Our

Origins

Out Our Front Door began in 2015 with a simple idea on the back of a napkin: “To immerse and educate in the history, culture, and the uniquely beautiful natural habitats of the Lower Lake Michigan Basin Area through bicycling.”

In 2015, two friends from the Southwest Side of Chicago returned from traveling, and hopped on their bikes, determined to keep their adventure spirit alive and find the natural beauty of their home. They didn’t want to travel to some far off place to “be in nature” or to “have an adventure.” Most importantly, they wanted to share that spirit of adventure and discovery with their fellow Chicagolanders.

So these two friends hopped on their bikes and started to build a community of nature and adventure lovers that wanted to learn about, immerse in, and care for our local habitats and history. And help us all realize that adventure begins, right here, out our front door.

Read co-founder Glenn Schneider's story below.

For many of us, I think our bikes were our first ticket to adventure.

The first time I was able to cross the street with my bike, my sense of adventure and liberation was soaring. I didn’t really know what those words meant. I just felt it in my bones. Adventure. I was seven years old and was just pedaling my gray Huffy with the cool splatter paint design across the street and around the corner to my friends house. A few years later, I was riding 10 blocks with friends, across not one but two busy streets, to the comic book shop to buy pogs.

Some years later, I had outgrown that gray Huffy and had graduated to my dad’s firetruck red Schwinn mountain bike. I was in high school and a couple friends and I would ride bikes around the neighborhood all night long. Wiggling through the streets of the southside of Chicago, sneaking into cemeteries or golf courses. Just exploring.

One of our first big international adventures together to Machu Picchu
Road tripping from Big Sur to Sequioa in California

We slowly started to branch out to the quiet, dim streets of Oak Lawn or wander along every tree lined street of North Beverly, the yellow glow of the street lights giving us glimpses of the beautiful mansions and the surrounding Dan Ryan Woods. One night we got back, and the small black bike computer on my handlebars read 40 miles. I told my best friend and biking buddy, Andrew, “Dude, we just rode 40 miles tonight.” “What, no way.’ “Yes way.”

That got Andrew and I thinking. What if we did those miles in a straight line? And so not long after, we were rolling out at sunrise and heading to Andrew’s family’s summer trailer in Antioch, IL, just on the border of Illinois and Wisconsin. It was a beautiful, steamy June morning. My summer break from my second year of undergrad at UIC had just started, and Andrew had weekends off at his union engineering job for Local 399. We were headed off on our first big bike adventure.

And that attitude of adventure just kept growing. That attitude found me biking 1000 miles from my Uncle's home on Vancouver Island, through the state of Washington and much of Oregon. Andrew and I found ourselves dreaming up bigger trips, further and further afield. Not necessarily to bike in, but to immerse in new places and experiences. Long road trips or a flight out west or even a couple of trips to South America, together or alone. Always seeking adventure.

Finally, the big adventure.

After I finished up a couple years of AmeriCorp volunteer work with City Year, and two years in grad school at UIC for Literature, I left Chicago on a one way ticket to Alaska and spent a summer commercial fishing for salmon. Andrew quit his union job and joined me the following year in South America. All in all, I spent about three years in pure adventure mode. From a 400 mile bike ride in Northern California, a month-long solo camping trip deep in the backcountry wilderness of Sequoia National Park, farming in Mexico, and even a year teaching English in Colombia, mostly at a coal mine in the desert on the border of Colombia and Venezuela. A freaking adventure. Through and through.

And for me, just like when I was home in Chicago, being called to the grand adventures away from home, now I was on the road, and Chicago was calling me back home. And I was getting mad. Because I felt like I was just grass is greenering the heck out of my life. I can’t be in Chicago without being called away, and now I am away, and I’m being called back to Chicago. What the heck!

Commercial fishing in Cook Inlet, Alaska
The first ever OOFD overnight crew heading to Chain O' Lakes in 2016

“Adventure was an attitude.
And it could exist at home.”

But alas, Andrew and I gave in. The siren song of our home got us. But we were determined to figure out a way to keep the adventure going while at home. If we can walk the streets of South America with that twinkle in our eyes of being in a new place, and an attitude to attack each day as a possible adventure. Why not here in Chicago. Find the beauty of our home. Adventure was an attitude. And it could exist at home.

