In just about two weeks time I’ll be burning big time jet fuel to get myself to the ProWalk/ProBike Conference in Seattle. It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years already (and in many ways it feels like it has been much longer) since I lent a hand in organizing the last conference, which was held in Madison the week after Labor Day 2006. I learned last week that the Madison conference was the biggest one ever, with over 650 people in attendance. The organizers are expecting over 700 people this year, and have some concerns that the venue will be over capacity. The first ProWalk/ProBike (then known only as ProBike, before the newer, more politically correct, name came into play) was in 1980 with only about 200 people present. This will be my fourth PWPB.

I learned this morning that another Tour de France has come and gone without my knowing. Though I risk alienating a large portion of my audience here, I have to be honest. The Tour, though beloved across the globe, just doesn’t interest me.

I know that even those who love The Tour dearly have mixed feelings about it these days. Doping has put a nasty cloud over the sport, like it has over so many sports in recent years. Floyd Landis went from the great next American hope to being the first cyclist to have a Tour win taken away from him.

Some health issues have kept me off of my bike for the last month. An attempted ride last weekend convinced me that I ought to stay off the bike for a week or so more.

It's strange to adjust to life out of the saddle, especially during the warmer half of the year. Because I'm not physically able to bike without significant discomfort, I don't feel too guilty about taking time off. But it does feel strange to not ride for so long. Even in the winter, I rarely take off more than a week or two at a stretch.

I've had friends in the past who have been sidelined off of their bikes due to various injuries, usually back or knee problems. I know that it frustrated them, perhaps most of all because they wondered if they'd ever be able to get back on the bike. Luckily, my hiatus should pretty certainly last no longer than 6 weeks at the longest.

Climate Ride is looking for participants to raise money and awareness of climate change and hope for a future powered by renewable energy and a green economy. Proceeds from the ride from New York City to Washington, D.C. (September 20-24th) will go to Clean Air–Cool Planet and Focus the Nation

One of the main reasons that I became a bike commuter was for the environmental benefits. Once I started, I found there to be so many more personal benefits, from saving money to always being able to find a parking space to staving the tide of full-blown morbid obesity…that eventually the environmental benefits became a secondary motivator for me. Maybe I’ve gotten old, but these days I bike because I want to, not to save the world.

This column marks the 20th edition of BIY, Bike-It-Yourself. It seems like a good time to reflect on things and do a spot evaluation. Either that or my job title (Program Planning Analyst) has permanently poisoned my mind.

When I started writing this feature I had a few goals in mind:
1. Bring bicycle advocacy issues to a broader audience. I'd been dealing with the usual suspects for almost six years and I started to wonder, "Does anyone out in the real world know what we're trying to do?" If there's anyone reading this who didn't know me a year ago, I've succeeded.
2. Write one feature a week. At 20 columns in 23 weeks, I think I've done reasonably well with this goal.

I’ve never paid much attention to the price of gasoline. Buying gas has always been a “necessary” evil for me, something that I did even for the year and half that I didn’t own my own car. Like all necessary evils though, I just tried to minimize purchasing gasoline as much as possible. But I’ve never fretted or complained about the price of gas.

It’s ironic that I don’t pay attention to the price of gas, because the price of gas has changed and shaped the entire course of my life.

I was born in 1970 into a one income family of five. The one income came from my father, who worked at an oil refinery. We lived in Houston, Texas, ground zero of the oil world. When people started lining their cars up around the block to buy gas on even or odd days during the 1970s energy crisis, I was watching, and it affected me deeply.

Maybe you hadn’t noticed yet, but on May 19th the City of Madison exploded in road construction. It’s no coincidence that the UW graduation ceremonies happened the prior weekend. Yes, the students are gone for the summer and the orange construction barrels have moved in to take their place.

Not that there wasn’t already plenty of construction happening. Particularly on the isthmus, there’s a good deal of tearing down and building up happening. Surprising, perhaps, in the midst of a sluggish economy, but most of these projects have been in the pipeline for years.

