The Chicago Neighborhood Bike Tours are back and ready to ride. Here is the link to register now:

http://tinyurl.com/fall2010biketours

Our first tour is Saturday September 11, 2010 with a Tour of Hyde Park, our most popular tour to date. Our original July 2009 Tour of Hyde Park drew nearly 150 riders. While it was a thrilling experience to lead that many riders at once, it also proved a logistical nightmare and stressed the limits of the usefulness of a megaphone, so for this and all future tours we are limiting registrations to 80.

The tour was understandably a popular one, as the area is amongst the most architecturally and historically opulent in all of Chicago and justifiably famous throughout the world. Hyde Park is both the name of the Community Area and the neighborhood, and the home of the University of Chicago, the institution that conceived of the very idea of Chicago Community Areas. The University was born out of the idea that every great city deserved and required a great university. Several buildings had been erected by the time that Chicago hosted World’s Fair of 1893 which changed the landscape and waterfront and the very nature of Hyde Park to create the splendor of the World's Columbian Exposition. The University and the World’s Fair are two enduring, indelible legacies that dominate the neighborhood, but their omnipresence is augmented by architectural beauty in the residences, businesses, civic and religious buildings throughout the area. Frank Lloyd Wright, Keck and Keck, Henry Ives Cobb, Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Lorado Taft, Howard Van Doren Shaw, Dwight Perkins and Frederick Law Olmsted all offer marvelous examples of their genius in Hyde Park, and even this “best of” Hyde Park tour will exceed 5 hours in length over its 17 ½ miles.

This is also the first tour of our revamped tour series and the first ride where we charge money. That in and of itself is likely more than enough to put a very severe lid on attendance numbers, but we’re hoping that people find the value commensurate with the fees at a minimum, and if they should feel otherwise after the ride we will happily offer them their money back.

Now when I ask people if they want their money back, it won’t just be a sardonic question.

More information here:

http://www.bigshouldersrealty.com/things/tours.php