Down Chicago’s Drain

As an experiment, I've set up this weblog to report on progress of the trash boat.
Its been a hassle to try to get this thing to work, but I guess I learned something from the effort?

For most of June, this was about all there was to show of the boat. Working alone at the Chop House with all the neighborhood kids dropping by to distract me, I didn't get much done.

Finally I towed the boat trailer over to Scally Island so Mike could help out. Here's some of the materials he'd collected already for his own boat project.

Laying out the frame. Looks like we need more conduit.

After some deliberation we decided the boat should be propelled by two side paddle wheels instead of one rear wheel. This means abandoning the cool paddle wheel McD gave me, but instead we end up with a boat evocative of the first steamship on the upper Great Lakes, the Walk In The Water:

The Army Corps of Engineers has all the navigation charts for the Illinois & Chicago Rivers online in pdf format. I knew I'd seen these a few years ago, but it took a while to re-find them:

www2.mvr.usace.army.mil/NIC2/ilwwcharts.cfm

On Monday it became clear that we would have to push the launch date back another week. Some of the steps to assemble the boat suddenly became more complicated than they'd first appeared. First of all, getting the pillow blocks for the axle bearings was more difficult than anticipated. Motion Industries, the specialists in such arcane parts, didn't have the size we needed. The larger size would be workable, but they only had one in stock that day.

Another trip downtown, another day, and we were finally able to position the axle on the frame with both bearings in place.

Turns out I didn't plan the frame position very well. There isn't much room to fit the gear so that it doesn't rub against the pipes in back or in front. Fortunately Mike had a spare half-link so we could adjust the chain length so that the axle lies in the center. But now the chain is rubbing against the stays!

After a lot of banging with a hammer and pulling on the pipe bender the chain seems to turn freely.

Hey, the Chicago Tribune is starting a 4-part series on the Ilinois River, on Tuesdays.

Before we can do a float test of the boat we need to finish the side paddle wheels. Once we put the axle in place on the boat it seemed that the first wheel that Mike had made would be a bit too large, so we started over with two smaller kid wheels. First the fins, folded and pressed in a vise:

Now we have a few extra wheels. Hopefully we can give these to someone else for another boat project.

Some photos from last weekend's work on the frame of the boat.

Mike welding supports between the parallel lengths of conduit.

The conduit is very flexible and easily bent wherever we like

Monday night we finished up the ends

And the stern, which will double as a bike hitch when towing the boat to the river

With the paddle wheels finally installed we wanted to take the boat down to the harbor to do a little float test. The evening seemed best to avoid getting in the way of any boaters.

Working quickly, we hitched up the tail to a spare bike, lashed a few paddles and spare boards to the top and made ready to head out.

Its only a few blocks down to the park and on to the harbor.

But as soon as we got to the park and turned off onto the bike path, a cop pulled up in his patrol car. "You aren't putting dat into Lake Michigan!" he said over his megaphone, and I recognized his voice. It was that same cop who closes up the park at Montrose Beach by cruising slowly and intoning from his car in a thick Chicago accent: "Da beach is close! What you guys is doin' here is beyon' me. Scram! Skeedaddle!"

The officer got out of his car and came over to check us out. There was still over an hour before the park closed, so he couldn't figure out what exact reason for why we should leave and get out of his life. "If you guys put dis in the harbor, the marine patrol is gonna have a heart attac'! Dey'll fine you $500 bucks... and confiscate yer craft, too!" Well, it went on and on, him telling us all the trouble we were going to have if we even thought about testing the boat in the water. Never anything specific of why it was against the rules to test a homemade boat there, just that he was not going to leave us alone.

So we turned around in defeat and dragged the boat home to Scally Island. We'll have to figure out another time when it would be good to do a float test without such interference.

But the paddle wheels are working great, on land anyway.

On Saturday we were ready to add decking to the boat. But first, some rearrangement of the flotation jugs. Our little excursion to the lake on Friday night showed that one of the floats was too close to the wheels, which nearly rubbed a hole through. We don't have any of these 5-gal jugs to spare, so we can't afford to lose one.

Last week I was fortunate to find some complete sheets of 4x8 plywood in the alley. We were looking for 1/4" plywood, which isn't so common in the trash. The dumpster where I found the wood had some interesting stuff, so I went back later to check it out, to discover that its the warehouse to a magic shop. They are cleaning out 40 years of packrat accumulations of card tricks, newspaper clippings, puppet stages and bric-a-brac. Pretty neat stuff in there.

So, with our magic plywood in hand we set to cutting the decking.

