Up In the Warehouse at Village Cycle Center

When you visit our store, what you see as a customer is only about 1/4 of what makes Village Cycle Center Chicago's largest bike shop. We have about 300 bikes displayed on our sales floor, but stock about 10,000 more in the rest of our building. Along with over 200 helmets, 1000's of pairs of shoes, 2000 plus locks, and so much more. Part of what makes us unique is our ability to stock loads of gear on site to make sure we have something for everyone. Below is a tiny little bit of what you don't see from the sales floor. Aisles and aisles of bikes, stacks of shoes, and racks of accessories, all ready for you.

Lets start off with shoes. We stock Sidi, Bontrager, and Chrome foot wear. We believe in order to sell you the right size shoe, we have to have it in stock, so we stock all the sizes of each model we carry to ensure the right shoes get on the right ( and left) feet.

Wall of Sidi shoes.

Bontager foot wear. Just a tiny bit of what we carry from them.

Sidi closeouts, and Chrome kicks.

We also sell quite a bit of new saddles. While we have cases and cases of the Bontrager saddles, we also carry Fizi:k, ISM, Brooks, and Selle.

Fiz:k saddles waiting to make someones butt happy.

Don't forget to lock your wheels as well as your bike when you leave it unattended. The number one reason people buy new wheels from us is theft. We stock loads of new wheels for replacement as well as upgrades.

Couple racks full of replacement wheels. We have another room full of Easton & Bontrager wheels too.

Locks are a very important part of cycling around Chicago. We stock 1000's of locks by Trek, Kryptonite, and Abus.

Just a couple Trek Streetwise by Kryptonite.

"I gotta flat." Heard at the back counter several thousand times a year. Over 5000 tubes a year pass through these doors. We save old tubes to donate to local artists, manufactures of bike tube gear, and for use in sports rehabilitation in youth programs. If you have a need for old tubes, email info@villagecycle.com.

Incoming pile of tubes.

On our sales floor we have about 100 helmets, upstairs we have over 1000 in back stock.

Bikes. The heart of our business. And to make sure we have a bike for everyone, even on those busy, busy, summer Saturdays, we stock LOTS of bikes. Here are a some pics of bikes in stock, there are 3 floors of them, so you only get to see a couple of them.

Road bikes in boxes and out.

Aisle of bikes.

Bikes leading into our tire room. Yes, we have a room full of tires.

Bikes! You can see rooms of more bikes in the distance.

More bikes!

Even more bikes.

Road bikes built & ready to get sized, then go riding.

You want speed? We got TT bikes ready for you.

This concludes our little trip up into the Village Cycle Center warehouse. Look for more adventures upstairs and behind the scenes to come.

Chicago Cross Cup #5 Carpentersville, IL.

What a great course! So much fun! Mud, rollers, water crossings, sand, sweet corners, and a beer garden. This is cross.

This year the rollers had an add on of farm field full of mud. Thick, sticky, clay filled, mud. Gave the earlier races hell. Hell being fun in cross. We surely do enjoy the suffering. And suffer we did. Everyone on the team put in their best and had a good time doing it.

Katie Tom was sporting her leaders jersey after becoming the overall points leader for the Women’s Cat 4 last race. Brandon held his own in the Cat 3 race. I almost got to finish my second 1/2/3 race. Only getting lapped by the top 4 riders. Great job fast SRAM dude. Mumford was in the top 10. Get some.

But mostly, I can just say, THIS COURSE ROCKS!

Here are some pictures. And thanks to our sponsors!

Village Cycle Center, Trek Bicycle Corp, SRAM, Sidi, Giro, Gore Bike Wear, Tifosi, and Saris Cycling Group.

Mud creek crossing. Photo credit to: Ben Van Couvering

Mud covered rollers.

Kinky Llama Racing base camp and heckle corner

Katie sporting her fancy yellow jersey!

Becky powering around heckle corner

Mumford moving through the corn field faster than Malachi.

Brandon avoiding someone during their prayers to the mud rollers. Photo credit: Bill Draper

Race report was cut short. More to come soon. Have a great day! Go ride your bike.

Chicago Cross Cup #4 Wauconda (Psycho Cross)

What a great weekend for cross. And day one of the two, brings Psycho Cross.

Saturday is a power course at Psycho Cross, and also my first venture into Cat 1/2/3. I figured, what the heck. Whats the worse that could happen? Man, oh, man. That was a good time. And by good time, I mean pure suffer.

Giant flyover!

It was sunny, but  holy crap was it windy. The noise from the flapping course tape was thunderous as you rode the course, and coming into a headwind across a farm field sure put a burn in your legs. This course is a speedway. Mostly flat with a giant flyover. Not my cup of tea, but what else would you want to do on a weekend off work aside from ride your ass off? Turned out that Brian Matter  had the same idea. This dude is fast. Fast as fast is. And after 40 minutes of hauling my ass around the golf course and over the giant fly over, I was pulled. Placed 19/25 but at least was the first Cat 3. Still fun, but now my goal is to race a 1/2/3 and not get pulled.

