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Once again this year, we’ll be riding for the Boys and Girls Club on 21 Jul 2007. We’ll be on our bikes battling saddle sores and non-trivial hills for the better part of four hours as we ride 50 miles for the club.

As part of the process, we’re collecting donations for the local Boys and Girls Club. If you’re interested in sponsoring either of us, click on our names below to make a pledge. Even a small pledge helps.

• David Bogen
• Sarah Bogen

For some time now, Sarah has been keeping her eyes open for a single-speed bicycle that would fit her.She wanted a single-speed because she felt that it would improve her climbing power. Since a single-speed doesn’t let you shift gears when you encounter a hill or a stiff wind, or, the worst-case scenario, a stiff wind while pedaling up a steep hill, it is up to the bicyclist to provide any additional power necessary to keep the bicycle moving forward. Since this power needs to come from the bicyclist’s legs, it forces the bicyclist’s legs to get stronger.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many frames in her size floating around the world, so finding one, much less one already converted to single-speed, was a tough nut to crack. This last weekend, we found the right set of nutcrackers.

Sarah found a single-speed for sale on craigslist and, shockingly, it not only fit her but was reasonably priced. A short time spent with the bike later, she was the proud owner of a new single-speed.

The purchase of that bike touched off a frenzy of bicycle maintenance this weekend. We had to swap the tires from her road bike over to the single-speed; a new set of tires was then installed on the road bike and the brakes on that bike were adjusted. The rack and fenders had to come off her previous commuter bike (a Gary Fisher mountain bike) and be installed on the single-speed. Since she wants to use her previous commuter bike for cyclocross, she stripped all the extraneous parts off that bike, including the kickstand.

Several hours later, we had touched nearly every bike she owns, but she seems quite happy with her new commuter (the single-speed), her cyclocross bike (the Gary Fisher) and her road bike (with its new tires).

As part of our training for our fifty-mile ride next weekend, Sarah and I determined that we needed to ride at least forty miles yesterday. Conveniently enough, the town of Mt. Horeb is roughly twenty miles from our house and a cafe there serves excellent lefse, a traditional Scandinavian flatbread made from potatoes.Since the Madison area was expected to see temperatures in the nineties with a fair amount of humidity later in the day, we made an effort to get started early. The plan was to get up early, walk the dog, hit the road on the bikes, eat breakfast in Mt. Horeb, and arrive back in Madison by 11:00.

Unfortunately, we didn’t hit the road until just after 08:00, and the temperature was already approaching 80 with a cloudless sky overhead. Regardless, we had a decent ride out to Mt. Horeb without any real complications. The last two miles into town are all uphill and the thought of eating tasty lefse is what kept me pedaling towards the top.

However, after reaching the outskirts of downtown, we noticed that traffic was being detoured, and the side streets were all filling up with parked cars. The town was having an arts fair! We’re suckers for arts fairs, so we happily strolled the streets looking into booths knowing that we couldn’t buy anything larger than a deck of cards because we were on our road bikes with extremely limited carrying capacity. In addition, whatever we bought would have to be pedaled twenty miles back to Madison, rather than simply being thrown in a car trunk and driven back.

Eventually, we found ourselves in front of the Blue Sky Cafe, which was our lefse destination. Unfortunately, the art fair had drawn a fairly large number of people downtown and so there was quite a line outside the Blue Sky Cafe.

All was not last, however, as we noticed signs for Kaffee Stue, which was inside the Community Center. The food at Kaffee Stue had all been prepared by the members of the local Sons of Norway lodge, Skjold Lodge, and it was all traditional Norwegian fare. There was smørbrod, lefse, krumkakke, a variety of sotsuppes, smultringer, rosettes, and a number of other treats. We loaded up our trays (though we passed on the hotdogs wrapped in lefse) and enjoyed an even better breakfast than we had anticipated.

Our stomachs full of tasty Norwegian victuals, we headed back to Madison. The ride back to Madison was scorching, but we arrived back in town shortly after noon. We had such a good time on our ride that we decided to make it an annual event. Skjold Lodge, keep the lefse grill warm because we’re already looking forward to next years Kaffee Stue.

Sarah and I are each biking a fifty mile course on Saturday, 22 Jul 2006, to benefit the Dane County Boys and Girls Club. If you can make a pledge to help us reach our fundraising goal of $75 each, we would appreciate it. You can make a pledge by clicking on our names below.

• Sarah Bogen
• David Bogen

Sarah and I took advantage of beautiful weather on Sunday to go for a long bike ride. Sunday’s weather in Madison was sunny with a high in the low seventies. With just a few wisps of clouds in the sky and a breeze out of the west, it perfect weather for biking.

We grabbed our flat tire kits, some water, and our helmets, jumped on our bikes and started pedaling out of the driveway about 11:00, bound for Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin.We traveled through Madison and Fitchburg to reach the Military Ridge Trail. The Military Ridge Trail is a rail-trail that runs forty miles from Madison to Dodgeville. The grade is gentle but contstant between Madison and Mt. Horeb, which lies along the trail nearly half-way between the two trail endpoints.