I had expected we'd be piecing together scraps to make the decking, but with these two full sheets it was easy enough to lay down the boards and simply trim the corners. With a few jigsaw cutouts to fit around pipes, the decking fits perfectly.

While cutting the rounded corners of the decks I noticed again how crooked and asymmetrical our boat is shaping up to be. It bothers me to some extent, as I imagine how sleek and elegant a homemade boat can be. Even the most lowly materials could be coaxed into graceful forms, with the right patience and artfulness to bring out the essence of the material. But I must remind myself that function is the important thing here. That the materials are all basically trash, and it is good enough for them to be used instead of wasted or destroyed. Besides, I know my style of working enough to realize that my tendency towards fussiness often only results in a tendency to not finish things. Let go of symmetry! Let go of plans and expectations! The boat must be finished!

On Sunday we finished up bolting the deck to the framework and then Mike had to head off to work. So I started planning where the gunwales of the raft will go. We had some old 2x4s that a neighbor had given us from a dismantled playground set. However, only one of the boards proved usable. This one had a nice warp to it which would be great for counter-acting the sagginess to the frame that had become more pronounced when adding more weight to the frame.

Once the boat gets into the water it will flatten itself out, and the flexibility of the conduit frame may be of value when riding over waves. But when towing the boat as a trailer, we need a little more stiffness to the frame. The 2x4s will work perfectly, bolted to the frame.

Last night we tried again at a float test, hoping to slip into the park and down the bike path unnoticed. The boat is quite a lug to pull behind a bike, especially so because one trailer wheel is badly out of true and rubbing on the frame. But at last we made it to the harbor! A wandering security guard had no trouble with us trying out our craft, and few of the passersby expressed much interest in the boat.

Rolling the boat down the steep ramp into the water, it was surprisingly stable.

And the paddle wheels worked well. Without any extra gear this thing moves pretty fast.

We chugged about the harbor for a while, meandering among the crowded sailboats and luxury cruisers. Some boaters were having quiet dinner parties on the ends of their docks, but they hardly looked up over their wine glasses as we pedalled by.

Definitely there are some adjustments that need to be made. The paddle wheels, in particular, throw as much water onto the decks as they push backwards. But these are minor things, and should be fixable as we prepare for a Saturday launch date.

The boat still has more work to do, but I think its safe to plan that we'll be ready to go on this Saturday, August 18. So we're planning a launch party for that morning.

3400 N. Rockwell (Clark Park)
Just south of Addison on the east side of the river
10/11am
Saturday, August 18

See you there!

Today's Tribune story on the Illinois River is about the new sport of Extreme Aerial Bowfishing. Guess thats what they do for kicks in Peoria. I am really looking forward to seeing some of these leaping silver carp when we get farther down the river. Our paddle wheel blades are pretty sharp on the ends, it might be like a food processor for flying fish.

The other day I rode up to see the source of the Chicago River. The river has several branches and forks, and its natural source lies far to the north near the Wisconsin border, flowing through the Skokie Lagoons and the Botanical Garden. But it could be argued that the largest contributor to the flow in the river is the Northside Sewage Treatment plant that pumps out an average of 333 million gallons of treated water per day, coming from the entire north side of the city and several suburbs.

Recently the Alliance for the Great Lakes released a report urging the city to change the way it treats its wastewater. The treatment plant cleans the sewage from the wastewater but does little to cleanse the water of bacteria or viruses passing through the system. Most all other cities around the country use chlorination/dechlorination or UV treatment to disinfect wastewater before it is released into open water. But Chicago simply dumps the brew into the river. Some of you Chicago River boaters may have personal experience with these little beasties that can cause gastroenteritis, leptospirosis, salmonellosis, shigellosis, even cryptosporidiosis.

Farther downstream, the river gradually cleans itself up. Below Grand Ave, water seeping through the locks from Lake Michigan gives the river a boost of freshness, only to be lost when passing by the world's largest sewage treatment plant, in Stickney. Beyond there, the river is not recommended for swimming until you get downstream past Lockport.

What surprised me while watching the sewage treatment outflow was all the wildlife present there. In just 10 minutes I saw turtles, ducks, a kingfisher, cormorant, night heron, bittern, all in this little spot.

The fast-moving water entering the sluggish canal must be a magnet for fish. Just downstream of the sewage treatment plant outflow a group of fishermen & women cast their lines. And indeed, I did see a lot of fish jumping and splashing in the murky water.

Just above the scene, the Skokie Swift raced by periodically.

