Tag: Awesome (page 1 of 2)

2012 Bike MS Tour de Farms – Videos and Such

This year’s edition of the Bike MS Tour de Farms was comprised of smooth roads, sunny skies, low wind and smooth-as-butter-paceline of 50 plus Spidermonkeys!  We had a great time riding fast, goofing off, drinking some Goose Island 312 and raising over $30K for the National MS Society!

Don’t believe it?  Check out some of the vids and pics:

Day 1 – 50 plus Spidermonkeys!

 
Going down the line …

Rolling along …

The right way to drink Goose Island 312!

Paulson Family Farm and 50 plus Spidermonkeys

Day 2!

Food!

Smooth-as-Butter

Let’s go!

2 days of pure awesomeness … Spidermonkeys love the Bike MS Tour de Farms! Thanks go out to all the other teams, all the great volunteers, all the National MS Society organizers (that’s you Elle!), Damien of Lakeshore Bike for helping us out, etc, etc, and the list goes on!  It was great!

Oh and thanks to Jack Cahillane, Dean Okun, Aaron Byrnes for the pics and vids!  There’s too many to post .. sorry!

2012 Bike MS Tour de Farms – Videos and Such

This year’s edition of the Bike MS Tour de Farms was comprised of smooth roads, sunny skies, low wind and smooth-as-butter-paceline of 50 plus Spidermonkeys!  We had a great time riding fast, goofing off, drinking some Goose Island 312 and raising over $30K for the National MS Society!

Don’t believe it?  Check out some of the vids and pics:

Day 1 – 50 plus Spidermonkeys!

 
Going down the line …

Rolling along …

The right way to drink Goose Island 312!

Paulson Family Farm and 50 plus Spidermonkeys

Day 2!

Food!

Smooth-as-Butter

Let’s go!

2 days of pure awesomeness … Spidermonkeys love the Bike MS Tour de Farms! Thanks go out to all the other teams, all the great volunteers, all the National MS Society organizers (that’s you Elle!), Damien of Lakeshore Bike for helping us out, etc, etc, and the list goes on!  It was great!

Oh and thanks to Jack Cahillane, Dean Okun, Aaron Byrnes for the pics and vids!  There’s too many to post .. sorry!

Spidermonkeys of the Week – Sponsor Spotlight – Alex and Lesley Tweedie

We opened Roscoe Village Bikes in March 2007 and were really happy when some roadies started meeting for group rides in front of the shop and bringing their bikes in for service.  We were even more thrilled when that Fall, those riders told us they would be forming a club and asked us if we would sponsor it.  They said the club would be called Spidermonkey.  Interesting name for a cycling club, but it’s not your typical club. 
What we like about sponsoring the Spidermonkeys is that the riders in the club are fast, serious cyclists and also truly good, sweet people.  The Spidermonkeys are competitive but not cut-throat.  They’re good sports.  Spidermonkeys are good coaches and cheerleaders in supporting new riders.  Spidermonkeys are charitable.  We loved sponsoring the MS ride and knowing there would be so many Spidermonkeys out there.  It was especially fun for us to host the packet pick-up for the ride.  Being nice, charitable, and enthusiastic about cycling are values that are important to us here at Roscoe Village Bikes so of all the clubs to sponsor, we feel Spidermonkey is a great fit for our shop. 
The first official meeting of the club took place here in October 2007.  Attendees included Dean, Vanessa, Matt Smith, Bryan Merrill, Nate Iden, Josh Green, Trent Williams, Jonathan Fairman, Ken Mitchell and more. It was around Halloween and there was a Spidermonkey pumpkin.  Now this may or may not be true, but let’s add to Spidermonkey lore that that the origins of the orange in the kit comes from that Halloween themed club meeting.
The Spidermonkey Pumpkin makes an appearance??

Over the years we’ve hosted several BBQ’s and pizza parties.  It’s been a lot of fun getting to know everyone and hanging out. Who can forget Ken Mitchell’s silent keg stands on a Sunday, summer evening.  As the club got larger, we’ve hosted less, but we always enjoy visits from Spidermonkeys, the Wednesday night ride leaving from our shop, having the sizing kits here and meeting new Spidermonkeys.

