USES FOR YOUR WEEKEND PASS. Courtney Crowder of the Chicago Tribune suggests a few scoot excursions. The column gives the fares and running times for a trip beginning in Chicago. Many of the excursions are doable at weekends, on the weekend pass, starting from anywhere on the Metra system, if you're willing to devote the better part of a day and evening to it. The Evanston dining scene and the Kenosha lakefront are good ideas any time, although the Kenosha lakefront is more active in summer. Weekends are probably better times to do the Green Bay Trail riding, detraining at Braeside.

This is the stop for those wanting to bike the Green Bay trail. The entrance to the trail is just off the Braeside parking lot and stretches up to Lake Bluff. The trail goes through mostly forests and has very few road crossings, but part of the trail is gravel. The Green Bay trail offers connections to many other trails, including the North Shore bike trail and the Des Plaines river trail, which can take you all the way into Wisconsin or west to Mundelein.

Ah, for the days when you could ride a North Shore Line interurban along the grade separation through Winnetka, past Lake Forest College, all the way to Milwaukee or west to Mundelein.

But as a pioneer of the use of abandoned interurban rights-of-way for bike trails (in those days I was trespassing) I fully endorse the use of interurban rights-of-way as bike trails.