How I came across the monk driving his yellow-and-green submarine on wheels

The pitch: Did you know that Illinois ranks 18th nationally in the consumption of green bean casseroles?!

The reply: No, and I don’t care — and neither will a single Sun-Times reader.

When that’s the quality of story ideas (yes, that was an actual pitch) littering your email inbox, it’s probably time to hit the road.

Even with the advent of the internet, social media and AI, the best stories often come simply by closing my laptop and getting outside. That’s how I met Father Ephraim in early 2024.

I was driving south on Halsted near Irving Park, when out of the corner of one eye, I glimpsed something resembling a giant green-and-yellow ice pop gliding along the street. We were traveling in opposite directions and so I almost kept on going. Curiosity got the better of me; I made a U-turn.

Mouthing, “I’d like to talk to you. Can you please pull over?” toward a narrow panel of clear plexiglass and making a series of exaggerated hand gestures, I eventually got him to stop.

He lifted the lid on his pedal-powered velomobile. When he stepped out, I’m pretty sure something like this came to mind: “God, thank you.”

Here was not some perfectly quaffed tech entrepreneur ready to offer me an “exclusive” story about his sleek invention, but as I say in my story, a man wearing “a full-length black cassock and a hand-carved wooden cross dangling from his neck. His salt-and-pepper beard is Gandalf-long. And he speaks softly, the words sometimes trailing off — befitting a man who values silence.”

Father Ephraim’s story just got better and better. He is a Greek Orthodox monk who, until coming to the Northwest Side in late 2023, had lived with a community of nuns on a remote Alaskan island. Oh, yes, and he has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from MIT.

When I met him at Saints Athanasios and John Greek Orthodox Church in Old Irving Park, where he was a priest (he has now left that post and is traveling in Europe), he offered me a cool beverage, cookies and a very long, handwritten list of the pros and cons of riding his three-wheeled contraption.

He was gracious and open — so much so that I wasn’t entirely sure if he knew what he was getting himself into by talking to a reporter. He had a request: Could we not use his name? His parents didn’t know he was riding around Chicago’s busy streets on a tricycle, and he didn’t want them to worry. I gently explained that the story wouldn’t work if it was about a nameless priest. He said he understood and relented.

Even when I’d finished talking to Father Ephraim, I wasn’t 100 percent sure I had a story. Velomobiles aren’t an everyday sight, but they’re not new either. In the end, I remembered my total delight and surprise at the incongruous image of an old-world monk stepping out of his high-tech machine.

Readers agreed, particularly enjoying the video of Father Ephraim navigating Northwest Side streets, a video that drew thousands of viewers to TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

Father Ephraim liked it too.

“The good news is that my parents never saw your article or your video … so they are not worrying. :),” he texted me a few days later.

I had been thinking about Father Ephraim from time to time, wondering if he was still using his velomobile. I worried too. On streets rumbling with trucks and SUVs, his tricycle is like a canoe in a shipping lane.

So I texted in early November. He was in Poland, but heading to Greece the following day. He said he’d left his velomobile with a friend in Chicago. Despite almost being hit on a number of occasions, he said he misses riding his tricycle in the city.

“It was such an enjoyable way to do errands while simultaneously getting exercise, fresh air and many delightful greetings and comments from everyone,” he wrote back.