As many of you know, this Saturday July 2, 2011, we will be hosting our first ever night tour, and it’s an exciting one to start our initial venture into the night.  We will be exploring the Loop, Community Area #32 and the central commercial district of Chicago.  The tour will take riders past hundreds of historic buildings, monuments statues, parks, districts, markers and historic places, and discuss the various examples that look particularly brilliant at night.  Since it is a night ride, in addition to our regular requirement that you wear a helmet, we are asking riders to make sure that they have working front and rear lights in order to ride. 

Now you may be thinking to yourself,
“Self, isn’t this weekend still the ongoing Taste of Chicago?  Won’t that affect the meeting place in Grant Park, specifically Buckingham Fountain”.

My friend, you are so correct.  I take full and all credit for this wonderful example of proud planning. 

Now ordinarily this would be no great tragedy, even if it was too prove additionally complicated, but despite the fact that the sign at the main entrance to the Taste of Chicago says you can bring your bike in if you walk it, I was twice rebuffed with my bike.  Since the Buckingham Fountain is in the fairgrounds for the Taste of Chicago, it is likely we will have a heck of a time meeting up with everyone at the fountain, and it seems possible, that despite the rules of the Taste that permit you to walk your bikes in, others may also get turned back with their bikes. 

THEREFORE, we are moving the starting location two blocks west on Congress to the Congress Plaza in front of the Congress Hotel…..Congress and Michigan.  Here is the exact spot we would meet:

http://goo.gl/maps/Fy0f

This is just outside of the fairgrounds and a large area where we can begin the ride.  There will be a few volunteers to try to direct those that don’t get the word that the ride space is move by waiting at the entrance, the fountain and riding the perimeter of the fairgrounds from Michigan to the LSD path and from Monroe to Balbo.  Will we catch everyone? Oh….probably not, but we will do our best, and I can only apologize for the poor planning.

I have already had several people ask for a re-run of the tour for scheduling reasons, and one of the ride marshals suggested a postponed date instead of running it this weekend, but it looks like we will try to ride it this time AND then offer another ride in the late summer with a date yet to be determined.  Please stay tuned for info on this.  In the meantime, here are the links:

Chainlink Event Page - http://www.thechainlink.org/events/night-tour-of-the-loop

Loop Photo Album - http://photobucket.com/looptour

Ross Felten Poster - http://www.thechainlink.org/photo/loop-2011?context=album&album...

Starting Spot - http://goo.gl/maps/Fy0f