The train provides the best view into the workings of the plant, with its circular settling ponds and aeration beds. When it was built in 1927, it was the world's largest wastewater treatment plant, an honor now held by the plant in Stickney. For now, the only vista I could find was this one, from an asphalt knob near Mount Trashmore, looking across the river at the handsome brick towers of the compound.

Some other boat building projects you all might be interested in:

Punk Rafting on the Willamette River

Rat Patrol Oz makes some astounding bike creations, including the S.S. Mitzie, a floating tall bike couch. Amazing.

An elegantly simple homemade pedal mechanism for a rubber raft, at backyard-invention.com.

Well, another late evening of work on the boat. On Wednesday night it all seemed discouraging. We had added another pillow block near the center of the boat to try to prevent the axle from flexing so much when pedaling hard. But now its harder to turn at all times. Nothing on the boat is very straight, and the shims we had to add to the axle aren't very round, or on center, so it adds up to extra friction. Not such easy spinning as before, even after all the adjustments we tried. We'll just lay on a bunch of oil and hope the drive train smooths itself out in the end.

But Thursday night we were finally making progress and it was fun again. Adding the last details and drilling holes to fit all the last parts. Its looking good. And now it seems again as if it will be all finished tonight and ready for tomorrow's launch. By then the boat should have a name and be ready for the champagne. See you all there!

Saturday the 18th - 10/11am - 3400 N Rockwell (between Belmont & Addison)

Well, we're back in Chicago again. We had some mechanical problems with the boat, an accumulation of breakdowns that left us with only one functional paddle wheel. So we pulled up on a landing in Rockdale yesterday afternoon, just south of Joliet, took the boat apart and Andrew was kind enough to drive down to haul us home just as yet another thunderstorm rolled in.

For those standing on shore, it may seem as if this was a short little trip. 5 days can go quickly when you are doing day-to-day things. But from the on-the-water perspective it was a full adventure enough. Of all the bike touring, canoe trips and camping trips I've been on, this was by far the most challenging endeavor. Riding the sewage-filled Chicago River and the brimming Des Plaines in full flood on a not-very-maneuverable homemade boat was not the simple float trip we'd imagined.

So with hindsight muddling the details, I'll try to write down some of our day by day travelogue for your enjoyment.

Saturday morning started off cool and clear. The weather for the last few days was such an improvement over the heat and humidity of the previous week. The boat was pretty much ready to go from our work on Friday night, so we hitched it up and headed down to the river.

At the landing at Clark Park a bunch of friends were waiting to see us off. It was fun to see so many people and share the excitement of heading out on a journey.

There were some last minute supplies to get, but it meant for more time for everyone to give the boat a try. Foamy brought his own little barrel boat to toodle around near the landing too, and Tim joined us for the day in an inflatable kayak.

While Nathan and I were goofing around on the boat, zigzagging up and down near the landing, I immediately broke one of the broomstick oars in half, a sign of how flimsy most of our improvised equipment really was.

After a champagne toast we christened the boat the Water Bug, and loaded it up. A little flotilla of friends rented boats at the landing to join us on the water. It was a charming sendoff.

It was good to get underway, pedaling downstream slowly. It was quickly obvious how much faster and more graceful the canoes and kayaks were than us, and they easily outpaced us. But the steady churning of the paddle wheels did push us forward at a deliberate pace and we made our way past the bridges and avenues one by one downward towards downtown.

In time the rental boats turned back upstream, with only Tim left to accompany us. As we chugged along in the slow current, he glided ahead and behind, checking out little tunnels and rusted ladders, exploring the industrial landscape along the river.

And then the rain began. Just a sprinkling at first. We put up the canopy in front and the tarp in back, neither of which was waterproof, but scattered enough of the drizzle to make it not unpleasant. Taking turns pulling on the oars in front or pedalling in back, the day stretched on and we seemed to make little progress creeping around the back side of Goose Island.

Passing a rowing team boatshed, two athletes pulled away on rowing machines in a doorway under shelter from the rain, with their tunes cranked up, watching us. Having broken an oar already, we knew not to row too hard ourselves, but this boat needed all the extra push it could get as we struggled our barge downstream at a snails pace. Our paddle wheels were geared down as far as possible, but still it was like riding a tricycle uphill all day long. Even with styrofoam filling the gaps in the paddle wheels, the fins threw water onto the decks, which flowed across in a steady stream to a puddle right under the seat of the pedaller, sitting in a low lawnchair basically in the water.

