 The Wild Scallions playing last year's Hootenanny. They'll be back again this year WelcomeGreetings y’all, It’s officially Hootenanny week! Goodness, can’t wait to rock out with y’all tomorrow. Plus, our Day Ride to the Skokie Lagoons and Earth Day ride to the Major Taylor Trail are right around the corner. Then it's May and forget about it! Endless Adaptive day rides, 2 bike camping trips, and a bunch of other rides, led by both OOFD and our partner orgs. Read on to learn more.  The Hootenanny is Tomorrow!We already have over 147 folks coming out! That means there are only about 18 tickets left before it officially sells out. And tickets won’t be available at the door. This is one of the best parties of the year. Huge thanks to our sponsors Wheel and Sprocket, SRAM, Vern and Sonny’s Bike and Snow, as well as Ride Illinois, Lendimi African Safaris, and Cosmic Bikes. For your $45 ticket, you get two 2 beverages (beer or NA options), catered taco dinner from Casa del Pueblo (vegan and gf options available), 1 Raffle Ticket, and live Bluegrass music compliments of Wild Scallions. The event is ADA accessible, kids free, dogs welcome. If you can’t come out and want to help us reach our goal to raise $15,000, all donations given online today and the day after the event will count towards us reaching that goal of $15k. So if you can’t come and want to donate, please do here. Also, we have over $5000 in raffle prizes! Check all of these rad prizes out:
 Upcoming OOFD EventsAdult Day Ride to Skokie Lagoons Saturday, April 19 The first Adult Day Ride of the year. A casual early-season jaunt to the Skokie Lagoons, plus lunch at the brewery and BBQ restaurant/brewery Une Année. It is sold out, so keep an eye out for our future day rides as they tend to fill up super quick. More deets on this ride here. Special Event: Book talk with author Heidi Beierle, slow travel expert Saturday, April 26 Join us for this talk at Wild Blossom Meadery in Beverly (right after our WTWTG service day at the Major Taylor Trail). The speaker, Heidi, works at the intersection of transportation, tourism, and recreation to create and communicate opportunities for everyone to access the outdoors, regardless of any barriers or limitations they may experience. She is uniquely qualified to speak about slow travel having pedaled solo across the U.S. studying bicycle tourism, rural economic development, and historic roads. We are super lucky to have Heidi in town with us. She will also have signed books available for purchase at the event. Register for free here. Where the Wild Things Grow Ride for Earth Day Saturday, April 26 Celebrate Earth Day with Out Our Front Door on a bike ride and service day with the Major Taylor Trail Keepers. This is I think our 8th annual Earth Day with these awesome group of bike and trail enthusiasts. Sign-up here. Autism Speaks Empower Summit Saturday, May 3 We will be out at this huge event at Soldier Field in partnership with Autism Speaks. We’ll have our adaptive bikes on hand to give some test rides and spread the word to the thousands of folks in attendance about our bike adventures, especially the inclusivity aspect of our adaptive, family, and now adult bike camping trips. “Your participation in the Empower Summit & Challenge means we can continue to stand alongside those living with autism and their families. Together, we can drive change and create a more inclusive world.” More details and registration here. Monthly Hang at Ping Tom Park in Chinatown Tuesday, May 6 from 730-10pm Swing by to meet new cool bike adventure folks or see your OOFD pals or both. New folks very much welcome. More deets and free registration here. Bring your own beverages and/or snack. If it's wet or really chilly, our back-up location is Skylark bar down the road from the park. Keep an eye on our social media the day of for the possible shift inside. What Lies West - Adult Overnight May 3-4 A beloved, shorter overnight along the Prairie Path out to the lovely Blackwell Campground in DuPage County. This ride sold out already, but you can read about what yer missing here. Lots of Adaptive Rides throughout May May 16 - LADSE schools in the Western Suburbs We will be doing day rides with students with adaptive needs at their school. May 17 - KEEN Chicago Any K at the Rauner YMCA (2700 S. Western) We will be out with our full fleet of adaptive bikes riding with kids and families at this amazing and inclusive sports and exercise event led by the incredible KEEN Chicago. You and your family should sign-up here and come out! May 21 - Nature is Accessible! at Little Red School House with Forest Preserves of Cook County We will be out tabling and giving test rides on our adaptive bikes at this huge adaptive sports event. Visitors of all abilities are invited to celebrate nature through accessible activities. Drop-in. The forest preserves new GRIT all-terrain wheelchairs will be on site to test on the trails along with other adventures. More details here. May 31 - Adaptive Day Ride with Keen This is becoming an annual tradition to do an Adaptive Day Ride with our biggest and best Adaptive Program partner, KEEN Chicago. We will be riding our adaptive bikes with some families from the KEEN Chicago community on the North Branch Trail. The Good Land May 16-18 A weekend bike packing trip from Chicago to Milwaukee, with a campground party in Racine and bike bar crawl in Milwaukee. More details and registration here. Only a few more spots left on this famously fun ride. It sells out every year. Battle to the Dunes June 7-8 Is it too early to get hyped for the big Battle to the Dunes?! I don’t think so. Can’t freaking wait for one of our biggest bike adventures of the year. A bike ride & campout from Chicago to Indiana Dunes National Park. More deets and registration here. Family Ride to Camp Sullivan June 20-22 A 3-Day Family Bike Camping Adventure. The first of the year. This is a great, chill, short distance ride from the Brainerd neighborhood out to Camp Sullivan in Oak Forest, IL. More deets and registration here. Family Ride to Camp Dan Beard June 28-29 A 2-Day Family Bike Camping Adventure to Camp Dan Beard in Northbrook, IL. A new ride for us this year. More deets and registration here. SWMI July 10-14 A 4-night bike camping adventure/vacation into Southwest Michigan. One of the best bike camping trips you could ask for, skirting the coast of our beautiful lake in the heart of summer. More deets and registration here.  Volunteer Gratitude - Allison HogikyanAllison started guiding with OOFD last year and contributed huge on the big ol’ Sun Harvest ride. Then, she started this year off as a guide right away on our first overnight of the year, the Shamrock Cycle parade march and campout at Camp Sullivan, where I think she fixed maybe 4 flats!? She brings such a helpful and inquisitive spirit to all the rides she is on as well as a wealth of bike knowledge and can-do spirit when it comes to fixing any bike issue that comes up on a ride. She is a star volunteer not just at OOFD, but also helps out big time at two of our beloved partner orgs, Working Bikes and Blackstone Bike Works. OOFD is so lucky and grateful to have Allison on the crew. She’ll be helping to serve up the tacos at the Hootenanny tomorrow, so if you see her, say hey, and thank her for being such a rad volunteer and part of the OOFD community. In her own words, “Allison grew up in Ann Arbor, MI, surrounded by trees and some “pretty excellent” lakes. She is sufficiently enthusiastic about the outdoors to have made it her profession: she currently studies atmosphere-ocean interaction with numerical models of Earth at the University of Chicago. Allison is deeply grateful to the community at Out Our Front Door for welcoming her to Chicago with lots of excellent travel companions and pre-made adventures after she moved in fall 2023. Her scuffed All-City is named Blaze and has been all over the Midwest and East Coast with her (he does have new bar tape since this photo was taken, though). Ask her about improving your bike mechanic skills at a local nonprofit!"
