Out Our Front Door's April Newsletter

​Welcome to Spring folks! We hope you have had a good winter and here we come! Overnight bike camping adventures! Our second full-fledged season as an organization has all sorts of adventures lined-up. Six self-supported overnight guided tours, a supported Family Ride, a ride to help some Southside friends maintain a classic Chicago bike trail, and who knows what else! All to purposely educate and immerse in the natural habitats and history of The Lower Lake Michigan Basin Area!

Registration is open for our 2017 Ride Season!

Walk out the front door with your bike and ride! Tours vary from 52 to 200 mile weekends to a state park. Along the way, learn about the nature, history, and architecture from our super rad, knowledgeable guides. Spend your night under the stars listening to the nature sounds of the prairie, dune, or wetland. Then, ride back to Chicago the next day or if your booty is a little sore, hop on that Metra Train and be back in the city in just over an hour. Either way, lets get it while the gettins good!

See All Bike Tours

> > Details and Registration

Upcoming Featured Events

> Bike Camping & Touring Session: A Day in Pilsen...

​May 6th Saturday All Day
The Out Our Front Door Organization will be talking about bike camping at Woman Bike Chicago's 5th Annual Day of Dialogue & Demos. A place and space to learn about different aspects of the Chicago bicycling scene. A round robin of cycling styles from: racing, touring, cyclocross, commuting, plus more. 
​Full Deatisl Here...

A Bike Camp Session in...

> > A day of DIALOGUE & Demos

> Earth Day Major Taylor Trail

April 22nd Saturday All Day
Giving back on the trail we ride on. The Major Taylor Trail.
Accomplish Earth Day on a whole new level.  April 22nd an all day event on Chicago's South Side​.
Including: Architecture Ride | Trail Goodness | Native Plant Speaker | Afterparty Music & Drinks with The Major Taylor Group, Wild Blossom Meadery & Winery and Horse Thief Hollow. 

Giving Back On The Trail We Ride On

> > Earth Day on the Major Taylor Trail

> BFF Bikes Movie Night: Shifting Sands

May 18th Thursday Night. 7pm
Join Us for a one of kind movie night. This locally produced film tells the story of how the historical journey of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore came to be in this documentary titled --Shifting Sands: On the Path to Sustainability. ​After the film, join documentarian and Co-Producer Tom Desch for a Q&A, check out regional bike maps & routes and then go bike camping this season on your own or with the Out Our Front Door Organization to discover first-hand about a place which exists outside all our front doors, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.   Come on out. Go Forth and Explore more #shiftingsands #BikeTheBlueBasin

​Details and Film preview down below!

> > BFF Bike Movie Night

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Featured Park 

​Illinois Beach State Park:
​Welcome to a landscape that changes on every visit, where ice volcanoes, quick sand, ridge and swales develop and shift throughout the year while you ride onto the youngest land in Illinois. This park preserves the last remaining segments of Lake Michigan shoreline left in the state, free of any major coastal engineering, and the last expanse of coastal dunes in Illinois. Home of the Dead River, an area that lets you see with your own eyes what Chicago looked like before European settlement.

> > Il. Beach State Park

Folks We look Up to:

​The Chainlink is the premiere place for cyclists of all types to connect, find rides, events and routes, pool resources, share information, and most importantly foster our growing community.
​
Whether you ride for fitness, for fun, to get to work, to race, to run errands, to reduce your carbon footprint…or all of the above, our hope is that this site will help you meet like-minded cyclists, expand your cycling knowledge base, explore new riding and social opportunities, and most importantly have more fun riding your bike and being a cyclist.

> >  Check out the Chainlink

Meet The Team

​Glenn Schneider
Co-Founder/Vice President
The Out Our Front Door Organization
​
An ultimate adventurer who mostly is powered by peanut butter jelly sandwiches and bicycles. He finished a three year travel adventure that included commercial fishing in Alaska, biking/hiking/hitching California’s Highway 1, and a year teaching/wandering Colombia. He returned to his roots, sweet home Chicago, with an amplified excitement to explore and further recognize the beauty of home and its surrounding area. He has been on multiple long bike rides; including a 1,000 mile ride through the Canadian and American Pacific Northwest as well as numerous rides up to Indiana and Michigan. Presently he is shaping the young minds of Chicago as an English professor with City Colleges and also runs beer/history tours. He rides a 1970s Raleigh racer complete with a Kemps milk crate. Chat him up on the tour about other worldly travels while he shares insights on his hometown, Chicago.

A Bike Camping Community For Chicago and The Lower Lake Michigan Basin Area.
Where does your travelling soul take you'

RIDE. LEARN. EXPLORE.
LET'S CONNECT & DO GOOD