At their first ride, which was in October, Slow Roll Chicago pulled in some 50 riders to saunter through several South Side neighborhoods including Chatham and Kenwood. For their second ride, which is tomorrow, the Slow Rollers will start things off at a church in Roseland and ride through historic West Pullman neighborhood, stop through to the A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, roll through the sprawling campus of Chicago State University, stop for another refreshment at the Michigan Avenue headquarters for an anti-violence group and then ride through Beverly before stopping for lunch at a local cafe on Western.
It’s all part of the fledgling group’s dedication to re-introducing Chicagoans to their own city and to encourage people to go outside and exercise. Tomorrow’s route is 14 miles – not long by a long shot – and since they “slow roll,” even the average couch potato can handle the pace.
“We ride slow because it’s more about the journey than it is the destination,” says Olatunji Oboi Reed, 40, one of the co-founders of the initiative, which sparked off in part by Slow Roll Detroit and its accompanying Apple campaign. Reed rides an old mountain bike he got years ago while living in Champaign-Urbana. “We ride to take it all in and to experience community from the state of a bicycle. And, we literally just started. We had our first ride on September 20.”