Silent Keg Stands??
Please stop in and say hi (but not next week since we’ll be closed Christmas through New Years).  Keep in mind official club members receive 10% off new bikes and 15% off parts and accessories.  Please introduce yourself as a Spidermonkey or show some spider bling since some of our staff may not have met you before.  We carry a wide range of bikes for kids, commuters, recreational riders and competitive cyclists.  We also have components like wheels, tires, tubes, shifters and pretty much and anything else a bike needs to roll.  We like fixing bikes and service turn-around times are shortest this time of year so if yours needs a little TLC, bring it by.
We’re happy to sponsor the club season after season.  It’s been a lot of fun and having a crowd of lyrca clad cyclists in front of the shop is good for the neighborhood.  As Dean said in his first Spidermonkey e-mail, “Keep the rubber side down.”
Lesley & Alex Tweedie and the Roscoe Village Bikes crew
Fall/Winter Hours: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday 11-8 & Saturday, Sunday 11-6
2016 W. Roscoe St.
Chicago, IL 60618
773-477-7550
www.facebook.com/roscoevillagebikes

Twitter: @RVBikes

Lesley striking a pose!  Nice bike!

Alex tearing it up in CX!

Spidermonkey of the Week – Anna Loosli

Wow, after reading the amazing posts by Kelly and Paul, I feel like I’ve got a lot to live up to! Many of you may not know me – I haven’t been on a lot of team rides this year and only got to know the Spidermonkeys at the end of last season – and between grad school and internships and work, I felt like I hardly had time to ride this year! I’m going to make up for it next year, though, so look out for me then! In the mean time, here’s a history of my relationship with two-wheeled transport.
First Bike. At the age of about 4 or 5 years, my older sister got a red and black BMX bike for her birthday; it was so bright and shiny I immediately determined I would get a bike of my own, even though I did not know how to ride. I got her hand-me-down, with training wheels, which I didn’t mind because they meant I could go wherever I wanted without fear of falling or knee scrapes! My sister was of a different mindset – and after having to ride around the park with me a few times she couldn’t handle the noise, and refused to ride anywhere with me again unless I took them off. My next bike memory is being pushed down a grassy hill – toward the street – by my sister.
            Hitting the Slopes. Luckily the story must have ended well, because the training wheels were never put back on, I didn’t wind up in the hospital, and my next major bike memory is getting a mountain bike in junior high. Red and black, like my sister’s old BMX, I think it was a Trek and it made one major, but memorable, excursion to the early June mud of Teton National Park before it got stolen. My best friend and I had decided we would simply strap our snowboards to our backpacks and ride our bikes up to the snowpack, hike, and ride down. We sadly overestimated our biking skills and never made it to the snowpack, let alone rode down it on snowboards!
            Many years later, working in Portland, OR, I decided it would be brilliant to get a new mountain bike so I could explore the major metropolitan forest preserve, and hopefully parts of Mt. Hood. I got to know Forest Park fairly well, but soon moved to the East Coast where the bike fell into disuse (pavement makes nubby tires sad), and I took the subway more often than wheels. New York was too much city for me, and being underground was claustrophobic, so I got myself a cheap steel frame off E-bay and began adventuring the main roads of Manhattan to get my adrenaline fix. Riding the streets of New York was amazing, so when I relocated to Chicago for grad school in 2009 the first major purchase I made was a little mixte commuter from Working Bikes. Once spring rolled around I got myself a road bike.
Road Bike. Mmmmmmm…  I knew absolutely nothing about bicycles when I bought that bike. I just knew I wanted it, and there were no mountains around so I had to find something to do with myself outdoors. Over my first summer in Chicago, we made friends. I rode my bike a LOT, and decided I would do the North Shore Century on it, just because. My bike was awesome. It needed to do something important!
I trained and rode alone most of the summer because I didn’t know anyone else I felt comfortable riding with. By the end of July, though, I was getting worried about the ride – I’d never done a century before. Were there rules to riding in a group? How would I know how to do it? How would I be able to keep going after mile 75? What if I crashed??
            After asking around with a couple of friends who raced, I found out about the Spidermonkeys, contacted Vanessa, and decided I would at least “try” to keep up during their last Saturday morning training ride before the century. I was slow. And I got dropped. But it’s a no-drop ride, so John was nice enough to hang back and try to coach me through the last mile or so to Highland Park, using terms I’d only heard on television and concepts I’d never applied to riding a bike before.  It was very kind, but it didn’t really help me get there any faster. I pretty much decided that even though I loved my new bike, maybe I needed more practice; maybe I wasn’t ready, or maybe I should just give up and do the century next year…
            But by the following Sunday, I had changed my mind back and figured I didn’t have anything to lose. I could always turn around at the metric century point, and I was determined to at least make an effort since it had been a goal all summer. I had no idea what to expect and didn’t even know anyone’s name, I just looked for the Spidermonkey jerseys in the parking lot and got up the courage to walk over and introduce myself. I asked if I could tag along, and never expected to keep up past the first rest point, let alone the entire ride. THANK YOU! To everyone who was so supportive! Vanessa, Dean, John, Kristi, Grace, Geoff (particularly when we got lost before the last checkpoint), and everyone else who rode with the group last year – I managed not only to keep up with the group that day, but LOVED it! It was way more fun than I ever expected and, even though I got dropped (before the last checkpoint) I managed to finish with some Spidermonkeys towing me along. In sneakers. And mountain bike shorts. (I do NOT recommend the latter, lesson learned!)
North Shore Century in Sneakers!