Finally we neared the tip of Goose Island, where cooperative yacht club guards allowed us to tie up at the Montgomery Ward building just to get a bite to eat and take a break in the late afternoon. We chatted a bit with a few well-heeled boaters, one of whom exclaimed "I put $500,000 into my boat, and you probably put $50 into yours! Thats great!"

After some lunch we pushed off again down river. Nearing downtown we entered the tour boat circuit and one by one they paraded by, each with the same spiel on the PA system: "On your right, you'll see the Merchandise Mart, which was once the world's largest office building..." Occasionally tourists came out on deck in the rain to peek at us with a camera flash, but mostly the big boats ignored us and kept to their scripts.

Approaching the main stem of the river, the skyscraper canyon walls grew higher and the boat traffic thicker. Each slow passing boat still threw a wake which bounced off the cement river walls and swept our decks repeatedly. The little raft was very stable and bobbed in the waves like a little cork, but that didn't mean that we stayed dry.

Now the drizzle turned to a downpour. We made for cover under one of the many bridges downtown, but as most of these are simply covered with gratings, the rain just fell on down, and through our canopies onto us. We were quickly soaked from the top and bottom. Still, the boat traffic kept streaming by: water taxis, tour boats and motor cruisers, waves bouncing everywhere. In our struggle to hurry out of this hectic freeway I crumpled another cheap oar blade and snapped another in half, leaving us only one complete oar. Meanwhile, the gears of the pedal crank were slowly working themselves loose, and the top chainring now flopped and wobbled from side to side with each turn, sometimes even throwing the chain or seizing up with tension.

But the rain made for an interesting downtown scene. Great geysers of water shot out of spouts on various levels of a parking garage at Union Station, while underwater drains frothed and boiled up from below the surface along the back of the Civic Opera House. Pedestrians on the bridges above hurried onward, watching their footing for puddles, never looking down at the strange craft bouncing in the water below.

Eventually the rain died down somewhat and we proceeded again. Slowly we crept on down out of downtown past River City and the frantic traffic faded away. As the day dimmed we made our way to the open land beyond Roosevelt Ave, where Tim scouted out a rough beach with a grassy camping area on the bank above. The climb up the crumbling bank was a bit treacherous, and I fell to the waterline when it collapsed while hauling up gear from the boat, but all in all it was a perfect campsite. Tim loaned us a kayak paddle to replace our broken toys, a good rope, some tools and a waterproof container for our food, then folded up his boat and caught a ride home.

Here we were, camping out in an empty field nearly in the shadow of the Sears Tower. Pretty strange. And fortunate that we'd made it this far in our slug of a boat. The skies cleared and we watched the sun set over the Amtrak yards, where the trains whinied and snorted all night long under orange street lamps bright enough to light our camp. Now in the clean evening air, party boats cruised down the river, with decks alight with food and loud music. From up on our bank standing next to the tent they looked so close by, but nobody seemed to notice us, absorbed in their floating enclosure of drinks and noise.

Sunday morning dawned with waves of drizzly clouds. From our camp we woke early and decided to go across the river to Maxwell Street Market to look for some odds & ends, like a new lighter, batteries, a 15mm socket wrench and perhaps a real canoe paddle to replace our useless trash oars. Accessing the bridge required bushwacking through a regular tallgrass prairie regrown on this abandoned industrial area. The 6-foot grasses and weeds were beautiful, but so dense and laden with dew and rain we were soaked by the time we found a gap between two walls to scale up to Clark Street.

After a hearty breakfast at the good ol' White Palace, we perused the soggy booths of the market.

I've never been down here too many times, but its easy to see that the market has changed in recent years. On all sides the old market is being pushed by construction of big box retail stores and parking lots for Whole Foods, Staples and Home Depot, the prepackaged consumerism that is the very antithesis of the improvisational market scene. Much of the old-timey junk peddler aspect of the 1950s & 60s faded away even before the latest gentrification, but there is lots of new life in the Mexican immigrant booths serving up chilaquiles and ranchero CDs. Its easy enough to find a cheap pair of socks and off-brand house cleansers, but in truth there is little of value for river boat sailors at the market. We found a socket wrench and a gaudy rain poncho and left.

It was good to be out on the river again. The rain seemed to hold off for a while and the skies lifted a bit as we puttered on southward past railroad lift bridges toward Chinatown. Passing the Amtrak yards the security guards stopped their trucks to watch us pass below. They'd probably been watching our parked boat all night and were intrigued to finally see it underway. At Ping Tom Park we watched some canoeists awkwardly loading their boat from the high walls along the water because there is no good landing point there.

