Are we insane? How many times did we say that on Wednesday? About 20 of us got ready to ride while it was warm, sunny, and the birds were chirping…about 15 minutes into the ride, the sky transformed into a black threat of death and the winds picked up, but we kept going. Half of us made it to Lake Cook, while the other half with a voice of reason turned around at Tower Road. We all luckily made it home and missed the big storm!

Have you heard the new trend is to wear cleat covers while you ride? Justeen is a big fan! About 20 of us were out on Saturday to see it. Turned out to be a beautiful day to ride!

About 15 of us headed down to Bike the Drive on Sunday to help promote Bike Chicago. Stop by the bike to work rally on June 17th to get your Bike Chicago t-shirt! We decided to hit the handlebar for brunch. Yum. When we got our food, the sky turned black. What’s that weatherman? No rain you say? And then the sky opened up. But we are lucky and all managed to make it home during a pause. And…is there a new Prince of Fashion in town?Geoff Scott was prepared for the rain – he was even sporting a rain jacket for his backpack! Watch out Ken Mitchell!


Bonus ride on Memorial day! To make it extra special, Rebecca led the ride and did a terrific job! 65 mile route out to Old School and back. Congratulations to Justeen on this being her longest ride EVER! Great job everybody!

Some of the triathletes decided to dust off their tri bikes for a long ride in the burbs…and they actually had a little left afterwords for a run. Now that’s definitely insane!

We still manageed to squeeze in the Tuesday girl’s ride! We attempted our first rotating paceline of the year and everybody worked really well together, it’s like winter never happened!

What an awesome week!

Upcoming this week:

Wednesday night ride – Could it be true? Warm enough for a stop at JJ Peppers? Stay tuned!
Sunday, June 5th, Spidermonkey BBQ to kick off the season! Lots of fun in store!
Saturday, June 4th and Sunday, June 5th: O’Fallen Grand Prix RR and criterium

Spidermonkey of the Week: Sam Winn

After a lonely preparation for the 2007 Chicago Marathon, an injury, and 3 months off I decided that I really needed to get back to doing something athletic with people again. Meg’s cousin ran this nice bike shop down on Roscoe so I got a badly needed tune up and I started trolling through the list of clubs on the USA Cycling website looking for something to catch my eye when I see this club called Spidermonkey Cycling, it caught my eye right away, as soon as I got to the website I saw that RVB was one of the sponsors so I knew I had to give it a try.
So I showed up all decked out with my camelbak (yes really), having no idea what I was getting myself into, Dean did manage to reassure me that I wouldn’t get left behind on the ride and off we all went. I had never ridden in a group for more than a few miles before so I didn’t really know what was going on with all the crazy hand signals then I realized that it was just all the potholes being pointed out. It was all nice and calm and then Dean drifted back to me and said “ok after this we are going to pick up the pace a bit, but we’ll regroup if we need to” at this point I was just a wee bit afraid I was going to get left behind but I fought hard to stay with the group and made it up to highland park and back with everyone, at that point I was hooked, and tired. That first ride with just a few of the monkeys or maybe most of the monkeys at that point, really made me feel welcome in the group. Even though I don’t make as many rides as I used to every time I show up and there is someone new at the ride just about everyone greets them and whoever is next to them always makes sure that they know when the pace is going to go up, it’s that sense of community that keeps people coming back. I know that’s why I kept coming back.