About a week ago, we got a call here at Planet Bike HQ informing us that we were winning some type of award. We were all pretty perplexed, but after a few hours of phone tag, we figured out that indeed, we had been tapped to receive an award from the City of Chicago. Mayor Daley’s Bicycle Advisory Council 2007 award for the corporation most supporting bicycling in Chicago, to be exact. So the crew loaded up in our Sprinter Van, and made the trip down to the Windy City last Thursday.

We checked into our hotel, dumped the van and pedaled up to a really cool bicycle themed bar on North Ave. called The Handlebar for some food and drinks. There we met up with a few members from the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation: Nick Jackson, Ethan Spotts and Rebekah Broussard. They bought us dinner and some cold beverages on a hot night before showing us some cool routes around the city to check out by bike.

We set off after dinner and pedaled a few more miles, tried to have a peek at the city lights from the 95 floor of the John Hancock building, and pedaled around some more before hitting the hotel for some sleep at around midnight.

After some early morning chow, we headed out for Daley Plaza to take part in Chicago?s Bike to Work Rally. We had a minor issue of not being able to find the van to drop our bags, got fooled by multiple level roadways twice, but still got there on time.

We enjoyed some more breakfast treats (sadly no bacon) and met some new friends before we were bestowed the hardware.

Mayor Daley is very active in making Chicago a bike friendly city, and the Council wanted to recognize us for our work with the Chicago Bicycle Ambassadors program. Previous winners of the BAC award are SRAM, Chase and Bank One, so we feel very proud to be recognized with such an honor amongst such corporate giants.

After the rally, we followed Nick back to the Bike Fed office where he showed us several of the projects completed, planned and currently being undertaken by the Bike Fed and the City. We headed out to see some ourselves, and also check out some sites on a pretty beautiful Friday afternoon. You can see some photos here:Planet Bike goes to Chicago Gallery Yes indeed, as a cyclist, Chicago is my kind of town!