This update is part of the ongoing research that keeps Bikeverywhere maps as current as possible. The irregular pattern to the minor updates reflects the realities of publishing. When I run out of maps, I reprint and incorporate any changes since the last update.  I don’t usually make a big deal of the change. The cover and ISBN numbers are the same. The only way to tell the difference is to look at the back cover. Just above the price you will see “Rev 8.2.”  The original version doesn’t have these words.

This is the first time I’ve labeled the revision numbers, and ironically, I did it wrong.  This is the 9th edition of the map so I should have labeled it Rev 9.2.  And those of you who care about this sort of thing at all will wonder “Why 9.2 instead of 9.1?”  The answer is that I did another minor update about a year ago, but didn’t label it. Check your map. If it has a break where the I-35W bridge collapsed, it is 9.0, the major update. Rev 9.1 reconnected the bridge. It also has other small updates, but it would require some deep sleuthing to discover those changes.

The report also states:

• Bicycling creates 13,000 Wisconsin jobs
• Non-residents spend $535 million on bike-related events, food, and lodging
• 49% of Wisconsinites participate in recreational biking
• A 20% increase in biking could increase economic activity by $107 million and create 1500 more jobs

My adult bicycling habit began in Wisconsin 40 years ago. I started as a bicycle commuter at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and within the first year Phil VanValkenberg,  one of Wisconsin’s best known bicycle gadflies, introduced me to bicycle touring in the rolling hills of Wisconsin’s Driftless area.  That hooked me, and that part of Wisconsin is still my favorite bicycling haunt.

“That was two weeks before my thirtieth birthday.” She wrote later in an email conversation. It was the beginning of what is now a two -and-a-half year odyssey that has taken her from non-cyclist to bicycle advocate who is using her bike regularly for transportation and recreation. Her story is inspiring because Eli is not a naturally gifted cyclist. She’s had to work at it and even now she is cautiously expanding her range and building confidence.

Here’s her story, mostly in her own words.

“My childhood started out fairly normally. I had the tricycle; I had the training wheels; the training wheels came off. Then my mother informed me that I was free to ride my bike as much as I wanted: in the driveway. Even at age eight, this could only hold my interest for so long before I got bored and just…gave up.

“In May of 2007, my wife Leora and I moved from St. Louis Park to south Minneapolis. As we explored our new area, I said, “Everything around here is a little too far away to walk to, but close enough to feel like a schmuck starting the car to get there.”

“They’re perfect biking distance,” Leora said.

“They are,” I agreed, “if you know how to ride a bike.”

What followed was an extensive search for bike classes. Eli found plenty, for kids 5 to 12 years old. A short time later, at the Living Green Expo, I suggested lowering the saddle on her bike and shuffling around until she got a sense of the balance.

“That sounded like crazy talk,” Eli remembers thinking, “but after two other people gave me the same advice, I figured there must be something to it.” She and Leora got new bikes in August. Eli’s was an “eggplant-colored” bike that she named aubergine or “Aubey.”

“I quickly came to appreciate the shuffling technique. Even on foot, I’m not graceful, and staying upright on a bicycle requires a sense of balance that I had to dig deep to find. Inch by inch over the next few months, I raised the seat, until I was shuffling at normal riding height. Then the snow came.”

So ended her first year.

“When spring melted the snow, I was gripped with terror. If bicycles had never evolved beyond their draisine ancestors, I would have been the queen. But cyclists nowadays will insist on pedaling the darned things. Maybe I could slip Aubey onto Craigslist and forget the whole thing.

But Leora was eager to get on her own bike. I told her, “If you want to ride, you have to help me. You have to do the Dad thing.” With her holding the back of the seat, I pedaled until I mostly had the sense of it – and then she let go. I wobbled up and down our alley until I could get from one end to the other without crashing into the neighbors’ garages and recycling bins.

“A series of “firsts” commenced: My first “real” ride (to the Mississippi and along the River Road); my first night ride (unintentional; we didn’t plan to stay at the party that long, really!); my first solo ride (I don’t know if that scared Leora or me more).

“Always, Leora was a tireless cheerleader, riding either just ahead of me to call out hazards or just behind to watch how I was doing. I was running into a lot of cars, but otherwise I was making progress.”

For Eli, her first errand by bike demonstrated how obsessed she was becoming about riding. “The errand was to our corner grocery store, a six-minute walk, but I wanted to ride that much.” She says.

“There was one other “first” to overcome: The first fall. I’d made it to the river and almost all the way back without incident and with a minimum of wobbling. I got cocky. I took the turn into our alley far too wide. I knew I was going to slam into the curb.

