Things to Do in Cicero

Inspired by a love of fitness and a passion for travel and tourism kindled within him by his late father, Jeremy Lewno founded Bobby's Bike Hike to create an interactive Chicago biking experience. He named the company after his dad, Bob, an Arkansas bus-tour operator who taught him to focus on service quality over quantity. That advice has clearly paid off, as the business's guided tours have earned it some of the highest possible ratings on TripAdvisor and the title of Best Organized Bike Ride from the Chicago Reader in 2010.

During the tours, which include rented bicycles, guides lead groups of about 20 riders past Chicago icons in Millennium Park and on the Museum Campus, or direct them to samples of pizza, hot dogs, cupcakes, and beer in and around Wrigleyville. The crew has designed a Tike Hike tour for kids 10 and younger, a historic Hyde Park tour that pedals past the home of President Barack Obama, and a mansion-studded lakefront tour, during which riders may glimpse Oprah waving or handing out complimentary helicopters at her main residence. Patrons can also rent Schwinn mountain bikes, cruisers, and tandem bikes to explore the city on their own.

One day, customers learn how to steer a small keelboat or plunge into deep waters wearing scuba gear. The next, they soar through the trees on a zipline cable or drop through clear blue skies over Southern California mountains strapped to a skydiving instructor. Action Sports Adventures connects these thrill seekers to more than 35 types of extreme-sports and fitness classes at Los Angeles–based sports schools and facilities, which allows them to join in a range of adrenaline-pumping activities without having to marry a Hollywood stuntman. Instructors teach gliding-flight technique in paragliding classes and powered flight in private planes. They lead customers across local waves in seven categories of watersports, such as kiteboarding, wakeboarding, and surfing. In the mountains, they lead mountain-biking wilderness tours and help climbers tackle cliffs in lead-rope climbing excursions.

Staffers from Action Sports Adventures also connect customers with outdoor organized sports such as golf, horseback riding, and tennis, or help get them access to wooded fields and parks to play paintball or ride BMX bikes. For customers who focus on fitness, they provide classes and sessions in nine indoor fitness categories such as MMA, kickboxing, yoga, and gymnastics.

Robert Birnecker and Sonat Birnecker-Hart are devoted to the art of distilling. For Robert, it’s a family tradition: he still treasures memories of his grandparents’ award-winning Austrian distillery, where he often helped out as a child. A graduate of Oxford and the University of London, Robert's wife, Sonat, gave up a tenured academic position to pursue the couple’s dream of making their own spirits from scratch. Today, Robert and Sonat’s award-winning Koval Distillery is the first to open in Chicago’s city limits since Prohibition. There, they blend classic, mainstream techniques with contemporary, indie methods, ensuring quality by using only certified organic and kosher ingredients grown in the Midwest.

Using a Kothe potstill custom-made and hand-built in Germany, the husband-and-wife team produces small-batch spirits, including five original white whiskeys made from rye, oat, wheat, millet, and spelt mash. They also distill Lion’s Pride aged whiskeys, plus a selection of liqueurs and brandies, such as bierbrand made with Dynamo Copper Lager from neighbor Metropolitan Brewing. These spirits have won multiple local and national awards, from Whisky Magazine’s 100 Greatest Distilleries to Visit to the Chicago Reader’s Best Local Distillery.

Aboard Seabreeze Charter’s 36-foot cruising yacht, passengers slice through Lake Michigan’s waves, steered by the steady hand of United States Coast Guard-certified captain Lorenzo Carrer. A native of Italy, Carrer has sailed in the Mediterranean and traced passages through the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic Coast. Also decorated with various racing awards, Carrer now helms the yacht during chartered trips, and graciously hands over the wheel when instructing new sailors in the waters near Navy Pier. The vessel itself features two private cabins and a radio with an iPod connector, on which patrons can play classic maritime ballads about the difficulty of untying boating knots. In addition, an on-board life raft and a digital emergency call feature guard the boat against potential mishaps.

Chicago Elevated, run by effusive improv veteran Margaret Hicks, leads curious charges on eclectic group, private, and custom tours of the city. Jaunts lead natives and tourists alike through the city’s oft-overlooked nooks and crannies as Hicks’s jovial voice narrates every step, shedding light on secret areas and easily overlooked historic sites. Her pedway tour sojourns into Chicago’s tiled subterranean antecity, where retailers, restaurants, and mole people mingle. Tours explore sites of famous disasters, visit the ghostly red-light district that once stretched below what is now Printer’s Row, and gaze at downtown’s ornate architecture from the riverwalk.

Stationed in Wrigleyville after college, Hicks accrued the healthy sense of humor and comedic timing that pepper each tour at Second City, iO, and other theaters. Though she attempted a move to New York City, Hicks soon discovered she couldn’t stay away from Chicago’s majestic skyline or the skyscrapers’ subtly receding hairlines. A stint in the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s docent program, as well as acting as a tour guide for six years, arm her with insider’s knowledge that soon transfers to listeners’ brains.

Inspired by the award-winning Signature Theatre Company in New York, Eclipse Theatre Company devotes each season to a single playwright, with past seasons spotlighting seminal scribes such as Tennessee Williams, Neil Simon, and Arthur Miller. Eclipse is one of the only companies in the Midwest to take this approach, enabling audiences to become fluent in a particular playwright's language and more quickly identify their use of silent letters.