- Tennis with Seen Meng at 8:30a ~ 45 minutes
- Bike Tour: Queen's Ride by The Campaign for a Free and Clear Lakefront
Stat:
Course condition: Hot hot hot, but fun...
How I felt:
(the 5-point scale)
- Physically 4
- Mentally 3
- About my nutrition 3
- About my sleep 3
How hard did I work? 6
(the 10-point scale)
Note and reflections:
The heat raises up very quickly this morning. Amidst the raising sun, Seen Meng and I play tennis for ~ 45 minutes before he has to leave. I continue my way to Gym and stretch for ~ 45 minutes. This morning gym is clouded by Gay Game Swimming participants. Gay Game is held in the city running this weekend to the next.
After a quick shower I get brunch in the lab; then I head home to prepare for a bike tour--Queen's Ride-starting at 2p. After blending my smoothies and pack it in a bottle, I rush out on my bike to downtown. The wind is a bit strong though the ride is smooth enough. I meet a group of people at the Queen's landing. A lady in her crown jewel helmet and a very nice red cloak. She has a dog dressing in red stylable helmet at the end of her bike (later the queen loses her cloak, sadly). She is our group leader, Kathy Schubert, and her dog is Joey. The tour starts by God Save The Queen sounded from two speakers at the rear of a bike. The classical music continues with us througout the ride. There are ten riders but one leaves us in the midst of the queen's journey.
Though the queen cross lakeshore drive from her landing to Buckingham Fountain (names are not related) during her visit 5o years ago, we cannot do this because the part of this section is blocked by concrete pillars and snow fench. We continue to various section of the downtown before heading south to Hyde Park. It does not complete the planed route because the queen has to be back for some business when we get to the Museum of Science and Industry. I leave the group there for home.
The ride is fun but there is not much descriptions about places we see during the trip, but Kathy suggests us to visit the open Letter to Queen Elizabeth (which is pasted below). Most of the people seem know one another. Later, some will join a fund raising event at Goose Island Brewery (L.A.T.E. Ride is also tonight after midnight). The Cute Joey is sitting on the bike most of the ride. She is a very friendly dog. The rear of the queen's bike shows a sign read "Bicycling Against Oil Wars!"
Find out about The Campaign for a Free and Clear Lakefront at its website.
Biking to the University
Joey enjoys herself##NOTE ABOUT THE TOUR
Queen's Ride
Jul 4 2006 - 11:16
When: Saturday, July 15 - 2PM
Where: Starting at Queen's Landing 500 South Lake Shore Drive
(Opposite Buckingham Fountain)
Follow the route taken by Queen Elizabeth II and her entourage when they visited Chicago in 1959. We'll go as far north as Banks St. and as far south as Midway Plaisance. Mileage is at least 25 miles at a leisurely pace. Leading us will be Kathy Schubert, Chicago's foremost Queen Elizabeth impersonator. Her royal wish is to see all participants wearing their bicycle helmets.
Contact kangarookathy@yahoo.com for more info.
---
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE QUEEN
(http://www.kangarooconnection.com/QueenLetter.html)
This Is Our Chicago . . .
First printed in the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday, July 6, 1959
An open letter to Chicago's distinguished visitors, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip.
Dear Friends:
You're not going to be able to see all of Chicago during your brief visit, but you will see much of its beauty and strength. You will travel through streets and view buildings and sites that figure importantly in the Chicago story of yesterday's growth and today's progress.
In this letter we will attempt to tell you something about these structures and scenes. We hope it will serve as a guidebook for the routes you will take.
The first steps you take on Chicago soil will tell you a great deal about the city and its people past and present.
You will be walking on land where once was water. We filled in the lake at your arrival point with debris from the Great Fire of 1871. It was a great disaster but it was the springboard for the construction of an even greater city, and the creation of artificial land out of the wreckage was symbolic of Chicago's refusal to quit.
You will be coming ashore near the eastern terminus of the $183,000,000 Congress Expressway, our first eight-lane highway. It is a part of a billion-dollar city-county-state series of high speed roadways now in the making.
You'll See 'Front Window' First
Your first view of our town will be our "front window" - the vast expanse of skyscraper office buildings and hotels on the west side of Michigan Ave.
You will see the grass and flowers of Grant Park, our "front yard." In the nearly two-mile stretch from Randolph to 11th there is only one building on the park side of Michigan. That's the Art Institute, which you will visit.