            Soon after the NSC, I signed up for VQ and got to train with everyone for several grueling weeks. I had no idea how hard it was going to be! Sadly, the VQ sessions ended midwinter, school took over my life, and the rest is history. Not quite… I did get inspired by Grace and Kristi on one of the girls’ rides to sign up for the Chicago Triathlon. Trent and Geoff held a (private) tri clinic with me that was a major help in setting up my transition space. Even though I trained with Team WILD (women inspiring life with diabetes), I tried to go on a few early morning rides to keep up appearances, which is how I wound up discussing cyclocross…

Chicago Triathlon!
            I didn’t even know what cyclocross was at the beginning of last year. Now, after two seasons riding a road bike I can’t believe I didn’t know about it before! I participated in the Half Acre clinic in September, on my old mountain bike from Portland, and decided it would maybe be fun. I wasn’t convinced. All that jumping on and off your bike, and carrying it? Mmmaybe not… But thanks to Kelly’s invites to practice, as well as the rest of the Spidermonkeys’ enthusiasm I decided to take my bike out to Sunrise Park – because it had rained and I had to ride a mountain bike. I was hoping it would be a benefit in the mud.
CX = Awesome!
It was. A little bit. More important, I realized I’d had a blast once I recovered from the gasping and burning sensations in my chest. I vowed to race again.
            A few weeks later, I hadn’t been back on my bike but I read about the Indian Lakes course and had been updated on all the Spidermonkey success and went ahead and registered. Note to self: do not race bikes (especially heavy mountain bikes – thanks for the reminders, Dean!) if you haven’t been practicing. Because I ended up deciding mid-race that I was NOT having fun. Once again, however, I felt great a little while later and was really sad I hadn’t tried harder. That may be my motto next year – rider harder, go faster! And maybe I’ll try the heavy bike out in Palos instead…

Indian Lakes CX

            This ended up being a lot longer than I originally thought it would be! To end it, I’ve had an awesome, inspiring and fun time both riding with the Spidermonkeys and participating in some of the other events they’re involved in. Their competitive nature keeps me on my toes, but for someone who loves going fast (just about any way you can – surfing, snowboarding, biking, lead foot…), I am not competitive and have gotten turned off by the need to WIN in the past. I love riding with the Spidermonkeys because most of the time it’s okay to ride just because you love it. Because it’s fun and it makes you feel good. If you can win while doing it, that’s just an added bonus.
Spidermonkey Ladies

