Last night we launched a new website for the Kidical Mass rides here in Chicago.  Check it out:

http://chicagokidicalmass.org/

Thanks to Steven for the lovely custom theme and to the content contributions that made up the previous site.

Massup.us, the "Social Cycling System" has been relaunched on the bikegeeks servers.  Massup.us facilitates group rides via crowd-sourced information and various tools all accessible via mobile smart phones.  Read more here. 

Massup.us has undergone several enhancements recently as part of the Apps for Metro Chicago contest and now leverages datasets from the City and State.

The bikegeeks have resumed regular meetings! We're meeting every other week at the Annex.  Please see the Join Up/Meetings page for more information.

The meeting host will provide beverages and snacks so come on out and BYOLaptop

After a bunch of false starts and a tremendous amount of work by Chicago bikegeeks (both official and honorary), we are please to announce last night's launch of the new Bike Winter website. The site is not yet considered complete, but the choice was made to launch the site in an incomplete state to allow those seeking information about winter cycling access to the tremendous amount of new content on the new site. Work will continue on this site to enable additional functionality and to further refine the project's custom theme. The new site features (or will feature) an annual blog by someone making their first foray into all season cycling, cyclist profiles created by the community, and the ability to provide feedback on the various HOW-TO articles by leaving new comments and ratings on existing comments.

The old, venerable Bike Winter site, which has served the community over the last decade, will remain accessible at http://old.bikewinter.org/ . As we retire another of these sites, it is worth taking a moment to once again thank veteran bikegeek Jim Redd, author of the original Bike Winter site (along with the first Chicago Critical Mass site and others), for the work done for the community.

The bikegeeks have now outlived another coffee shop.   First Westgate and now our most recent home, the Mercury Cafe.

The Mercury Cafe  was a well-loved haunt for not just the bikegeeks, but lots of groups in the bike community.  The Chicago Critical Mass art show was held there for a few years running and various other community events took advantage of their copious meeting space, yummy food, and free wi-fi.

The following is on the front page of the Mercury Cafe Website:  (provided for historical sake)

IT IS TRUE --- MERCURY CAFE IS CLOSING IT'S DOORS BY OCTOBER 4TH.

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT. UNFORTUNATELY THE ECONOMIC TIMES PROVED TO BE A BIT TOO MUCH.

I was glad we could provide a space where different groups could meet each other. It was nice to see that everyone from books clubs to knitting clubs to Muslim/Jewish open mic to feminist meet ups could find the place comfortable enough for themselves.

Alas...  We'll miss you Mercury Cafe.

Both this site and the Break The Gridlock site are now no longer part of the Westgate system of shared logins.  This was done to allow the sites to be updated independently of the rest of the Westgate sites. Both sites have now been updated to Drupal v6.

Because of the amount of bikegeek work that has been going on outside of the Monday meetings, we'll be curtailing the "weekly" part of the meeting plan.  Meetings will still happen, but on an irregular schedule.
Please contact us if you want to come on by and we'll let you know if someone was planning on being there and, if not, see if we can arrange something.

All the Westgate sites have (finally) been updated to the most recent version of Drupal 4.7. For a long time they were stuck on Drupal 4.7.5, a very old version. At the same time, the sites have been broken up from the old monolithic Drupal installation to the installation-per-site technique that has become a recognized best practice.

At last night's meeting, the Westgate sites were moved off our old production server, whip.bikegeeks.org. A moment of silence and some beer-poured-on-the-ground for this old work-horse of a machine....

As of today, all bikegeeks sites are now running DreamHost with the exception of the West Town Bikes site which is running on a host owned by bikegeek Paul. DreamHost provides this account for free because of Break The Gridlock's looming 501c3 status.