We have our beautiful uncluttered lakefront vista because of the foresight of the city's founding fathers and the courage and wisdom of men of a later generation.
In 1840--three years after Chicago got its city charter - action was taken to preserve the downtown lakefront property as a park.
Later, in the 1880s when attempts were made to blot out the view with buildings, A. Montgomery Ward spent a great deal of time and money, opposing the invasion in the courts. He was successful, as you will see.
Ward was a founder of the great mail order house that bears his name. His and similar enterprises, including the world-famous Sears, Roebuck & Co., make Chicago the mail order capital of the world.
Gifts by Other Great Merchants
During the day you will learn how other merchants who gained great wealth through their business acumen sought to repay the city by providing cultural and educational opportunities for all the people.
You will visit the Museum of Science and Industry in Jackson Park. This, the world's finest presentation of science in its application to industry and modern living, was made possible by Julius Rosenwald.
En route to the museum on S. Lake Shore, you will see a cluster of three handsome buildings in Grant Park. The John G. Shedd Aquarium, erected in 1930, was the first and largest of its kind in America. The same is true of the Adler Planetarium and Astronomical Museum, also opened in 1930. It was financed by Max Adler who, like Shedd, was a merchant.
The third building, the Chicago Natural History Museum, one of the five foremost scientific museums of the world, was established by another merchant, Marshall Field I.
The Art Institute, chartered in 1879 and in its present building since 1893, was helped greatly through paintings purchased by Martin A Ryerson, attorney, and Charles L. Hutchinson, banker.
Businessmen financed the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, established in 1891. Across the street from the Art Institute is Orchestra Hall, home of the symphony since 1904. In the Institute's garden you may catch a glimpse of a sculptural work called "The Spirit of Music." It honors Theodore Thomas, first conductor of the orchestra. It pleases us to know that in 1835, when we were still a village, we had concerts by the Chicago Harmonic Society.
City Paved Way With Its Bridges
Like Venice we're a city of bridges. We have 81. Most of these are a lift type designed originally in Chicago and copied throughout the world.
You'll be crossing the Chicago River on the Michigan Av. bridge. The river flows backward. We reversed the flow in 1900, to prevent pollution of our lake water supply. We understand that feat has never been duplicated.
The bridge is by the site of Fort Dearborn, erected in 1803 and an important factor in our beginning days.
At various places you will see our city flag. It has four stars and two blue stripes on a white field. The stripes represent the river. The stars symbolize these events: The establishment of Fort Dearborn, the Great Fire, the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, and A Century of Progress in 1933-34.
Chicago defied a depression era with the Century of Progress exposition. It drew 39,000,000 visitors and was up to that time the only international fair anywhere to wind up with a profit.
You'll travel on Wacker Dr., built in 1926 as the national's first two-level highway. Once the Richmond Hotel stood near the intersection of Wacker and Michigan.
There, in 1860, the queen's great grandfather, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, stood on a balcony to greet Chicagoans. More than half of the city's population of 109,000 paraded in his honor.
We're Second City in Nation
Chicago then had an area of 17 square miles. Now we occupy an area of 224 square miles. Our present estimated population is 3,743,000, making us the second city of the nation. We're the heart of a six-county metropolitan area with a total estimated population of 6,559,000.
It's estimated that the citiy has a yearly population gain of 35,000 and the suburbs are growing at the rate of 65,000 a year. In 1958, permits were issued in the area for 31,135 new homes valued at $489,700,000.
Last year the area invested $198,930,000 in building and enlarging factories and commercial buildings. During the last five years we have led all metropolitan areas of the nation in industrial expansion. Our wholesalers last year had sales in excess of $20 billion.
You'll be interested in the Chicago Public Library, on its present Michigan Av. site since 1894. We had no free library before the Great Fire. After the fire, our library system had its nucleus in 8,000 volumes sent us by the queen's great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, and authors and publishers of Great Britain.
You'll pass alongside the underground tracks of the Illinois Central R.R. Since 1858--10 years after we got our first road--we have been the rail capital of the Nation. Daily our roads handle 30,000 freight cars, 65,000 intercity passengers and 300,000 suburbanites who work in the city.
You'll have a glimpse of Meigs Field on the lakefront, one of our three major airports. Midway has long been the world's busiest, and the active but still not completed Chicago-O'Hare International Airport is destined to be the world's largest.
