Congratulations. I've only done one century ride (also solo, about a year ago), but I could totally relate to the part about making it home short of the century mark. I think I only had about 1.5 miles to go, but it was about the worst 1.5 miles ever! I think just the fact that you've seen your home in spitting distance makes something psychologically snap.

I was riding through Skokie/Wilmette on Sunday, guess I missed you by a day. If you want to do another round-trip century sometime, I'd suggest skipping the initial bike path section, and going straight north to Wisconsin. I'm not sure how far north you live, but it's probably somewhere around 50 miles to the border, and riding to another state and back makes a nice goal. I wouldn't really recommend riding out northwest, even though that's where I live and I don't want to discourage riders out here; we definitely need more of them! But if you rode out 50 miles, almost all of it would still be through suburban hell. Not that going north isn't mile after mile of suburban hell too, but there just seem to be a lot more bike facilities (and bikers) on the North Shore than there are out here.