Hard as it may be to believe, the Kibitzers (formally the Kibitzers Bicycling and Breakfast Club) did not always have a fancy web site or a super-high tech email discussion group, where the Kibitzers regularly communicate great thoughts using profound statements, such as “Sounds good” or “I’ll be there” or the prodigious “OK thanks.” (Al is the notable exception to the profound brevity of normal Kibitzer communication, but that is the topic of another discussion.)  Nor did they go on annual tours throughout the world.  Nor did the Kibitzers have a digital camera or fancy bicycles or a resident poet laureate.  Nor, in the beginning, did the Kibitzers even have a name.

No, the roots of the Kibitzers are much more humble.  In the beginning, the Kibitzers were just a couple of teachers taking a Sunday morning bicycle ride.  First there were Jerry and Marty, often with Rob in tow (and often asleep) in the bike seat, riding down the North Branch Trail from Devon and Caldwell or from West Rogers Park to the Botanic Gardens, where they stopped for breakfast before heading back to Chicago.  Jerry, the founding grandfather of the Kibitzers, had been doing the Sunday morning trek on the North Branch Trail for many years.  Only the greatest sages realized that when Marty joined him one fall Sunday morning in 1985, the world of bicycling would never be the same.

Jerry and Marty were soon joined on Sundays by Peter and Rich (the record shows that Peter began his inaugural Kibitzers ride with a flat tire and Rich began his with a Schwinn bicycle that was roughly half his size.)  Later dozens of others would join the Sunday morning Kibitzers trek.  At one point there were so many riders that when riding single file, the group stretched from Jerry’s house all the way to Highland Park.  During the Sunday rides, the Kibitzers not only enjoyed themselves, they also provided an important public service— providing training opportunities for Emergency Medical Technicians all the way up and down the North Shore.  The Kibitzers would eventually abandon the fine cuisine at the Botanical Gardens for the greener pastures of Once Upon a Bagel or Le-Restaurant-with-an-Italian-name-that-Michael-likes or Louie’s.  But even from the beginning, two things were crystal clear: the breakfast and conversation were just as important as the ride; and, the participants each had a finite number of stories (≤5) which they could repeat literally thousands of times without anybody remembering.  Yes, those were the roots of the Kibitzers.

Sunday mornings were later joined by daily bicycle commutes along Damen Avenue to work on the Near West side.  (Al would make his way from Hyde Park, on his way to his daily swim.)  The bicycle commuting began as a summer activity but later expanded to spring, fall, and eventually year round.  As on Sunday, the daily rides were always accompanied by breakfast and stimulating conversation, where the oft-repeated stories from Sunday could be repeated 3-5 times more each week!  Only the finest coffee and cuisine was acceptable.  After a brief tenure at Jamoch’s on Taylor, the Kibitzers took up residence at Pompeii, where Jerry, Al, Bill, Peter, Michael, and Marty—and later others—became part of the regular Pompeii crowd, savoring the pepper and egg sandwiches and always delicious conversation.  When Pompeii eliminated early morning hours, the Kibitzers found a home at Manny’s and other fine Chicago establishments.

It was during the morning sessions at Pompeii where at least two important decisions happened.  The first was that the group decided to expand their bicycling repertoire by joining Jerry’s and Al’s regular summer bicycle tours.  This led to the requirement of commemorative t-shirts and thus it became imperative to come up with a formal name for the group.  Within moments, the Kibitzers were named!  There was however, considerable discussion about the name.  In particular, there were passionate discussions on its proper spelling.  In the most exemplary of Kibitzer traditions, everyone agreed to spell it his or her own way.  But, now armed with a powerfully descriptive name and the basis for commemorative t-shirts, the Kibitzers (or Kibbitzers or however you like it) summer bike tours began. 

Sample photographs from nearly a decade of Kibitzer tours grace this web site.  The collection of Kibitzer riders on each tour varied from year to year, often including Kibitzer Kids.  Jerry was always the master planner and fearless leader, enabling the rest of the Kibitzers to sit back and let him do all of the work.  Jerry carefully trained each Kibitzer to begin planning for each trip months in advance—fine tuning their bicycles, laying out their equipment, and doing several dry runs at packing the equipment into the panniers.  All of the group, that is, except Michael, who preferred to begin his packing at least several hours ahead of time.  The photographs on the web page generally tell a remarkable story of the Kibitzers tours.  They could not begin to capture, however, the weight of Al’s panniers.  On one tour, Al managed to pack the entire reference section of the Library of Congress into his left pannier, including the unabridged edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (which he vowed to memorize on the trip) and a complete German-English dictionary.. 

There also was the world famous, bike-repair classes, a Kibitzer classic.  The weekly classes were held in Jerry’s basement workshop (where the motto is, “If at some point in your life, you threw out a bicycle part, nut, or bolt, it probably is still here somewhere.”)  It was during those classes that a generation of Kibitzers learned that bicycle chains need to be cleaned and oiled more than biannually – and it does not have to be done by a bike-store mechanic!  The classes were so effective that—in an incredible story that shocked all Kibitzers at the time—with darkness fast approaching and the two stranded miles from their campsite on one Kibitzer tour, it took Al and Michael a mere 68 minutes to change one of Al’s record four flat tires in a single day…all by themselves.

That is the early history of the Kibitzers, the stuff of legends.  To commemorate the group’s history, Kibitzers gather each year at the annual Kibitzer Family Reunion.  In song, poem, and awards, the reunion celebrates the group’s many accomplishments during the past year and provides an additional opportunity for each Kibitzer to repeat (for the ten thousandth time) his or her favorite Kibitzer story of all time.  Most of the stories involve bodily functions, in particular flatulence, except those stories that are expressed in the poems of Al, the Kibitzer poet laureate.  In the case of Al’s poems, the bodily function usually involves sex. 

And thus is the early history of the Kibitzers, as it has been passed down from one generation to another... Currently, the Kibitzers number in the dozens—too many to name here—but they all rest on the shoulders of this noble and semi-factual history.