Your city/hometown

[DirtDiva]

Just above where you type in your message there's a little square with a picture that looks like it's supposed to be a couple of mountains and the moon. Click on that and type in/paste in the web address of the photo you want to add. (Or if you understand how to work HTML tags, the code is IMG.)

[Lise]

Chicago's my home town. I was born in Park Ridge, a NW suburb, moved around as a kid to Syracuse NY and Minneapolis, but back to Lake Bluff, a northern suburb by age 13, and then into "the city" at 18 for college, and never left. I love my home, and I think it would be a beautiful city to visit. We don't have the natural beauty that so many of you live in, and I envy that. But...there's no place like home, right?

CrazyCanuck asked if it's windy all around Chicago...it's the prairie--only thing that stops the wind is the lake, and when it blows off the lake--WHOA! What gets me is that sometimes it seems to blow from all directions at once. In those times, my feeling is: Surrender Dorothy. You're not going to overcome it, so hunker down and let it blow!
About Oak Park--I agree with Betagirl. It's a lovely town. My sister lives there. My grandma was born and raised there. Her dad was a building contractor that worked with Frank Lloyd Wright, and they grew up in a house designed by Wright, "The Balch House". The Hemmingway family lived close by, and Ernest's younger sister, Carol, was close friends with my grandma. My aunt is named for her, and my middle name is Carol, for my aunt. Hence...(six degrees of separation)...my connection to Ernest Hemmingway!

[Polly]

littleblackduck - wow! what a fantastic place to live.
I live in Rugby UK - and is the place with the famous school, where the game of rugby was invented. We have lots of historic buildings, though the town itself was medi-evel it grew much larger in Victorian times. There isn't much riding around here, a few bridle ways - you have to strap your bike to a car and drive about an hour in any direction to find somewhere decent to play

Just found this on the web - told me things I didn't know too! Cool

Rugby UK

[westendgirl]

This is my first post here. I have lived in numerous places. Born in Ireland, moved to Nova Scotia, high school in Victoria, BC and have called Vancouver home for almost 10 years.

It is a beautiful city, and the Capilano Suspension Bridge is nowhere near as scary as ziptrekking at Whistler - though not as fun either!

[crazycanuck]

Hey polly-are you a rugby fan by chance???? I just figured out where the Ellis trophy originated!!!!

Westendgirl-where in NS did you live?? Still can't get enough of halifax nor the east coast-Def want to visit nfld again...Welcome!!!

c

[betagirl]

Lise, cool story.

I realized the other day riding up north on Oak Park Ave that the Mars candy bar factory is up there (technically in Chicago though). I knew it was in the area, but didn't realize it was so close. I wonder if they have free tours Another favorite on the border of Oak Park and the next town (Forest Park) is the Ferrara Pan Candy company, maker of the Lemonhead, Atomic Fireball, and Boston Baked Beans (ew). They do have a reject store and on certain days you can smell them making the candy of the day.

Oak Park-is the whole area around Chicago v windy??? (only know chicago from ER)

Lise summed up this part of town nicely. I experience less wind around here than when I ride out in the farm areas. Which it doesn't take very far to get from Chicago to farmland. The basic saying is there's Chicago, and the rest of the state (which is mostly corn and soybeans). But downtown, especially when the wind is blowing off the lake, look out. The waves get pretty big as well, where Lake Michigan is usually pretty calm especially compared to the ocean. We also get something called "Lake effect snow" in the winter when the wind blows across it, generating huge snow storms that only happen up to about 10 miles inland.

The hospital that ER is based off of is Cook County hospital, which is a public "free" hospital that serves those without insurance. You could go there if you have insurance also, though I'm not sure why you would. There's a couple private hospitals right next door to it. It was housed in this cool looking, but old building up until a few years ago when they built a nicer, more high tech hospital. The bureaucracy didn't stay in the old place unforutnately, and the waiting times and other crap that people have to go through to get care remain. I took my friend there in college and they had a "take a number" system like at a bakery, and we got ours and it was 143. I asked the lady what number they were on and she said 39. Our wait would have been approximately 9 hours. We went to another hospital and she figured out all the bills later. So the good thing about cook county is free or cheap care, the bad thing is the wait and the quality of what you get. The craziness that ER shows going on isn't that far off, but I don't recall the medical staff being as hot as Noah Wyle

[westendgirl]

Hey polly-are you a rugby fan by chance???? I just figured out where the Ellis trophy originated!!!!