Big News and March/April RecapHow much do we love the Forest Preserves of Cook County? This much (my arms are extended out all the way out to my sides). They are dream partners. Not only do we camp at their campgrounds all the time, they also are a delight to work with. And they have the CLIC camping gear that they lend out which we utilize a lot because it helps us breakdown barriers that our riders might face when considering going bike camping. And they are next level with their inclusivity and accessibility (see Nature is Accessible! event above). We could go on and on. But right now, our gratitude is through the roof because they are partnering with us and our Adaptive Program. They have granted us a permit to park our brand new, $14,000, 20 foot trailer, at their Whealan Family Aquatic Center (near Caldwell Woods, ie Devon and Milwaukee), where we will be able to store our fleet of adaptive bikes. This will help us get our bikes out of our partner bike shops (thank you Cosmic Bikes and Bikes N Roses for the free storage over the years) and consolidate them in one place for easy access. Plus, they will be right on the North Branch Trail, so we’ll be able to simply meet adaptive riders at the trailer, pull the bikes out, and go for a ride instead of renting a truck and hauling the bikes to any and all adaptive rides. This will help us get so many more adaptive riders out in nature on our bikes and majorly reduce the logistics on our end in doing so. Huge huge thanks to the Forest Preserves of Cook County. They are as awesome as it gets.  Other Awesome Events Upcoming Working Bikes Hot Wheels April 19 Working Bikes is hosting a HOT WHEELS event, featuring beautiful bikes, races, challenges and best of all PRIZES & PIÑATAS! Semillitas Outdoors Bike Rodeo with Latino Outdoors and Blackstone Bikes April 27 Participants in the Bicycle Rodeo at Blackstone Bike Works can expect a fun and hands-on experience focused on bike safety and riding skills. They will navigate obstacle courses designed to help them practice important skills such as braking, signaling, and maneuvering through tight spaces. OOFD will be out supporting the event. Southwest Collective’s Bike Brighton Ride from the Park District Headquarters May 3 Join the SW Collective as they kick off biking season from the new Park District HQ for a six-mile, family friendly bike ride. DIVVY bikes available to a limited number of adults, first come, first served. Illinois Bike and Walk Summit May 7-8 in Springfield, IL This is the state’s most important conference related to biking and walking. Professionals, advocates, and individuals from communities of all sizes are invited to attend the conference to learn, collaborate, and identify creative solutions related to biking and walking in their community. Glenn will be presenting alongside CDOT and Blackstone Bike Works in a session called Bicycle as a Tool for Adventure, Learning, and Inclusive Community Building. If you are going and want to camp with the OOFD crew a couple miles from the conference center instead of staying in the hotel, you certainly are welcome to join us. Reply to this email, and we'll get you the deets. Evanston Bike Club’s Ride of Silence May 21 On this date riders all over the world will ride in silence to remember riders who have been injured or killed on the roads and to support cyclists and cycling. Starts at Wheel & Sprocket in Evanston. Skokie Bike Network’s Tails from the Trails at Sketchbook Brewery July 13th (story submissions due May 27) This is a bike storytelling event at our beloved partner and beer sponsor Sketchbook Brewery. We love stories and beer and bikes so this is so up our alley. Submit a story and tell it to this lovely, family friendly crowd at this great brewery.  Y’all! We get to live here. Within this vibrant community of organizations that are so consistently welcoming us into amazing, inclusive events. How lucky are we? Not only do we get that lake, and the prairie and the dunes and endless bike trails off into nature, but then we get this incredible ecosystem of nature and bike loving individuals and orgs. Freaking Chicagoland. I love you so. Hope to see y’all at The Hootenanny tomorrow. And if not, catch you out there pedaling through these lovely spring popping streets. Glenn and the whole OOFD crew 
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
-EXPLORE MORE-
"To immerse , educate, preserve & advance the history, culture, trails and native habitats of the Lower Lake Michigan Basin Area" Trail Series
All
|
RSS Feed
A Bike Camping + Nature Community for Chicago and the Lake Michigan Area
Founded in 2015. A 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
www.oofd.org
Founded in 2015. A 501(c)3 non-profit organization.
www.oofd.org