Farther down the river, we passed a customer dock at Lawrence Ave Fisheries. If only we hadn't eaten such a big breakfast, it would have been fun to tie up and enjoy a catfish sandwich. There seemed to be a few places where recreational boaters might tie up or stop awhile, but nobody was around. The river was pretty quiet for a summer Sunday morning. And it started to rain again.

We hurried on around some parked barges as the rain increased, making for shelter under the Dan Ryan freeway overpass. Once we made it there we found the canoeists we'd seen earlier, hiding from the downpour as well. Their names were Carlos & Greg, they offered us beer from their cooler, and we ended up hanging out under the bridge for an hour or more as the heavy rain continued. They said they plan such excursions every month or so with various other friends, float trips with a lot of beer and some delicious food, perhaps some sushi and a bottle of wine. They regaled us with tales of day trips on suburban rivers, encounters with the natives in the land of SUVs and other misadventures. It was fun to sit out the rain with them, and Carlos admitted he might even be inspired to build a raft from scraps of wood left over at his deck-building job. Eventually the rain lightened a bit, they headed back upstream and we down.

Mike was sheepish about sporting his new Bears poncho, but as the rain continued, there really was no avoiding it.

Passing by the mouth of Bubbly Creek and down toward the Sky Factory, we began to notice a lot of debris in the water. A basketball, baseballs, wrappers, even a slime encrusted rubber duckie. And we saw water plants riding on the flood, just like I'd remembered from Disney movies in elementary school.

But the most disturbing flotsam heading downstream with us were the innumerable condoms and tampons drifting just below the surface of the water. If there had been just a few, perhaps they could have washed in off a trash-filled parking lot, but there were so many we assumed it meant that the rains had overwhelmed the city sewer system, which dumps raw sewage into the river from dozens of combined sewer outfalls at various places on the banks.

The first towboat we saw on the river. The crew of the Kiowa comes out to watch a strange homemade boat float by.

As the river turned west out of the city, it seemed to pick up speed a little, and the going seemed easier. One improvement was that we figured out that the wobbling gear on the crank could be alleviated by pedalling backwards for a while, so we turned the boat around every so often and continued.

Chicago has so many bridges! Here's a cool quadruple lift bridge for 8 rail lines.

From the water level, the open gratings make it look as if the cars were flying overhead in the haze with a roar.

Onward and onward down Chicago's drain, the river became a long straight canal hemmed in by brush and rusty industrial detritus, a separate world cut off from the neighborhoods and the rest of the city. At one point we tied up to a rusted staircase and climbed up to explore a derelict barge oil pumping station, just to break up the monotony of the humidity and drizzle.

Here and there, pipes dumped more water into the flow. A sign proclaims that this is a combined sewer outflow, and to expect sewage discharge in rainy weather. If you see an outflow during dry weather, there's an 800 number you can call to report it. All along the river we saw the standard warning sign against any human contact with the water, in places where you could only reach if you had already contacted the river water. Its a Catch-22: if the Water Reclamation District assumes the water is too filthy for recreational purposes, they are not legally required to bother cleaning it to the point where anyone might be able to touch it, since the standards are different for rivers used for recreational purposes.

Beyond Western and California Avenues we passed a triplet of turntable railroad bridges which once rolled on an axis of little iron wheels in a ring.

We passed two coal-fired power plants along the river. A smaller plant in Pilsen, then the far larger Crawford plant at Pulaski. Each spewed a fast-moving effluent, shoving us across the river. The water was warm, and the entire river seemed as humid and tepid as bathwater.

As the day came to an end, we found a rugged landing point and climbed up through rubble and weeds to an abandoned boat yard under the Central Avenue bridge where we could stay dry for a while at least. Just as we lugged our gear up the bank it began to rain again.

All night long the rain fell by the cupful and bucketful, but we felt clever at finding this little hiding place under the bridge. The humidity was so high nothing really dried out, but at least it didn't get wetter. Periodically I was awoken by rumbling diesels of towboats on the water below us in the night, or freight trains on the tracks to the other side of our camp, or trucks on the bridge above and airplanes blasting off from Midway, but all in all it was a snug place to sleep in the rain.

In the gauzy morning we looked across the river at the lush lawns of the sewage treatment plant campus. But really our scrappy campsite was more comfortable than all that green grass. Looking down on the boat, tied to a tree nearby, we could see that the water had risen a foot or more overnight.

While making breakfast a boat came tearing down the canal. Bigger than the usual speedboat, it was a working yacht belonging to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, charging at full speed. We ran to the wall overlooking the river but there was nothing we could do. The enormous wake thrown behind the boat turned into 3-foot breakers as it crashed entirely over our little raft, smashing it against the rocks again and again mercilously.