And very importantly, we wanted to find the natural beauty of our home so that we didn’t have to live the rest of our lives staring at a map and booking expensive flights to Colorado or Chile to have an adventure in nature. We needed to figure out how to do that here at home. So when we returned. I personally made a promise that I would not leave the states of Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin or Michigan for two years. As a 30 year old, I didn’t own a car. So we were back on our bikes. Adventuring around our hometown, our home region. Exploring its marshes and prairies, dunes and oak savannas, with a new perspective.

To keep that adventure spirit going, Andrew was on a mission to do a big bike ride in Illinois. After much research, he had patched together a loop that went back up to Antioch, where we had done that first trip, but this time we would bring our camping gear and stay at Chain O’ Lakes State Park.

Andrew and I had always been very into nature and history, so along the ride, we stopped to read the historical markers or get in close to check out a plant or admire an especially beautiful native ecosystem as we rode through. We found ourselves in conversations with forest rangers, geologists, biologists, historians, and cyclists. Gathering up information like sponges. When we got back from this 200 mile weekend, we knew that we needed to share this with others!

So we got to work researching the ecosystems and history of the areas we rode through and started to develop extensive scripts with educational spiels about the local history and nature. Through this learning, we fell in love with our home in a whole new way. We no longer thought of Chicago just as a culturally vibrant city surrounded by boring cornfields. We instead were able to see the beauty in the prairie. We learned to recognize that our home,  the lower lake Michigan Basin Area, was one of the most biodiverse places in the country.

And on May 14-15, 2015, we pulled together a random smattering of acquaintances and friends of friends for our first pilot ride to bike and camp at Chain O’ Lakes State Park. After a beautiful and challenging weekend, we asked our first group of participants what they thought. Is this a cool idea? Is it something we should pursue? And their resounding answer was yes!

From there, Andrew and I dove in deep to further establish us as an official organization. He built out a website, got custom art made, and even came up with our name. Out Out Front Door. We spent a good part of 2015, our first year home from abroad, working on this idea. And by 2016, we ran four rides, for free. We paid for the campsites out of our own meager pockets. We just wanted to get more feedback, see if this idea could work, see if others would be into it as much as we were.

We started in 2016 with 4 bike camping trips with 50 participants and by the end of our 2024 season, we had run 23 overnights with 557 participants, just in that one year!

We got about 50 folks out on those rides in 2016. By 2017, we had 8 rides including a family overnight. We were recruiting and bringing in volunteers that wanted to see this project get off the ground. By 2018, we ran an epic, 100 person bike camping festival to Starved Rock, and we officially got our non-profit status. We were growing, but we also were teetering. We were one-hundred percent volunteer run, and it was getting to be too much. And sadly, after the 2018 season, Andrew left the organization. It felt like we might fall apart. We were a brand new board of directors, most of us had zero experience on a board of a non-profit. But we banded together. We vowed to slow things down, get back to basics, and really build us something that was sustainable.

So we got to work to build on the foundation from our first three years. We brought in good people, structure, and really established our mission and values.

Glenn and Ahleli crossing the Wisconsin border on the first official OOFD ride
Caption caption

Once we felt in a good place, we wrote a future looking 5 year plan for years 5-10 which was all about making OOFD sustainable through program growth and bringing on an employee. We grew non-programming revenue, became more radically inclusive, and stewarded volunteerism. We succeeded as we were able to slowly scale up to bring me on as a full-time Executive Director, brought on heaps of next level volunteers, and even started an Adaptive Program. We learned how to write and win grants. And we grew, in a sustainable way. We started in 2016 with 4 bike camping trips with 50 participants and by the end of our 2024 season, we had run 23 overnights with 557 participants, just in that one year!

We are solidly a mission and values driven organization. We don’t do anything without it living up to our core WAVE values - Welcome, Adventure, Volunteer, Educate. We plan to be here for years to come. And as our mission says, “we welcome you to join us on our immersive, inclusive, and educational bike camping adventures. We aim to deepen your reverence for the region by exploring local trails while learning about the culture, history, and habitats native to the beautiful Lake Michigan area and beyond.”

Our Team

Guides, Educators & Adventure Seekers

Our team is made up of passionate cyclists, nature lovers, and visionaries who believe in the power of adventure. Our staff and volunteers create the experiences and connections that make our rides unforgettable.

Meet the team