Westendgirl-where in NS did you live?? Still can't get enough of halifax nor the east coast-Def want to visit nfld again...Welcome!!!

c

I lived in Halifax for a year, then Wolfville for 4.

[bikerchick68]

This is my first post here. I have lived in numerous places. Born in Ireland, moved to Nova Scotia, high school in Victoria, BC and have called Vancouver home for almost 10 years.

It is a beautiful city, and the Capilano Suspension Bridge is nowhere near as scary as ziptrekking at Whistler - though not as fun either!

Hi Westendgirl and welcome to TE! Oh... Ireland... I got to do a 6 day cycling tour of the Connemara region in 2004... it was AWESOME!

OK... so explain "ziptrekking"... I know about Whistler (someday I WILL snowboard there!) but haven't ever heard of ziptrekking...

I love Stanley Park too... first time I went this little rodent was scurrying around... I asked my sister what animal it was and she said it's a squirrel. HUH? I knew it LOOKED like a squirrel, but it was the wrong color! That was my first experience ever seeing a BLACK squirrel Here they're all brown...

can't wait for my trip to Australia this summer... should see all sorts of animals I'd never see here!

[arnaew]

I live in Adelaide, which is nestled beween the Gulf St Vincent (which flows into the Great Southern Ocean and the Mt Lofty Ranges (aka the Adelaide Hills). I live in the foothills. Adelaide is the cycling capital of Australia, with the Tour Down Under and the Australian Championships held here each year. The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) cyclists train here, and amazing world and Olympic champions like Kerrie and Anna Meares live here. Stuart O'Grady is also from here, as is Lleyton Hewitt (tennis) and Jason Gillespie (cricket, a game we former colonials play with gusto). Oh, and Andy Thomas is our astronaut (flew on last space shuttle).
We host the Adelaide International Festival For The Arts which includes Writers Week and Artists Week, and the Adelaide Fringe Festival, which is huuge - Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland is the only one larger (we suffer from a tyranny of distance). We also host WOMAD, a world music and dance festival held in particular countries aross the planet, initiated by Peter Gabriel. With all that music, it's quite appropriate that we're also a sister city to Austin, Texas (I went to SXSW in 2002 - fantastic!). Um, there's a big car race too, but I just don't get it. Early next year we're hosting the World Police and Fire Games - all those big strong cops and fireys - swoon!
An hour north and south of here is the Barossa Valley vineyards and the McLaren Vale vineyards respectively - a trip the locals make quite regularly! The TDU runs through both these regions, while the Aust champs are in the Adelaide Hills (which also boasts a very strong viticulture history).
We enjoy what is termed a mediterranean climate - long hot summers, balmy autumn (fall) and spring and quite cool winters (which feel bloody cold to me!). Thousands of bikers for about nine months of the year, from the hills to the coast. Then hundreds.
And why are we known as the City Of Churches? South Australia was the only free colony settled in Australia - the others began as penal colonies for the British. Lots of very radical thinkers flocked here from all over Europe, and one of the cornerstones of the colony was that every person, regardless of their religion, had the right to worship whom they pleased, and to build places of worship to that effect. Hence, amongst the first substantial buildings, were mosques, synagogues, temples, and eastern and western churches. Very soon, tis true, the public houses far outnumbered the churches, but the sobriquet is about the variety, rather than the number, so all's well! If you ever decide to come to the Tour Down Under (remember there's a century for the public to ride over the same route as the pros), give me a hoy.

[DirtDiva]

Very soon, tis true, the public houses far outnumbered the churches...

Well, it is Australia...