Climbing down the rough bank, our trail from last night now under the rising water, we finally made it down to inspect the damage. The right paddle wheel had taken the brunt of the beating and was now bent and mangled. It took some twisting and spoke tensioning to get it back straight again and we were ready to set off.

So many things built along the river are now abandoned or simply battered into ruin. The river wrecks everything. The old boatyard where we'd camped looked as if it had been an elaborate undertaking in its day, with concrete foundations showing where there had been buildings, crane footings, stairs and levels. How many years ago was it still open? Maybe only ten? How quickly do these endeavors fall apart?

Other than that Reclamation District boat we saw no other traffic on the river. On the right (north) bank we knew that the world's largest sewage treatment plant was there, but there wasn't anything to see. Just trees along the bank. Kingfishers and green herons flew back and forth along the trees in pairs. Occasionally a fish jumped. It was a picturesque natural scene as we drifted by the many outflow tunnels of the sewage treatment plant.

Finally we crossed under the Harlem Avenue Bridge and headed to the bank to find a place to begin our portage. We knew that up ahead the shipping canal narrowed to half its width and would not be a pleasant place for little boats to play among the barges and powerboat wakes as we'd seen this morning. So we had planned to portage the boat on its little wheels over to the Des Plaines river, which runs parallel to the shipping channel nearly all the way to Joliet.

But these steep banks! Nowhere were there easy places to pull the boat out of the water. All along the river the sides were made of broken concrete and rebar twenty feet high, topped with a gravel road. We pulled our little bike off the back of the boat and used it to scout out the portage ahead. Mike found a way to the other river by following the road downstream, but it involved getting the boat around a gate and a railing. In the other direction, the road lead onto busy Harlem Avenue and eventually to a forest preserve. But first we had to pull the boat up the rocks and put its wheels on.

We unloaded all our gear and hauled it up the bank. How did we end up with so much useless junk? So many little things were thrown on the boat at the last minute, but with the constant rain we'd never really had the chance to sort them out. A last minute paper bag of odds-n-ends was quickly destroyed in the rain and boat wakes splashing over the deck. But now we had to pick up all those loose pieces and bring them up the rocks.

Finally we were ready for the boat itself, when suddenly that dreaded Reclamation District yacht appeared again, tearing back up the canal. I jumped off onto the rocks, but fortunately this time the yacht slowed for us, lessening the wake, and we received no more damage as they kicked up their engines again and sped away.

So we took the front of the boat and pulled it forward up onto the rocks. This was simple enough when the stern was still on the water, but as the boat came up out of the water it grew increasingly heavy. With one of us lifting the side, and another pulling from the front we inched up the jumbled concrete incline, scraping and cursing. Sometimes it would even slide backwards, and we used up all our strength to get it back up a few inches, until it seemed we were stuck. It was just too heavy for only two people to lift up this rugged bank.

Just then a car stopped on the road above. I thought it was just a curious passerby, but it turned out to be a Water Reclamation District cop, who mentioned that we were trespassing on District property, but seemed intrigued by what we were doing. Why were we hauling all this junk up the bank? We explained that we were trying to portage to the Des Plaines to get out of the Sanitary Canal. A good idea, he agreed, and offered to help us. So with the cop pulling on the front rope, and Mike and I hefting the axles on the sides, we scraped and dragged the boat all the way up to the grass beside the road on top. What an ordeal! And what a blessing that a stranger showed up at just the right time to help out!

Thoroughly exhausted, we had some lunch and made a run to get water at a nearby gas station and decide what to do. Eventually we got the trailer wheels back on the boat (for some reason more difficult than it had been in the garage), nearly lost one of the wheels as it fell back bounding down the rocks and bounced to a stop just beside the water. Hitched the trailer back to the bike and loaded up all the gear, and we were ready to go.

We decided that the Harlem Avenue route would be better, despite the busy road, so with one of us riding the bike, and another running behind giving a little extra push we rolled on down the road across some train tracks, down over a little bridge over the scummy remnants at the edge of old Mud Lake and out onto Harlem Avenue right by the monument to the Chicago Portage used by Joliet and Marquette and a hundred other voyageurs to cross the continental divide between the Great Lakes and the great rivers leading to the Mississippi.