Clearly I've been drinking the special kool-aid for too long.

Instead of biking to work for Bike to Work Week I've spent the last few days at a university transportation conference. I've been surprised to see how other schools in the country deal with transportation issues, and how very much it is different from the way that things are done at the University of Wisconsin and the City of Madison.

For about the last 10 years I've been straddling the line between government staff and community advocate. It can be a tricky line to walk. On the government side, things often are done according to the status quo, and change seems to move at a glacier place sometimes. On the advocacy side, it is all about change. Change now (or as quickly as we can get it). Don't get me wrong, in Madison there's a fair mix of community-minded folks in government, but they often have to work within the constraints of the systems that they inhabit.

There are a great deal of things happening in this community related to bicycling, which is one of the reasons that I started this column. When you love bicycling, and think it can save the world, you want as many people to bicycle as possible. And part of getting more people to bicycle is making them aware of all of the varied opportunities to get on a bike or do something bike-related in our fair city.

Another effort to get the word out which I am peripherially involved in is www.madvelocity.com.

I've seen how Dane101 has grown over the last year that I've been reading it and writing for it, and I'd love to see the same kind of success with a bicycling-specific site. I know it can be done, it just will take the will of the people. Right now there are only a handful of us providing content, and we'd like to see that increase.

Unlike my band …I take requests. Here’s a column inspired by a reader. Yes, I was as shocked as anyone to learn that I have readers.

A few weeks ago I wrote a column about the Rules of the Road. Today’s companion piece is about being nice.

There are things that we do in life because the law tells us to, and there are things that we do because they are the right thing to do. Even if we aren’t saints, most of us know that you get more flies with honey (Is getting more flies a good thing? Hmmm…maybe I’m mixing my metaphors here). You don’t have to be altruistic to be nice to others, because when you are nice to others, sometimes it gets paid back.

I try not to repeat myself too much in this column. It isn’t necessary, I find, because there is so much to talk about in the world of bicycling, even in my small slice of it. But I’m going to revisit some subject matter from my “Heroes” column.

I’m going to talk about Jess Bullen again.

I was teaching a class last Saturday and the topic turned, as it often does in bike safety classes, to bicyclists who are killed by careless motorists...and what happens to those motorists.

The answer to that question, of course, by and large, is that nothing happens to them. They get off the hook because people feel sorry for them. Unless alcohol is involved these cases are rarely prosecuted. And prosecuted successfully even less often.

Recently, during discussion of the adoption of the Madison Platinum Bicycle Committee’s Report recommendations (full disclosure, I wrote this report), Alder Thuy Pham-Remmele (District 20) asked, amongst other skeptical comments regarding adoption of the report, "How is a 300-pound person going to ride a bike?" Story on the meeting here.

Thankfully, Thuy Pham-Remmele was the only member of the Council to vote “no” on the adopting the report, and the measure easily passed, clearing the way for many improvements to bicycling in Madison in the coming years.

This morning there was a story on the Today show about a mother who is allowing her 10-year-old son to ride the bus and subway in New York City all by himself. I guess this is shocking news. The mother in the story was defending her decision by saying that the bus and subway are perfectly safe, and that her son is capable of navigating the system on his own. She contends that allowing independence in children helps them to become more self-sufficient adults. She mentioned, amongst the things that people believe are unsafe, but which are perfectly fine, riding a bicycle in the street.

I hate to jinx us all by saying this, but I think that the weather has broken towards spring. Hopefully this means that the number of bicyclists on the roads is going to steadily increase from now until it hits a peak right before the UW lets out for summer.

More bicyclists on the roads means more on-road interactions between bikes, peds, and cars. Unfortunately, I’d guess that a majority of folks in each of those categories has very little idea what the law says with regards being on the road. Even MORE unfortunately, they all THINK that they DO know.

Public service announcement…rules of the road 101:

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Margret Mead said that. The quote always makes me think of my friend Robbie, who has used the quote in the past in her email signature, and who I’m pretty sure lives by its meaning.