might injure myself more.  But all I kept say was "it's my bike... my bike, my bike...".  I obviously wasn't hurt at all.  It was my bike that was all messed up.  So I got the insurance money from it and bought the GSXR shown above.

Ever since I've been a boater.  Check me out at http://www.hotboatdeals.com/dotcomd/  Check out my blog on this page, The blog with the story about it is the "will I ever ride again" topic. Hope to see you there!

I mean really, the son Paul has tons of talent which takes a certain kind of flair and work style.  Sr never likes it.  Wants him to come in and spend all the same exact hours as someone that is a normal (non family) employee.  Jr, who whas a 20 percent owner in OCC now just wants fair market value.  I've heard Sr say that the value is nothing and that Jr will buy out sr if that's the case.  We all know that the value has to be considerable with the number of older shops they have, the nice cars they drive and so on, but I'm thinking that SR is just being unreasonable.  He was always picking fights, always starting things with JR, and never letting any little thing go that most normal people would try to figure out some normal way to deal with untill it got to a boiling point. 

Now, I need to watch a few more shows to see what info the producers let loose, but what does everyone else know about all this?  Is it really Sr that is being unreasonable?  or is it Jr as well?

Voice in on your views of the show's status...

                                                      thank You                              r

jhickslocal4600@gmail.com 

yosh pipe and brand new tires.  Also comes with cover and owners manual. Great bike for the summer ready to ride

for more info contact me at 708 860-4049

MXpert

MXpert

• Location: LAKE JACKSON, TEXAS

Less then 1600 Miles, Excellent condition

$14,000.00 OBO