But that was long ago. Over the last hundred years, the Chicago Portage has been obliterated by the filling of Mud Lake, the construction of the Sanitary Canal, reversal of the Chicago River, the rerouting of the Des Plaines and building levee systems to keep it all in place in high or low water. Right now we were riding backwards along the left hand side of Harlem Avenue, a little bike pulling a wide trailer against oncoming traffic. We had found a break in traffic, expecting the stoplight ahead to change and hold up the speeding cars, but it never did. Right now there was a huge panel truck coming right at us, without changing lanes. I was readying a dive for the shoulder in this game of chicken. I don't know what Mike was planning to do.

Suddenly one of the oncoming cars flashed its lights and an undercover cop rolled down his window. "Boys, I suggest you get off the road!!" he barked at us. But even he succumbed to the panic of onrushing traffic and raced off with the rest of them. Finally the cars cleared for a moment and we made a break for the little gravel road leading up to the train tracks that was our goal.

From there we hurried up the two-track road, hoping the cop hadn't seen us, a ramp up the embankment to run alongside the railroad track and on down to a low bridge over the Des Plaines. Hooray! We made it!

Finally we'd made it to the Des Plaines River. I was surprised how high the murky waters were, but there wasn't much to do about it. Now it was starting to rain, and the mosquitos had found us.

Initially we'd thought about pulling the boat down a dirt bike trail to a muddy bank under the trees, but when we saw the railroad embankment at the end of the bridge it seemed easier. Away from the worst of the mosquitos anyway. So Mike took the back end of the boat as I held the rope on the front, lowering it backwards down the steep gravel. In a minute it was clear that we were exhausted and not thinking very well. The heavy luggage and food boxes slid down the deck and tumbled off onto the rocks. The food crate, heaviest of all, flipped upside down at the edge of the water, popped open and spilled all our things in a wet pile, ruining our crackers and cigars. Even the tools to assemble the boat were lost in the brown water, and it took a long time of feeling about blindly to rescue most of the little pieces from the flooded river.

Fortunately our trail had put us downstream from the railroad bridge. The rising waters made it so low we would have had a hard time floating underneath. The flood brought a new anxiety to what might be around the bend. Perhaps an impossible passage under a bridge, or a log jam. Would we have time to assess the situation before being swept into it?

For now we chugged out into the river in the rain, boat reassembled and ready to go. The Des Plaines was a welcome relief from the monotony of the shipping channel. This was a more natural looking river, with muddy banks, lots of trees, and meanders hiding what might be around the bend. The water was cool to the touch instead of sickly warm. Flowers and nettles and random flotsam grew along the banks in homey scenes.

The Stevenson Expressway had followed us all the way from downtown. Here it ran alongside us, just out of reach behind a screen of trees. Commuters raced on, oblivious to our little boat floating along calmly. The roar of the traffic grew through the afternoon, and we were overjoyed to finally reach the bridges where the cars turned north and left us behind. As we drifted below, it was fun to look up and see the passengers do a double-take and point us out to their families. At the last bridge, a truck driver stuck in traffic tooted his horn and gave us a big thumbs up.

In the afternoon the sun came out a bit and the day at last became pleasant. We were finally able to pull a few books from the ship's library and read for a while. While the stern pedaller could absent-mindedly crank the pedals forever, the bow paddler had to be wary and look up from the book every few sentences to poke away the many floating logs and keep us on a steady course. But it was relaxing to know that no powerboats or barges would be in our way on this river.

On and on we pedalled, in a flooded forest landscape. There were only a handful of houses visible from the river for miles. Only one house that was actually on the water, where a couple farm dogs tried to chase us, then realized that we were on water only after they were up to their elbows. A white-haired man with snowy beard came out of a shed to see what was up, and he waved, and complimented us on our unusual boat.

There were so few dry places to make a landing of the boat. Suddenly on the bank there looked like a perfect little campsite, with a bank to step out, a fire pit, even a caboose parked in a little mowed picnic area. But we hadn't seen it in time. Charging across the current at full speed we were swept too far downstream, and our paddling and pedalling weren't strong enough to make headway against the rushing floodwaters. This was a one-way journey, and we now realized we had no chances to do things twice. We must be ready beforehand and in the right spot on the river to act.

As we approached Willow Springs in the dimming light we encountered three kayakers paddling upstream who told us about a takeout point ahead. We just slipped below the old Willow Springs Road bridge with inches to spare above our heads and tucked into the flooded picnic area of a forest preserve.

Now about the camping spot. The forest preserve cops seemed to be on the prowl, so we hid the boat awkwardly in a thicket of stinging nettles, hauled our gear across the old road and found an open dusty area under a bridge again to set up the tent and cook another canned dinner. And there was the shipping channel once again, only a few hundred feet parallel to the river.

