Bike Fed promotes life on two wheels.
Having lived in this state for 35 years, and with it now being August, I’ve found myself starting to make the Wisconsin summer countdown:
How many weekends do we have left of swimming? How many weeknights of good daylight after work? How much time until the first frost? The first snowflake?
Knowing what’s coming, I want to be outside as much as possible for as long as possible, and one of the best ways to do that is on a bike.
I call my Trek hybrid (with medium-size tires and tread) my convertible and look for every opportunity to use it instead of the car — to the dry cleaners, grocery store, library, gym. I’m not always looking for exercise. I’m just so happy when we’re the Unfrozen Tundra. The Wisconsin Bike Fed gets it. The whole mission of this membership-based, nonprofit organization is to promote the bike life.
That doesn’t have to mean crazy, competitive races — although there’s certainly room for that crowd. But it can also mean a little bit of activity, socializing, navigating and enjoying our city in one of the best ways possible, on two wheels.
And so on Friday, I joined 300 riders for the Bike Fed’s second Polish Moon Ride.
The slow, 11-mile ride meandered through the streets of Milwaukee’s south side, beginning at our Polish Moon — the Allen-Bradley Clock Tower at Rockwell Automation — and under a blue moon, the second full moon of the month.
The family-friendly event is the creation of Bike Fed deputy director Dave Schlabowske.
With musica norteña, polka music and accordion players on bikes, with bratwurst and tortillas, beer and root beer, a festival atmosphere surrounded hundreds of cyclists before the ride even got going.
The ride traveled through some of the south side’s wellknown neighborhoods, past Walker’s Point, Kosciuszko Park, the Basilica of St. Josaphat, up Lincoln Ave. and back down Mitchell St., monitored by police officers who helped, as we did stop traffic at times. We biked past Polish bakeries and the El Rey market, past majestic old churches and Latino restaurants.
“It looked funky and fun, and it was long enough to make it interesting,” said Anne Lucke of Madison.
“And it’s a part of Milwaukee I don’t really know,” said Nancy Schuh of New Berlin. “It’s a fun way to discover it.”
Residents sitting on porches or peering out windows sometimes cheered, often waved and almost always asked, who were we? What were we doing?
“It’s about using the bicycle to create a sense of community,” said Dave Cieslewicz, the former Madison mayor who has been the Wisconsin Bike Fed director since 2013. “The whole neighborhood comes out, as well as people from the city. It’s just a great way to help knit together a community using bicycles.”
With the registration fee, the Bike Fed raised more money to be pooled with the $9,000 it raised last year in the first Polish Moon Ride. It will go toward a Wisconsin Bike Fed community bike shop, designated to go in the Milwaukee office at 3618 W. Pierce St. The hope is it will be completed in early 2016.
“It will be a place where people can come and get their bikes fixed,” said Cieslewicz. “Get free air for their tires. Advice on how to do simple bike maintenance tasks.”
The shop also borrowed an idea from a North Division High School bike program that teaches kids how to be cycle mechanics.
Created 26 years ago, the Wisconsin Bike Fed primarily serves two purposes. It aims to educate everyone who uses the roads — drivers, cyclists and pedestrians — on how to get around safely. And it serves as an advocate for cyclists.
Bike Fed programs teach high school students how to bike safely to school and those in driver’s education classes how to share the road. Its Safe Routes to Schools program served 2,500 Milwaukee children from 30 schools.
It is also a resource for cyclists, listing races and rides on the website and in the magazine as well as lists of cycling shops and clubs throughout the state. It gives tips on places to ride, maps and guides.
The Share & Be Aware program is intended to cut down the number of fatalities on the road. Already this year, 26 pedestrians and eight cyclists have died in the state.
“The Bike Fed’s approach to sharing the road is not ‘it’s us vs. them.’ It’s just us — motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians,” said Tom Held, Share & Be Aware media ambassador. “The vast majority of us who bicycle also drive cars and also walk on the sidewalks. Anytime we’re on the road, we should be thinking about how to do that safely.”
But Bike Fed itself doesn’t put on races and it doesn’t do a lot of rides. The Polish Moon Ride is a nice exception.
Instead Bike Fed lobbies in Madison for complete streets, the vulnerable-user law and funding for bicycling infrastructure and trails.
I’m grateful for that. When I was 11, living on the south side, my father took the time to get me to the police station to get my bike registered. I still remember feeling so grown up with the freedom I would have with my own wheels. And yet there’s only so much one person can do.
I was hit by a car turning left while I was simply crossing the intersection of S. 27th St. and W. Burnham St. on a green light. The driver sped off while other people came to help pick me up off the street and collect my bike, which was damaged beyond repair.
I don’t know if we wore helmets in the 1980s but I wasn’t wearing one, and I don’t know how I was lucky to get away with just a few cuts and scrapes.
I never forgot the experience of such vulnerability, however, and as I try to teach my kids how to obey traffic laws and share the road, I swear every other person is either texting or talking and not really paying attention. It’d be safer to just drive them to baseball and soccer practice myself.
But then I begin the countdown, and know that we’ll all be trapped indoors, and inside cars, soon enough.
The Wisconsin Bike Fed aims to educate everyone who uses the roads on how to get around safely and it serves as an advocate for cyclists.