Bad ass indeed.

Enough about me, there was also a good showing from the rest of our team. Our Pretty. Fast. Becky Welbes came out with her new socks on and rode her bad ass off.

Holding her own with the fastest ladies in the Chicago Cross Cup series, she placed 8th.

Brandon Murphy came out for the Cat 3 mens race and had as

Brandon passing out of the corner! Go B go!

much fun as a chimpanzee riding on a segway.

It’s a long, fast  course. And after it was all over. B got a 45.

Good job sir. Keep up the weekly dose of suffer.

Katie Tomarelli rode her bike like a pretty woman possessed. And landed a 5th place finish for the Women’s Cat 4 race.

We can’t forget about Alex Blom, new to cross and bike racing, holding her own in the Womens Cat 4 race and finishing with a very respectable 13th place finish.

I would like to give a special great job to Meghan Murphy-Gill. WEEOOOOOOO! 

Kinky Llama Racing peoples.

 I would like to give the usual thanks to our sponsors:

Village Cycle Center, Trek Bicycle Corp, SRAM, Sidi, Giro, Gore Bike Wear, Tifosi, and Saris Cycling Group.

As well as a BIG, FAT, thanks to Ted Schweitzer and everyone else who worked to make Psycho Cross a good time.

WORS #12 Wigwam MTB Challenge, Quarry View & Evergreen Parks — Sheboygan, WI

I love Wigwam! Such a great course, so much fun to ride. Last year at Wigwam was my first XC race in 9 years , and this year I returned for another good time as a Cat-2 Comp racer.

Kinky Llama Racing has grown and this year we come in numbers. All will race, some will finish, but a good time will be had by everyone. This year we learn that broken bikes, still come with big smiles.

Kinky Llama Racing was represented by

The pure power of Felke.

John Felke Cat-3
Tyler Cox Cat-2(sport)
Brandon Murphy Cat-2(sport)
Becky Welbes Cat-2(sport)
Jim Pittacora Cat-2(comp)
John Hunt Cat-2(comp)
Anthony Mikrut (Me) Cat-2(comp)

The day starts off with John Felke leading off in Citizen.
Turns out ol' Felke has some thunderous power coming from the two giant pistons he calls "legs", and sheared off a cog in the middle of his XTR cassette. He tried as he might, but trying to shift over a missing cog is nearly impossible. After and a half, his rig couldn't take it anymore, and a DNF was in his future. Doesn't matter to us, as long as we have a good time racing.
Racing in sport we had Tyler Cox, Brandon Murphy, and Becky Welbes. Becky, Tyler and Brandon took off like mad

Brandon making the Equalizer his beatch.

men & woman possessed. Possessed by who or what, I have no idea.

Tyler and his buddy, The Equalizer.

One of the most memorable climbs WORS has to offer is the Equalizer.
Everyone thinks they can do it, some try it, and few climb it. And those who do, get $5 on your first lap.
Tyler and Brandon both finished off without any mechanical incoviences and both placed well.
Up next was Becky Welbes, This girl can RIDE THE SHIT OUT OF A BIKE.  Excited to race and having already pre-rode the course, she was ready to rock. Unknown the her, a rock had already been ready for her. And her rear tire blew out only a 1/2 mile into the race. It looked like it had been attacked by a badger. We all learn from our experience, and we can all learn from Becky about keeping our chins up when shit happens. You can read her blog post about her experience on her site Pretty-Fast.org.

Following the sport racers, comes comp. John Hunt, Anthony Mikrut, and Jim Pittacora are going for the gold, or at least the finish, in this one. A couple mechanical issues for Mr Hunt suffers him a bit on the race, and a cleat that wasn't tightened fully becomes my undoing. The first lap the cleat was moving, by the second, one of the two screws was

Game face for llama

gone, the third was a wiggle fest on my foot, and as I cross the line for the fourth lap, the cleat was stuck in my pedal, without my foot. After a mile of trying to stay on the bike and pedal, another DNF came down our pipeline and landed right in my lap. Sad not to finish, but still very happy to had gotten in 3 laps of one of my favorite rides. Fast rides with fast people are a blast.  Rounding out our comp racers Jim stands on the podium for a 3rd place finish.
Fun was had, bikes were broken, and smiles were everywhere. This was great event. Looking forward to Iceman Cometh.
We would like to thank our sponsors for all of their support and superb products that help us do what we love to do.
Village Cycle Center, Trek Bicycle Corp, SRAM, Sidi, Giro, Gore Bike Wear, Tifosi, and Saris Cycling Group.
Our final results were:

John and the log jump. GET SOME!

John Felke Cat-3 - DNF
Tyler Cox Cat-2(sport) - 19 age group - 111 overall
Brandon Murphy Cat-2(sport) - 10 age group - 57 overall
Becky Welbes Cat-2(sport) - DNF
Jim Pittacora Cat-2(comp)
John Hunt Cat-2(comp) - 13 age group - 48 overall
Anthony Mikrut (Me) Cat-2(comp) - DNF