Now we were glad to be off it. Just up from here the canal narrowed to half the width as when we were on it this morning. And here its sides became solid walls of huge stone blocks as far as we could see downstream. No easy place to get in or out of a little boat. In the dusk, a string of 8 barges glided down, just 20 feet of open water away from us, hardly room for a small boat to pass safely. Just as we watched the lead barge was about to run over a floating refrigerator or some other flood trash. With a tiny crunch the plastic crushed and was dragged along as a bug smacking a windshield. Far in the rear a towboat muscled the barges onward, its twin sad spotlight eyes steady on the route ahead.

In the exurbs the morning rush hour begins at 4am. The booms and bangs I'd taken to be thunder in the night increased and revealed themselves to be traffic over the plates of the bridge above us. It was a restless night of worries of where I have come from and what might lie ahead, tossing in the thick humidity of night under a creepy bridge.

A walk down to a nearby gas station turned up only Wonder bread and crummy carrot cake. So we decided to hike across the bridge into Willow Springs, on the prospect of finding the internet at a coffee shop. Turned out it was closed, but just getting out of the woods for a bit lifted my spirits and we found more appetizing breakfast at a new convenience store. From high up on the bridge we could see the three parallel water highways heading to Chicago: the original natural Des Plaines river, the old I&M Canal, and the current Sanitary Shipping Channel. All were filled with the same murky brown water and fallen logs, either still or in steady motion downstream.

Returning to the boat, we packed up and headed out into the channel again. The water had gone up again overnight so that it seemed easier to get out of the weeds than it had been getting in. A reassuring light drizzle let us know that we were back to life as usual.

The morning was a leisurely float around islands and meanders as the rain gradually drifted away. A flock of waxwings caught bugs in the air right in front of us. High in the treetops an osprey eyed us nervously. We passed several heron rookeries, with egrets by the dozen and herons of all sorts in the trees and along the shoreline.

One more bend and then our leisure came to an end. From the binoculars we could see a low railroad bridge set on many piers, clogged with flood-borne logs and the flash of whitewater. If there was no safe way through, our journey would be at an end. Visions of overturning and being sucked into a sieve of logs played in my mind. But we tied up on shore well above the bridge and walked a gravel road down to scout it out. We couldn't get too close to the water, just enough to see that there was a passage between the second and third piers open enough for us to make it through.

Donning our life jackets and battening the hatches, we pushed out onto the water again. How maneuverable would our boat be in dodging obstacles? It seemed such a slug when we were on the flatwater heading downtown. The portage proved the boat was heavier than when we'd started. And yesterday afternoon's landing attempt showed how little power we had to paddle against this current. Drifting closer to the chute there would only be one chance. Pointing the bow forward down we went. In midstream we decided the right passage around that log looked better than the left. Paddle, paddle! We hit the edge of an eddy behind the bridge pier and it bought us enough time to move around the log with only a bump of our tail. Whew! I was glad to move on and see that bridge gradually recede around the bend.

Suddenly across the river we caught a glimpse through the foliage of a sparkling tall white pyramid, an ornate Hindu temple, looking like some fantastic ancient jungle vision hovering in the greenery over the river. And then it was hidden again by trees and vines.

Pedalling on steadily again, even the more tangible towers of picturesque Lemont up on the bluffs to the south faded away as well. These towns along the Des Plaines grew up along the old I&M canal, not the river, so that they seemed remote, even inaccessible, to us as we passed on by.

Far ahead we could see another bridge. This one looked very high, a span soaring across the entire river valley on enormous pilings. At least we wouldn't have to worry about bumping our heads on this one. Looking at our charts we couldn't quite place where we were on the map or which bridge this might be. But as we drew closer and looked ahead with the binoculars we could see another bridge beneath it, crossed by construction equipment, and then it seemed like a dam spanning the entire river, piled up with logs. Were they damming the entire river to work on this bridge? What is going on? How could we get around this?

Landing the boat well upstream, we pushed our way through the thickets onto a dirt road and hiked on down to the construction site. It was a massive undertaking, and we realized that this was the new I-355 project connecting interstates 55 and 80, the newest, farthest flung ring road circling Chicago. Let loose the sprawl floodgates! South of here the monster freeway tears through farmland nearly to Joliet. Suburban commuters have been rooting for this pork project for a dozen years, but it will bring nothing but more than endless ticky-tack houses, Wal-Mart warehouses, wasteful pavement and acres of gridlocked traffic where there once was rich farming land.