The Biotic Bicycle Brigade invites you to ride to Ravinia this summer! Join us for three concerts by the renowned Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Lawn seats at Ravinia are just $10 or free with student ID. Bring picnic materials, or help us make a picnic at locally owned grocers.

The ride is about 20 miles each way (about the same as the entire lakefront path), and we usually take a moderate pace (12 mph) up paths and shady residential streets. Bring lights and wear a helmet. New for 2005: you might be able to bring your bike back aboard Metra!

June 25 Saturday 4pm Bucktown — 5pm Lincoln Square — 7pm Ravinia
Mahler: Symphony No. 2 (�Resurrection�)
CSO & Chorus conducted by James Conlon; Heidi Grant Murphy,�Soprano; Birgitta Svend�n, Mezzo-Soprano

July 15 Friday 5pm Bucktown — 6pm Lincoln Square — 8pm Ravinia
Bach: Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, Glass: Double Timpani Concerto,and Brahms: Concerto in A Minor for Violin and Cello, Op. 102
CSO conducted by James Conlon; Pinchas Zukerman, Violin; Amanda Forsyth, Cello; Jessica Linnebach, Violin; Jonathan Haas, Timpani; Svetaslov Stoyanov, Timpani

Aug 7 Sunday 3:30pm Bucktown — 4:30pm Lincoln Square — 6:30pm Ravinia
Bruckner: Symphony No. 8 in C Minor
CSO conducted by Christoph Eschenbach

Meeting locations
Bucktown at Damen & Wabansia, outside the Goddess & Grocer
Lincoln Square at Lincoln & Giddings, outside Delicatessen Meyer

My route proposal (239K) for the June 2005 Critical Mass ride. It’s much gayer than the other one. It also makes for a wonderful tour of pre-renewal South Side urbanism, although a truly proper tour of that would have to include much of South Shore.

Update: photos from the ride by: Art, Bob K, Bob M, Devin, Don, and Jordan. I recommend Don’s open-hydrant shots (way to avoid dousing the camera) and Devin’s shots on the Quads.

From John Greenfield:

Mark your calendar for the 4th annual Perimeter Ride, Saturday, July 30, 9 AM, meeting at the Handlebar, 2311 W. North.

This free, 100-mile ride moves at a relaxed 10 — 12 MPH pace with lots of stops for sightseeing, snacking, swimming, and other legal and illegal activities.

We’ll meet at the Handlebar for breakfast at 9 AM and hit the road at 10. The route is roughly the perimeter of the city, from Hegewisch to Beverly, Edgebrook to Rogers Park, and includes lots of off-street paths and the entire lakefront. We’ll wind up back at the Handlebar sometime after midnight for drinks.

If you’re not biking on the edge, you’re taking up tooo much space.

The Perimeter Ride is a fantastic way to see those completely out-of-the-way parts of the city, like the Calumet basin, that you’d otherwise have absolutely no reason to go and see. Plus, 100 miles isn’t nearly as far as one might think!

Just signed up for two weeks’ worth of produce from the Rainbow Farmers Co-op. Rainbow is a project of Growing Power, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit that seems to have its fingers in a lot of pots: urban gardening in Milwaukee and Chicago (here in conjunction with Gallery 37), a cooperative of small farms in southern Wisconsin, food-security programs in both inner cities, etc.

Anyhow, what’s cool about it:
– choices: all- or partially-organic, a half-share size at half price, and meat’s available upon request
– year-round: local produce in the summer, less local stuff in the winter
– variety: produce comes from many small farms, instead of one; includes vegetables, fruit, and other things (honey and eggs, for instance)
– small, flexible commitment: just drop off a check by the Monday prior and you’re good for that week
– competitively priced: $26 for a large organic box, $7 for a half-sized partially-organic box

The pickup location is Blackwater Caf�, a small operation inside the Acme Artists Lofts co-op a few blocks away. Right now, there’s not much local inside the box: basically, the earth around here is yielding nothing but some very early perennial herbs right now. (I can get sorrel and sage from the garden, and only a snippet of either.) Hopefully, that will change within a few weeks as the first spring greens show up.

Results, checkpoint locations, and photos from Sunday’s Tour da Chicago have been posted. Stumping the messengers was fun if exhausting — setting up the checkpoints took about eight hours, and even once they were off I logged 38 phone calls from lost riders.