Spidermonkey of the Week – Paul Halupka

When I sat down to write about cycling and what it means to me, I ended up writing for about two hours and basically documenting the history of my love for bikes throughout the course of my life. Rather than posting the Complete Works of Paul Halupka, please enjoy the following excerpts:
Exquisite fashion sense from the first purchase.
ON THE DISCOVERY OF BIKES AND THEIR INHERENT EPICNESS
I started riding a bike when I was very young, riding lots with my little brother in my ample front/back yards in Alabama. I had this little blue Huffy that I rode the crap out of, and no manner of throwing it around or leaving it in the rain to rust could destroy it. Oh, the years of my life spent on coaster brakes… I remember them with a special gravel-skidding fondness.
Fast forward to my early teens, and the purchase of my first real bike. Some how I came up with $180 and threw down for this awesome candy-red Mongoose mountain bike at Wal-Mart. Holy crap, aluminum frame! Suspension fork! 21 Speeds! I didn’t know why that was good, but I liked the sound of it.
I found some amazing adventure on that bike.
I remember my first two epic rides. The first was with my dad and little brother. I may have been 14, my brother would have been about 11. We rode on Easter day. It was cool but sunny. We pushed so far into the mountain’s trail system that we eventually were just riding dry creekbeds and descending into raw forest. Two hours into the ride, we were riding and walking through this patch of the woods that looked like an Alabama Ferngully. I’ve never seen a piece of woodland that looked so verdant, mossy, and lovely. We eventually exited the forest by riding out into a cow pasture, climing over a couple of barbed wire fences, and riding the main streets back to the other side of the mountain where we’d parked. Mom was pretty pissed because we were super late for the nice Easter dinner she’d prepared, but in my mind I didn’t regret it for a second. My dad died a couple years later. My little brother and I remember it with a glowing fondness, a singularly special bonding moment for the three of us.
The second epic ride was with the first guy I ever considered a bike teammate. Alex, a friend since elementary school, got his hands on a dual-suspension Mongoose. After a few months of mountain biking, we went and bought matching Primal Wear jerseys and formed our two-man bike team. Throughout high school, we would throw the bikes in my van or on his bike rack and drive to the nearby mountains to tear up the trails. On one of these rides, I had a brilliant idea. Let’s ride around the military base, which was nestled into the mountains and foothils, and just climb every hill we can find or think of. I learned that day the true joy of overcoming gravity, of conquering just a tiny piece of the earth. There’s no feeling quite like it. The day closed with a ride to the top of the tallest mountain on-base, on a gravel access road that you’d need a tank or Humvee to climb, as demonstrated by the ruts everywhere. We found ourselves at the peak eventually, where we stared up at the radio towers that we’d seen our entire lives, flickering at us from miles away. That day we took the sky and brought it closer, then we descended like maniacs, racing furiously and nearly killing ourselves like teenagers are made to do.
I recently found a trip on the REI website where you fly to France and do all the great climbs of the Tour. Yes, please.

The mud keeps the flies off.

ON FINDING THE SPIDERMONKEYS AND WHY THEY ROCK MY WORLD 

I ran half marathons in 2010, and then took on my first Olympic tri in Spring 2011. Once my little tri training crew started breaking apart, I decided it was time to find a bike team. I started digging around online, and narrowed it down to xXx. (Yeah, no shit.) Something about the serious attitude of the club was really attractive to me, despite how ugly the kits are, and that a bike team has the same name as a Vin Diesel movie.
On paper, they were the perfect fit for a newbie rider with competitive aspirations. But a couple of things fell through where they shouldn’t have, and I was left feeling like they weren’t the right fit. Next on my shortlist was this bizarre listing online for a club called Spidermonkey. The website was about three years outdated but I thought it was worth a shot. So I emailed the Info account, and of course Vanessa was incredibly warm and welcoming from the get-go. And we both liked that my orange bike matched the kits perfectly. I did the Saturday ride, felt the love, and knew this was the right move.

A truly happy boy.
ON FALLING IN LOVE WITH CYCLING AND DISCOVERING WHAT PASSION REALLY FEELS LIKE
At some point in 2011 it occurred to me I could watch cycling on TV. I watched the Tour de Suisse and the Dauphine, just kind of learning about team tactics and time trialing, things I’d never really knows about before. Later in the summer, I started watching the Tour de France. I DVR’d the entire thing and watched every stage from the prologue onwards.