John Steffen

This thing is still in the planning stages but I’ve got a date; save Saturday April 25th! We’re starting early to mid-morning and taking a 10 mile tour through Ukrainian Village, Humboldt Park, Logan Square, Avondale, Bucktown, and Wicker Park. There’s a map after the jump.

It will start and end at Big Shoulders Coffee at Chicago and Milwaukee in West Town, but you can join and leave anywhere along the route. I’ll post periodic updates online mostly on Twitter @jstefdotcom.

We’ll be making planned stops at Dark Matter, Parson’s, Honey Butter, and Harold’s. These chicken places are heavy into cocktails, it seems, so be careful. These won’t be long stops. We may sit down, but it will be short.

I’m also throwing in about 30 minutes of bodyweight PT early on, maybe at a park along Chicago avenue before the caffeine hit at Dark Matter. Depending on the weather, we’re talking sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and lunges – maybe a 100 each, or as many as you can do, whatever. If you’re not up for that, join us after at Dark Matter.

I’m expecting the whole thing to go from like 8am-ish to 1pm-ish. I don’t know. The route is in blue below. Red things are chicken places, black things are coffee places, and blue things are public transpo spots (Blue Line and Divvy Bike stations). Hover or click each for info.

Check back, I’ll have more in the coming weeks, including a rough timeline with meeting places and contact info.

These are my hikers, my winter runners, and my casual tennis shoes. I use them for day hiking with a loaded pack, running in snow, and general knocking around town. Water stays out and the outside sheds dirt and grime well. They are getting beat up because I wear them all the time, but the tread has held up. If you’re just going to have one pair of shoes, know that charcoal goes with everything.

Urban hiking in Chicago isn’t happening for the Steffen’s in January. We could, but we’ve found that it’s best just to hole up in inside during the winter and recharge/recover.

So, Gail and I used a perfect Friday in January during a visit to San Francisco to take a little walking tour. It gave me an opportunity to learn Google Maps and practice how I’m going to map things when we get down to it in Chicago. Check out the map below. If you click on each marked location you’ll get comments and maybe some insight. The Chicago maps will be much more robust because I know this city.

We’d been to San Francisco before so we had a few destinations in mind but mostly wanted to get acquainted with some neighborhoods and have a bite to eat. We had planned to go longer but cut things a little short in the end. We officially went about eight miles, but this could easily be made longer or shorter because the area is so dense in sightseeing options.

Our starting point was the Fairmont Hotel in Nob Hill and we ended the day a few blocks away at a great little restaurant called Aliment. My original plan had us going to Corona Heights Park just west on 16th Street in The Castro, but we ran out of time/fuel.

Valencia Street in the Mission had a bit of everything – gritty urban hipster mixed with boutique food and retail. Hayes Street in Hayes Valley was more of the same, but smaller and residential. If I were to go back, I’d get some hill climbing in and maybe carb up at Tacolicious on Valencia and Schulzie’s Bread Pudding on Hayes.