We’ve ended the “community commute.” This is good news.
For a decade or more, Bike to Work Week was celebrated in May right around Syttende Mai. I always thought an opportunity was missed here. Cyclists could have dressed up as Norwegians and Swedes and the Norwegians could have ridden their bikes through the blue and yellow Swedish line, declared their independence and proclaimed their right to eat fish soaked in lye. Then everybody could have had a beer or two.
But Bike to Work Week is declared by the League of American Bicyclists out of their home in Washington, D.C., where the group tries to get it in before the humidity sets in. Here in Wisconsin, May often means slushy ice fishing.
So, my organization, the Wisconsin Bike Fed, audaciously moved it to the first week in June. This year that’s June 1-10. Yeah, I know, that’s technically more than a week, but we’re not even calling it Bike to Work Week anymore either. We’ve dropped the “to work” part because we wanted to celebrate all things bike, including stuff that has nothing to do with commuting.
There will still be the expected commuter stations all over town with their coffee and treats. (On their own special dates, and only at the Monona Terrace station, these treats will include bacon and brat cakes. These are nature’s finest foods.) But we’ve dropped the once popular “community commute” in which we invited civic leaders to join bands of bikers as they rode to work, culminating in a press conference on the Capitol Square.
What was once a must-do for elected officials who wanted a podium to proclaim their bike love, turned into, over the years, a collective shrug. People stopped coming because biking to work stopped being a novelty and started being, well, a way to get to work.
We don’t declare it “use your stapler at work day,” or “write an email at work day.” Well, bike to work day became sort of like that. Its demise is not to be lamented. It’s a sign of great progress.
A couple of years ago Madison got recognized as being one of the five best cities in the nation in which to ride a bike. The others are all west of the Mississippi, in places that don’t know snow that arrives in December and leaves in March, and where August is a month during which you can hydrate simply by breathing.
We didn’t get to that elite cycling status by taking our orders from Washington or by trying to be like everybody else. So, when the rest of the country celebrates cycling in May, we do it in June. While the rest remain focused on getting people to try to bike to work, we’re so past that. While other places offer a box of donuts and some juice at their commuter stations, we pioneer the brat cake, which is a bratwurst smothered in maple syrup and wrapped in a pancake.
Riding a bike isn’t just a way to get around or to stay in shape. Cycling, when enough people do it, can shape a city. And a place built to be experienced at 12 miles an hour while exposed to the elements is going to be a lot better than one built around the notion that you can ignore anything that doesn’t grab your attention as you move through space three times as fast and surrounded by a couple tons of glass and steel. Citizen cyclists ask for better urban details because they notice them. And their demands often make city life better for everyone, whether they ever get on a bike or not.
So, it’s almost Bike Week. Celebrate the cycle, even if you don’t ride one yourself.
Dave Cieslewicz is the executive director of the Wisconsin Bike Fed, which coordinates Wisconsin Bike Week activities in Madison and elsewhere.
