Out Our Front Door Newsletter - January

The New 2024 Ride Flyer By OOFD Volunteer Mimi Stocker

Welcome

Hope January has treated you well. Things keep rocking over here at OOFD during our “offseason”. We have a lot of super smart and caring volunteers putting in the behind the scenes work to make sure the 2024 ride season is amazing. Our first bike camping trip of the year, the St. Paddy’s Day Parade and Overnight, is just a month and a half away! One overnight has already sold out and another one only has a few spots left.

We did our annual winter Where the Wild Things Grow ride and service at LaBagh Woods during those chilly days of January. The monthly hangs kicked back off in January and there’s one next Tuesday at Reed’s Local. Read on to hear about some good news on the fundraising and grant front as well as hear us shower one of our longest standing volunteers, Miles Talty, in gratitude. Oh, and we have a venue and date for the Hootenanny fundraiser in April!

Featured Ride: St. Paddy’s Day Parade and Overnight: March 17

Join us for some South Side Irish festivities + bike camping. We will have a spot to march in the South Side Irish Parade down Western Avenue with the OOFD banner! We’ll gather at the start of the parade near 103rd and Western and walk/ride our bikes in the parade which ends at 115th Street and Western. 

Once we reach the end of the parade, we will get some lunch, and then ride out to Camp Sullivan in Oak Forest to camp, which is about 12 miles from the end of the parade route. We’ll have dinner and enjoy a fire with some beverages and get up on Monday morning in our tents, have a light breakfast, and pedal back to Beverly, where the parade started. From there, the riders will head home with options to ride back north with some OOFD folks or even catch a Metra or the Red Line train.

For the parade march, the more the merrier! So there are lots of free tickets if you just want to come and walk with us in the parade and head home that same day. The paid tickets are for those that want to walk in the parade AND bike camp. 

You can learn more about the event and register for the parade and/or the camping here.

OOFD guide Aly tossing some Bucktown onto the fire at the WTWTG event at LaBagh Woods Photo by Glenn Schneider

Recap of Some Winter Events

We didn’t have any bike camping trips this past month though we did have a surprisingly great turn out of about 20 folks to the January hang at Skylark on a cold, snowy wintery night. The Volunteer Committee shared some cool history and overview of upcoming events at the hang. More of those to come this year. 

We are learning that November and December are the months for non-profits to focus a bit on fundraising with both Giving Tuesday and the end of the year being important times of the year that donors are looking to generously give to the orgs they care about. Between our fundraising efforts over the last few months, we have been able to fundraise over $5000 which is more than half of our annual goal (not including the coming Hootenanny fundraiser event). Thank you to all the amazing folks that donated to put us in such good shape on the fundraising front this year. And thanks to Patagonia for providing awesome swag for us to raffle off as a part of the end of the year online fundraising campaign. 

We did have one ride this month. We partnered with LaBagh Woods and Arc’teryx Bucktown for a Where the Wild Things Grow ride which is becoming a yearly tradition. We had a crew of 7 folks brave the single digit temps and ride the 6 miles up to the service, where we were met by the dozens of welcoming volunteers and some of the best site stewards in the region. We chopped invasive Buckthorn and satisfyingly tossed them into a huge bonfire and were even treated to hot, hearty, homemade chili by the site stewards. After service, we rode over to Old Irving Brewery for a snack and beverage.

Miles cheersing an OOFD sticker on one of the first Good Land Rides to MKE Photo by Emily Ransom

Volunteer Spotlight: Miles Talty

This month, we would like to shower some gratitude on one of OOFD’s longest serving volunteers, Mr. Miles Talty. Miles is kinda a walking manifestation of adventure and a welcoming spirit. He is a big proponent of many other OOFD values, especially Type-2 Fun and Party. If you’ve ever had the pleasure of riding with Miles or enjoying a beverage around the fire with him, you know what I mean. 

He has been involved with OOFD since 2017 which earned him a belated 5 year anniversary gift this past November. He helped write a number of our early scripts and put together the first ever Good Land ride up to Milwaukee which is one of our most popular rides, the one that is close to selling out already. The name of the ride was him quoting Alice Cooper in Wayne’s World and the script’s focus on beer/party certainly has Miles all over it too. 

He stepped away for a couple years to go wander the world with his wife, dog, van, bike, and fishing pole. And now that he’s back, he has stepped in the Assistant Director Role for the Adaptive Program, helping Program Director, Bradley Fisher, plan out some amazing things for 2024. He has been a big volunteer for the Adaptive Program since it started, so its awesome to have him helping lead it with Bradley. 