Our Tallest Building --601 Feet
In the vicinity of Randolph and Michigan our tallest structure will loom before you. The Prudential Building, erected over the IC tracks, soars to 601 feet plus a 324-foot TV tower.
Chicago, as you may know, is the birthplace of the skyscraper. Here in 1885 there was erected the first building utilizing the metal skeleton principle.
During the day you will be able to see the 80-foot statue of Ceres, goddess of grain, atop the Board of Trade at LaSalle and Jackson, the world's busiest grain exchange. We got into the grain business early. On the riverfront between the present Wrigley Building and The Sun-Times Building we shipped our first cargo of wheat in 1839.
Chicago is called America's bread basket. We have the national's largest butter and egg market and we are the foremost corn market. Chicago is no longer "hog butcher to the world," as poet Carl Sandburg phrased it, but it continues to be America's biggest livestock market.
You will tour two of the finest of our 75 shopping centers. Together, they had sales last year of more than $5 billion.
On downtown State St. you will be in the most highly concentrated shopping center on the globe. The 1,000 acres of shopping space include seven of the world's largest department stores. Daily some 500,000 people move along the intersection of State and Madison, which we call the world's busiest corner.
Your auto will take you along the tree-lined "Magnificent Mile," an 11-block stretch of Michigan Av. from the river to Oak revitalized in 1947 with an investment of $200,000,000. You will see fashionable shops including some that are branches of firms in your London.
Union Jack Will Be Flying
You may be able to see the Union Jack flying from a 16th floor balcony at 720 N. Michigan. That's legally British soil, for it is the office of Robert Whyte Mason, your consul general here.
On the balcony warching your procession will be invalids and elderly persons with blood ties to the British Empire. The 1950 census showed that the Chicago family included 16,900 natives of Canada and 23,000 natives of England, Wales and Scotland.
Just north of the consulate you will see the water tower erected in 1867. When Oscar Wilde was here in 1882 he called it a "monstrosity and abuse of Gothic art." But we're fond of it and we call the area about it "Towertown."
East of Michigan on the Near North Side, built on land reclaimed from the lake, is the Northwestern University Medical Center. Here are three hospitals--Wesley Memorial, Passavant Memorial, Veterans Administration Research--and the university's school of medicine and dentistry.
On the West Side, in a section you will not have time to visit, we have other hospitals and medical schools on 305 acres. Although it is still unfinished, it already is the world's foremost medical center.
A West Side landmark we wish you could see is Hull House, the city's first settlement house and second oldest in the nation. Established by Jane Addams in 1889, Hull House was patterned after the Toynbee Hall settlement house in London.
Vast Slum Clearance Under Way
Chicago is engaged in a vast program of slum clearance, neighborhood conservation and public and private housing projects.
Less than two blocks west of the Amassador West Hotel, where you will have lunch, work is progressing on the demolition of sub-standard properties that will be replaced by 1,400 modern living units. This is one of 20 redevelopment projects under way.
From S. Lake Shore, you will be able to see new skyscraper apartments, some representing public housing and others private building but all for families of modest incomes. The Chicago Housing Authority has completed 31 projects and plans 33 more in various sections of the city.
Slum lands of the Near South Side are being uprooted and an area of more than a square mile is being rebuilt. Housing financed by private capital includes the 100-acre Lake Meadows, the Prairie Shores project of Michael Reese Hospital and the 435,000,000 development of the Illinois Institute of Technology.
Further south some homes have been completed and others are under construction for the Hyde Park-Kenwood urban renewal project.
You'll See University of Chicago
On your drive, which will show you some of our 412 parks and 29 miles of lakefront, you will tour the Midway of the University of Chicago campus. The university was established in 1892 and is one of the largest and best-known of the 34 colleges and universities of the metropolitan area.
Here you will be at the birthplace of the atomic age, for it was under the stands of the athletic field at the University of Chicago that man in 1942 first controlled the energy of the atom. You will see several buildings recently erected on the campus and you will learn that the university is embarking on still another program to erect more than 11 buildings at a cost of $49,500,00.
The publicly operated physical properties of the city are of necessity expanding and improving to keep pace with bustling people, business, industry and institutions. Last year the city spent $150,000,000 for improvements of streets and street lighting, waterworks, parking and recreation facilities and the like. This is the first step in a five-year capital improvements program that will see the expenditure of $852,924,000.
There is a great deal more we could tell you about Chicago and there are many places we would like you to visit if you had the time. We hope you will have a happy day and an enjoyable sight-seeing trip.
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