I have spoken to several of you via private messages about the riding and racing scene in the chicago area and I appreciate all the great info all you have given me. It led me to do a crit in Winfield a few weeks ago and I loved the scene there the whole weekend.

The question at hand is commute times, distances and how often do you ride and how far do you drive to ride? I'm not going to ask where to live because that will only give about 50 different answers from 50 different people.

The only riding in the area I've done so far is in the winfield for the crit race and around the Fox River area starting in Geneva and St Charles.

I'll be local starting sometime in mid to late 2011 so I'm just trying to get some ideas on how you guys juggle your commutes, work and riding.

It's very easy for me right now to just ride from my front door and get about any ride I would want. The same goes for MTB since I have a 8.5 mile MTB course 4 miles from my front door which has 900 feet of climbing.

The thing that really trumps me is your racing scene there. I have to drive everywhere to race. Probably a minimum of 1-2 hours to just get to a road race or crit.

I'm doing my first cross race this weekend and it is nearly a 3 hour drive. It's raining today and the forecast is rain on Saturday for the race. I am so stoked.

Anyway, thanks to all the people that have helped me so far with the area and I hope to say thanks to even more of you as time progresses. I will be in the area from time to time as the next 12 months progresses so I hope to meet several of you and buy you some beer.

I'm too damn old to be great at racing but I'm having fun with it. Did MTB racing forever and just moved to road racing this year. Going to Cat up to 4 after my next race in a couple of weeks. Yes, we still have road, crit and circuit races still available here but the window is closing in about 3 weeks.

It's X and Fall MTB racing.