Some ideas for another race, some thanks to Lucky and Jon:
– slots at the East Chicago casino
– exploiting Easter Sunday craziness, which I did not do this year
– something involving now-worthless, cast-off Kryptonite locks and keys, maybe also involving a coffin filled with prizes

I left the manifesto off the manifest, but the sites were chosen from a menu of locations I’ve collected over the years — primarily leftovers from anti-urban, street-phobic Modernist planning ideology. One strange thing I noticed in setting it up, though, was that even though the planners of Illinois Center, the Circle Campus, etc. had the opportunity with their giant superblocks to consign the grid to the ash-heap, they instead still lined up many of the structures along the old grid lines. Hence, “Beaubien Mall” in Illinois Center, the Federal Center mezzanine pedway running exactly along the line of Quincy Place, Sandburg Terrace raised above the old alley between Clark & LaSalle, or UIC’s walkways lining up with what was Green Street.

Another group of checkpoints were tucked away inside quasi- or actually gated residential compounds from the 1990s: the odd pedestrian walkways in University Village, parks hidden inside Kinzie Park and Central Station.

For some odd reason, I’m really excited about the upcoming Bike Winter–maybe it’s the exceptionally mild summer we’ve just had or something like that.

For Tour da Chicago races, Brent’s idea is to reward both speed and ingenuity. Thus, one part logic puzzle, one part wayfinding, and two parts race makes for a good race.

• ER: Checkpoints at two major hospitals’ outpatient entries (maybe Cook County and University of Chicago). Start in Bridgeport, maybe.
• Air Rage: Checkpoint at ticket counter at O’Hare International Terminal, then one or two other checkpoints elsewhere at airport ticket counters or baggage claims. Start on north side, not along Blue Line.
• 90210: Refund $6-7 of entry fee and distribute list of movie showtimes. Ride down to checkpoint in Beverly. Require that riders return to start with ticket stub from movie matinee, then write short essay about ending of movie. Judges will grade on accuracy and effort.
• Tic-Tac-Toe: Divide downtown into nine sectors, with checkpoint in each. Judges at each checkpoint have limited number of passes (say, half the number of riders, with fewest at the center). First one back with passes from three adjacent sectors wins, with extra points for blacking out.
• Three Rs: Encode address of distant public library into an arithmetic puzzle, must solve before leaving (check your answer just outside the door). Ride to library and check out book (say, author named Edith), or else copy one paragraph from page number X of a certain reference title (where X is your rider number — no cheating). Maybe split group to two libraries?
• Rat race: All checkpoints are underground, in open sections of the underground pedway, especially in Illinois Center or at Union Station, where surface access is less common. Alternately, find checkpoints along the downtown river walks.
• Trivial Pursuit (by Brent): checkpoints at a stadium (sports), Orchestra Hall (music), etc.; answer question once you get there to collect the ticket
• Some other checkpoint ideas: inside Lincoln Park Zoo, the IIT student center, conservatory or other Park District building

I’m also thinking of proposing a “I see dead people” mass map for October that will go by sites of notable disasters, most of which are oddly concentrated downtown (the Eastland, the Iroquois Theater, the Illinois Savings blimp explosion, the Haymarket and Lager Beer riots) or on the near south lakefront (the Ft. Dearborn massacre, the 1919 race riot, the McCormick Place fire).

For Bike Winter, my only thought so far is a Tropical Paradise route between the two conservatories and maybe the Wild Reef at Shedd.

I’ll lead a ride down to Pullman the weekend after next — to coincide with the once-this-year opening of the Pullman Palace Car factory site to the public, and with the annual house walk. It’s a scant 50 miles round trip, 30 if you take the Red Line back.

It’s June, so Ravinia will soon be in season — this weekend, in fact. However, I haven’t had a chance to sit down and scrutinize the schedule for days to ride out there and picnic. This summer, though, I think it’d also be fun to visit some out of the way parks within the city limits — say, Columbus Park, Ping Tom Park, or Wolf Lake. The curvilinear town of Riverside might be a fun place to get lost in, and it’s not far away.

Ideas for dates? I’ve opened up comments for this one.

I bought an Xtracycle on a whim yesterday. This nifty contraption is a frame extender: it pulls the rear wheel about a foot back and inserts an extra heavy duty rear rack over. The rack can easily carry as much as a trailer — 200 lbs, to be exact. Best yet, it’s almost ideal for carrying passengers on board.

I’m not exactly sure how I’ll use it (for passengers? cargo?), but it will allow me to carry much, much more extravagant picnics, and maybe help to feed Critical Mass in a very literal way.

Plus, it comes with rockin’ stickers.

We are people who like picnics and bicycling. Every summer, we go to hear the Chicago Symphony play at Ravinia, and bring along a picnic assembled beforehand or purchased from purveyors in lovely Lincoln Square. This year, we’re going on 19 July.