I could go on and on about how excellent a human Miles is, and goodness even this little bit was so fun to write, but I’ll leave it there. Next you see him, give him a cheers and say thanks for all he has done and is doing for OOFD!

OOFD had 8 folks earn the first ever 5 year anniversary gift this past year

Interesting Content and Good Vibes

While we're on the Adaptive Program, give this awesome write up about the program in Streetsblog by John Greenfield.

Some other good news on the grant front, we have purchased 3 of the 4 Hase Pinos from Cosmic Bikes which are covered by the big $50,000 grant we received from Laureus this year. These bikes are the top of the line when it comes to helping folks with a variety of disabilities get out and ride. Also, our partners for the Adaptive Program, KEEN won a grant to help cover some expenses for some Adaptive Day Rides and Bike Camping Trip this summer!

Finally, we continue to improve our grant writing skills and just won a $13,000 grant from Patagonia’s Retail Grant program. Patagonia is truly one of the best partners a little, grassroots non-profit could ask for. They support us across so many different aspects of the org, and us winning this grant means so much to us!

OOFD volunteers, Rachel and Alex, cutting out some Buckthorn on the WTWTG Ride Photo by Glenn Schneider

Upcoming Events

Monthly Hang at Reed’s Local in Avondale: Tuesday, February 6th from 730pm-10pm
Come get hyped for this coming year of bike adventures at a great local bar in Avondale. All are welcome including folks that have never engaged with OOFD ever in the past. More deets here. The Monthly Hang schedule for all of 2024 is here and most of them are up on Eventbrite. No registration necessary.  

Tabling at Winter Bike Swap at Kane County Fairgrounds: Sunday, February 11 from 9am-230pm
Stop by our booth at the Winter Bike Swap to say hi to OOFD volunteers, Rachel and Kevin, while you stroll around and stock up on bike gear at this huge annual bike swap out in St. Charles, IL.  More deets here. 

Creative Work Session at Marz Brewery in Bridgeport: Wednesday, February 14 from 7:30-930pm
The theme this month is the big 150 person Flock Off the Block bike camping trip to Camp Sullivan on August 10-11. These Creative Work Sessions are a time for OOFD Volunteers and Supporters to gather to discuss bigger ideas, work collaboratively on projects, and generally carve some time out each month to get some work done on their OOFD projects. We have themes this year that the sessions will focus on though certainly feel free to come to discuss or work on any specific project/idea you have for OOFD. The entire Creative Work Session schedule for 2024 is here.  
 
Southside St. Paddy’s Day Parade March and Bike Campout: Sunday, March 17 - Monday, March 18
As noted above, we will have a spot to march in the South Side Irish Parade down Western Avenue with the OOFD banner! Once we reach the end of the parade, we will get some lunch, and then those that came out to just march can head home while the rest of us will ride out to Camp Sullivan in Oak Forest to camp, which is about 12 miles from the end of the parade route. More deets and registration here. 

Main Volunteer Training, Saturday, March 16th
We are still working out the details and location, but if you are interested in volunteering with OOFD this year, this is an important event to attend. It will be hybrid with most folks coming in person. We will have a "make-up" training on the evening of Thursday, March 28th. If you are interested and want to stay in the loop with the details, fill out a Volunteer Interest Form here.

Hootenanny Vol. 4 Fundraiser Party at Midwest Coast Brewery: Thursday, April 11
​Yes! You read that right! We have a date and venue for our annual Hootenanny Fundraiser Party. This year promises to be an absolute blast. We will have more details and registration out soon. 

Adaptive Day Ride for Multiple Sclerosis: Saturday, May 11 
We are partnering with the Exercise Neuroscience Research Laboratory at UIC to lead an Adaptive Day Ride from Bikes N Roses in Hermosa over to the 606 Trail. The ride will welcome folks with MS to ride and even bring along family members. The folks from the UIC lab will be on hand to help lead the event and share more information about how exercise is important for folks with MS. 

Ok. Phew! I thought gettig these out once a month would help slim them down, but we steady have so much great stuff happening. Which is major props to our incredible crew of volunteers that keep making OOFD more excellent every.single.month. Plenty to keep us hyped and adventuring even over the course of the winter! Happy pedaling this last full month of winter and hope to catch you out there soon.

P.S. If you haven't checked out this awesome newsletter by our friends at Cosmic Bikes, you definitely should. 

The WTWTG Crew set to rollout from our partner Arc'Teryx en route to LaBagh Photo by Arc'Teryx