This is a discussion page for the Tour of West Town, picture posts, map updates, and all matters and events related to the Tour of West Town. Here is the chainlink event page for the site:
http://www.thechainlink.org/events/tour-of-west-town
This is the final tour of the second season of
Big Shoulders Realty's neighborhood bike tours. Next month begins our second Winter Cycling Series, more details on which will soon come. In the interim, one can vote for the four rides for the Winter Cycling Series here:
http://bigshouldersrealty.com/winter
Back to the point...Tour of West Town. This is our first partnership with West Town Bikes and Ciclo Urbano. We are very proud to work with an organization(s) that we are ardent supporters of. It is our hope that this ride gives them another opportunity to be visible and raise some much needed funds. As always, our neighborhood tours are completely free, but we are also asking for donations for West Town Bikes. They do a lot with a little, and every bit of help they can get goes a long way. Donations will be accepted onsite, or you can donate right here, right now:
http://tinyurl.com/donatetourofwesttown
If you are unaware of the great things that Alex Wilson and West Town Bikes have done for the city of Chicago, for bicyling and in particular for the young people of the west side of Chicago, than please take a moment to visit their website and see all of the great programs they have ongoing, and all of the great things they have done.
Here is their website:
http://westtownbikes.org/
and Ciclo Urbano’s:
http://ciclourbanochicago.com/
This tour is our most ambitious to date. Some of the features beyond the typical 15-esque mile tour of a wonderful west side community area with loads of architecture to oogle and gape at and a historical narrative on the ride include:
- 60 second-bike tune-ups and pre-ride checks courtesy of West Town Bikes
- This is Halloween so it is of course a costumed ride with prizes for best costume, best Halloween themed-helmet and best bike costume.
- Early ride time allows us to end directly in front of Ciclo Urbano to witness/participate in the Haunted Paseo Boricua parade.
This is also the day after the
Halloween mass, and a perfect opportunity to get a little extra-mileage out of your Halloween efforts, have fun on a Saturday morning/afternoon, join the party at Haunted Paseo Boricua, and still get off in plenty of time for Halloween evening. To that end, we are hoping a large group of folks find this a good opportunity to bring their children and make it all a great bike-filled fun day. Hope to see many families, costumes and cyclists of all stripes for our season finale.
If you would like to get a first-hand role in shaping the tour, we encourage you to join us for the planning rides. Our first one is tonight at 6:00 directly outside of Ciclo Urbano. Here are the details on the Chainlink event pages for the rest of the planning rides:
West Town Planning Ride #2 - Monday October 12 at 6:00 PM
http://www.thechainlink.org/events/planning-ride-for-tour-of-west-1
West Town Planning Ride #3 - Sunday October 18 at 2:00 PM
http://www.thechainlink.org/events/planning-ride-for-tour-of-west-2
West Town Planning Ride #4/Pre-Ride - Saturday October 24 at 11:00 AM
http://www.thechainlink.org/events/planning-ride-for-tour-of-west-3
Thanks for checking this out and sorry for the lengthy post! Stay tune for some pics and map for tonight's planning ride. - Cheers - Lee Diamond