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Every year, when summer rolls around and the April rains let up, bicyclists can pull on their helmets and gloves and take part in one of the most popular summer pastimes in the country.

But if you're an Illinois biker that is tired of riding the same old trails, fear not! Thanks to a man named David Johnsen, bicyclists in Illinois have a veritable treasure trove of well planned rides right at their finger tips with Johnsen's book, Biking Illinois.

Sandwiched between an attractively colorful and glossy cover, the book is only 132 pages, but it crams in an amazing amount of content. Biking Illinois spends a few pages in acknowledgments, introduction and general biking tips before it gets down to business.

The book features 60 unique rides, sorted by location, and has sections detailing each geographical area of the state (northwest, northeast, central and south). Anyone in Illinois who reads the book will probably have at least one ride in relatively close proximity, as Johnsen features rides from Rockford, to the Chicago lake-front, to Shawnee National Park and everywhere in between.

Johnsen devotes two pages to each ride, and each ride has a quick reference box that immediately gives the readers a quick "at a glance" look at what the ride will encompass. The details include the location, distance of the ride, rough amount of time the ride will take, the surface, terrain and "sweat factor."

The rest of the first page gives a step-by-step breakdown of the ride itself, including a photo or two from along the trail. The second page devoted to each ride is a full-page map of the area, with a clearly highlighted path and well-placed marking that point out tricky areas of the trail (as well as things like rest areas and steep hills).

Each ride is very thoroughly described; on top of being able to effectively direct readers to where they need to get (not the easiest task in the world), Johnsen is also an accomplished bicyclist who knows every nuance of the rides he writes about, right down to when you need to veer a couple feet this way or that to avoid some sort of obstacle on the trail.

I've personally ridden on a number of the 60 trails listed in the book, and I can say that Johnsen's descriptions of not only the trails themselves, but also the areas around them, are extremely accurate and very helpful.

At first read, I questioned Johnsen's sorting method for the rides; my first impression was that sorting them by difficulty would be a better idea, because there are many

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