“Calm came over me. I was going to hit the curb. It was going to hurt a lot. I made peace with that inevitability, and I suspect it hurt less than if I had gone down fighting. That’s not to say that it didn’t hurt.

“I spent the following Sunday morning working on turns and stops in an empty parking lot. It was an important rite of passage. I’d had a real fall. I was a real cyclist.

“I started riding to doctor’s appointments, parties, picnics with friends – if I could get there by bike, I did. Nothing daunted me. Only the cold is stopping me at the moment. I’m not ready for winter riding yet.”

What’s next?

“For now, I’m content riding Aubey around my neighborhood, riding the River Road with Leora, or making a dash to the store.

“I’m aiming for the St. Paul Classic or the Minneapolis Bike Tour next year (or both), and I may eventually work up to long-distance fund-raising endeavors, like the AIDS ride or something else ridiculously long and involved.

“I’ve become convinced that the bicycle was the greatest invention humankind ever wrought, and that belief has made me a bicycle evangelist. I don’t have to proselytize. All I have to do is pedal.”

“What an amazing gift it is to be able to ride a bicycle.” Eli says. “I don’t take that gift for granted.”

The Jefferson County Bike Map has been researched by Milwaukee Bike map researcher Bruce Thompson and developed to the same standards as the Milwaukee and Madison Maps. The routes are laid out on low traffic, scenic towns roads and county highways. The primary difference is that the Jefferson County Bike Map is a downloadable pdf file. That makes it a less expensive alternative to the paper maps, and you can reprint the map as often as you wish.

You can view the Jefferson County Bike Map in the Shopping Cart.

As a special introductory offer, the Jefferson County Bike Map will be reduced by $1.00 to just $5.00 from now until the end of 2009. Now’s the time to start planning that city-to-city bike trip, or a close to home get away into rural beauty of Jefferson County.

The Minneapolis Bike Tour, organized by the Minneapolis Parks Foundation, is a major fundraiser for the parks system, and a great ride for showing off the system to visitors and local riders. You can support the parks and enjoy a traffic free bike ride on Sunday, September 20, by joining over 4000 fellow cyclists on the Minneapolis Bike Tour.

Bikeverywhere will be at the Start/Finish Line in Parade Stadium to talk about bike routes, show you the products we sell and get your suggestions for changes, corrections or additions to our map and book selection. We’ll also have free bikeverywhere stickers while they last. Join the Minneapolis Bike Tour for a beautiful fall ride, then stop by our table to say Hi.

For more information about the Minneapolis Bike Tour, click here.

Before we’d ridden a mile I knew they needed more than a shop. They were tired, a bit cranky, lost and carrying camping gear, but faced with an expensive motel stay because there was no way they would get out of the city before dark. I volunteered our backyard for the night. It’s exactly the sort of thing that others had done for me on my long ago trip to Portland, Oregon.

By chance, they were riding west from Portland. their destination was a friend’s house in Vermont. Too far into the ride to carry the novelty of the adventure and too far from the end to feel the accomplishment, they were at a mental low point, and the normal tensions of parent and teenage son were heightened. It would have been great to hear travel stories of wonder and parent-child bonding, of cherished memories and life changing experiences, but that wasn’t for this night. Dad needed someone to talk with and son needed “space” and rest.

What we could offer was an ear and a respite from the road. We fed them cheese and crackers until the large pizza arrived, then followed up with a couple of large scoops of ice cream and chocolate chip cookies. They took hot showers and dried off with the thickest towels we had. We listened as Dad unloaded his travel blues while the boy slept. In the morning Dad woke up early and worked on the bikes in our basement bike shop as son continued sleeping. I made a pancake breakfast for Dad, but son chose to get another hour of sleep.

I gave Dad a copy of the “Twin Cities Bike Map,” marked the location of shops for picking up the gear he needed and highlighted the route out of town. Then I hopped my bike and went back to work. It was a small respite for the travelers and a break from the daily grind for me. For them, I hope they form that bond and settle into a close friendship as they continue their travels.

For me, I’ve made a down payment on a debt. I can never directly repay those who helped me on my cross-country trip. The best I can do is pass the favor to another traveler. I’ve done it once. I still have a couple more to go before the debt will be fully repaid.

By late Friday morning the crew had completed half the remaining distance. Tar filled dump trucks lined the side of the road. The drivers, with time on their hands, gathered in the middle of the line to visit. Behind them an empty truck raced up the unpaved portion of the trail toward an exit while a loaded truck waited. When the path cleared the loaded truck backed down the trail to the paving machine.

