Sat 9 July

I avoid cities of these journeys for all the obvious reasons but mostly because they all largely look the same and hold no appeal. Well Chicago is different in the extreme. Sure the traffic going into the city was a bit nerve wracking at 8 lanes and all going like a bat out of hell. And my first impressions of the skyline did nothing for me either. In the brown soup that hovered over the city you could just make out a single tall building with a couple of white masts on the top. Once in the city you were presented with trees and flowers and parks and grass verges every where. There were even flower baskets hanging of an overhead pedestrian walkway. We rode along a wide clean street fronting in to Lake Michigan. There were kids playing on the beach, sailboats on the lake and people strolling along the walkway. There were literally hundreds of high rise apartment blocks facing the lake. You have to wonder where they all worked. Even a couple of blocks back from the lake the tree theme continued. Suffice to say this was a really neat city and the folks I spoke to were immensely proud of their city. This would be a city worth visiting in its own right.

We found the BM dealer and Terry fitted his sprocket while we watched the mechanic assemble one of the new 1600 6's. This dealer has presold 25 of these bikes and we saw 6 sitting on the floor waiting to be collected.

More toll roads to get out of town as we head west towards Nebraska.