The new truck backed into place, a puff of black smoke belched out of the paving machine and the whole operation inched forward. Black tar and sand poured from the truck to the hopper of the paving machine and came out the back in a smooth, straight ribbon. Moments later, and ten feet down the trail, the operation came to a stop. The truck was empty. As the truck sped away, the operator of the paving machine put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the seat. A crew member stared off into space at the back of the paving machine. Ten feet, then wait until the empty truck clears the trail and a full one backs the distance to the paving machine. It wasn’t one of the more interesting jobs for this crew.

The pace picked up as the distance shortened. Within two hours the paving crew had completed all but a couple of dozen yards of the trail. Trucks pulled off the trail almost as soon as they emptied their loads. The long line of trucks on the side of the road gave way to a couple of trucks carrying the last loads of the day. A bobcat swung into action, picking up paving debris and loading it into an empty truck.

The last truck raised its bed to dump a load into the hopper, then lowered it less than a minute later. The paving machine wouldn’t need his full load. A moment later the last few inches of the connector were covered with hot mix. The moment cyclists were waiting for, connecting that 120 mile ribbon of blacktop, had arrived.

It was not a momentous moment. The paving machine pulled off the trail and rumbled down the road to a grassy area. The partially emptied dump truck started down the road, presumably to return its leftover load of mix. A reserve truck, still full of mix, left the scene. The bobcat swung onto the trail and scraped up a mound of leftover blacktop. The load went into the debris truck. The bobcat swung back to the access road. With its bucket scraping the road and front wheels floating in the air, it scraped the pavement free of tar and sand.

The paving machine rumbled down the road toward a waiting trailer. Pickup trucks, ubiquitous vehicles at every construction site, left quickly. The bobcat finished its work and dropped its last load into the debris truck. A moment later the truck left, leaving only the bobcat, its driver and another man. The two men huddle over diagrams for a few minutes.

A pickup swung into the abandoned site. The extra man hopped into the bed of the truck and spread out to relax as the truck raced away. The bobcat churned down the road a moment later.

Forty-five minutes ago this was a bustling site of dump trucks, paving machine, pickups, a bobcat and crew. Now it is abandoned except, somewhere down the trail, a lone man on a compacting machine is slowly rolling up and down the trail compressing the mix.

With a little luck, the crews made it back to Willmar, their hometown, in time for Friday’s happy hour or an evening with their families. On Monday morning they were at a new site, paving a Wal-Mart parking lot. They would finish that job in a couple of days and move to another job. The trail project would fade into the long list of projects completed.

The celebrities showed up two weeks later. Garrison Keillor, mayors, trail advocates and folks who enjoy momentous events. Garrison drove in a ceremonial green spike. Speeches were made. Musicians and food entertained the crowds. Bicyclists and in-line skaters cheered.

None of them made it to the actual completion of the trail. I expected someone, perhaps a trail advocate, to show up with a keg of beer that the crew could tap into once they’d parked their trucks and clocked off the job. At the very least, I expected an accidental bicyclist to come upon the scene just as the crew was wrapping up. I expected him to stop and hang out, aware that this was an important moment in cross-state trail building.

But I’m projecting my own needs into this moment. What I really wanted was for a single trail user to connect with a single trail builder, to briefly share a moment in common. A moment when the trail builder could talk about his job and what it takes to put asphalt on the ground, and a trail user could say what it means to have these incredible facilities available and perhaps give an insight into why we enjoy them. It won’t happen this time. Bicyclists didn’t show up at the construction site and the paving crew didn’t show up at the trail celebration.

I wish I’d bought them that keg of beer.

Diagonal Trail

Minneapolis has designated Talmadge St as a bike route between 18th and 27th. It’s a pleasant residential street and connects student housing to the greater campus area. It’s a good local connector, but it is short and doesn’t serve the larger area covered by the Twin Cities Bike Map very well, so I haven’t symbolized it as a bike route. While researching it, however, I discovered a very good alternate to the Industrial Blvd/Hennepin Av/29th Av SE route. See the attached map for the alternate. I’ve also added Ridgeway Pkwy between Industrial Blvd and Stinson Blvd. This has always been a very pleasant road, with a substantial hill in the middle, but it didn’t connect well to the rest of the routes until the Diagonal Trail was built.

Just north, on the overview side of the map, I added part of Long Lake Rd and 33rd Av and eliminated most of W. Co Rd C. The new routes, although not as direct, are more bike friendly.

This area still needs some work. One intriguing possibility is to run the Stinson Blvd bike route north to Silver Lake, then connect with 44th/Cty Rd E. If anyone has insights into this option, please let me know.