Why Mount Horeb over all the other places we could go? Well, it’s about twenty-two miles from our house to Mt. Horeb’s downtown district. Round-trip that’s a bit over forty miles. That distance is just right about for a pleasant mid-day ride. In addition, we both wanted to get some more lefse from one of the cafes downtown. Finally, we were nearly out of the mustard we bought two weeks ago at the mustard museum.

So, yeah. We biked forty miles yesterday to eat lefse and buy mustard. Call us crazy, but don’t call us out of shape.

The last time we biked to Mt. Horeb, we rode back to Madison in a huge, black ambulance courtesy of the Mt. Horeb Volunteer Fire Department. As we were riding down Segoe on our way out of town, that same ambulance came barreling down Mineral Point Rd. bound for the UW Hospital with all its lights and sirens running. We yelled after it that we’d see it back in Mt. Horeb and continued on our way, both of us hoping that we were just kidding.

The ride along the trail was great. The sun was warm, but not punishing. The air was relatively dry; the breeze was constant but not overwhelming. The trail was dry but not dusty. While there were plenty of people on the trail, we never really ended up in any sort of traffic jam. We made good time and found ourselves in Mt. Horeb in about 13:00.

As we got in to town, the civil defense siren started screeching, and since the skies were absolutely cloudless in all directions, we certainly weren’t worrying about tornadoes. As it turns out, the siren is used to summon the volunteers to man the ambulance. Soon, the large black ambulance we had seen in Madison earlier went screaming down the road toward the east. We crossed the street and started to lock up our bikes. We hadn’t been doing that for more than a few seconds when the big black ambulance came screaming down the street, but now heading west. Suffice it to say that more than one person walking the street was heard to comment that perhaps the folks driving the ambulance needed a map.

Anyway, we got our mustard at the Mustard Museum, and enjoyed a light lunch at one of the local cafes (which included a generous portion of lefse) before getting back in the saddle and heading towards Madison and home.

While the constant, gentle, upward grade of the trail from Madison to Mt. Horeb can be tiresome after a while, essentially coasting twenty miles back to Madison is a heck of a lot of fun.

For the last month or so, my main bicycle has had a wobble in the rear wheel. I’ve been busy with other things, so it wasn’t until last weekend that I got the bike up on the stand to true the wheel.After getting the wheel off the bike, I started checking the spokes to see if any were broken before putting the wheel on the truing stand. Unfortunately, I had a broken spoke. That explained why the wheel was so out of true. What it didn’t explain is why I had several prominent cracks and holes in the rim.

I bought that set of rims five years ago while we were still living in Alameda, CA. Over the next five years I put several thousand miles on those rims. I rode that bike in the rain, in the cold, in the blistering sun, on gravel, on limestone, and on pavement.

What I had done, essentially, was wear those rims out. The rims weren’t double-walled and they were the cheapest aluminum alloy rims that I could get at the time.
The manufacturer most likely didn’t anticipate that anyone would buy those rims and then put several thousand miles on them in short order. Between the stress and strain of hitting bumps in the road; being worn down by the brake pads and road grit; and carrying myself (185 pounds) and sometimes up to fifty pounds of gear those rims suffered through quite a bit.

Now, however, they can go to that great aluminum scrap heap in the sky. I just got a new wheel custom built for me by one of the local bike stores. It’s a Surly track hub (read: bolt on and designed to be used with a single-speed freewheel) that is connected to a Velocity Deep-V rim (read: double-walled aluminum alloy; known in the MTB community to be rock solid). Combined with my usual tire (Panaracer Pasela Tourguard), it all makes one really nice wheel. The bike shop even threw in a new freewheel for nothing.

For the last week, I’d been riding my Miyata frame which I also got in California. That’s a nice bike, don’t get me wrong, but for around town riding, I’ll take my beat-up old Schwinn. The Miyata is a zephyr meant for long, speedy road rides; the Schwinn is a beast of a bike with its single-speed freewheel, collapsible metal panniers, and a trunk. All of that is attached to an old-school steel frame. While the Miyata also has a steel frame, but it is stiffer and lighter which gives a much different road feel.

I took the new wheel out for a ride today and it is fabulous; it’s worth every penny that I paid for it.

Two days ago, Sarah purchased a new bicycle, a Fuji League. The bike is a lightweight road bike without excessive bells and whistles.

She had been looking for a new road bike since last summer when she finally decided that her old road bike was simply too big for her.The frame of her new bike is red and white. The frame is chro-moly, which should absorb some of the usual bumps resident in Madison-area roads.

She bought it from a local bicycle retailer’s “used” department. However, the bike clearly had never been ridden for anything longer than a block or two. The chain and rear sprockets were in pristine condition. The rims evinced no signs that brake pads had ever touched them.

Madison ordinances require that all bicycles kept in the city be registered (licensed). Normally, the cost is $10/bike. However, once a family goes over the two bike threshold, the cost drops to $8/bike. Since we now own seven bikes, we’re clearly getting the volume discount.

Even though we have seven bikes, I expect that number to drop to six at some point as Sarah unloads her old, too large road bike. However, if I can find a cheap frame in decent condition, I’m going to purchase it and turn it into a fixed gear. Also, Sarah has expressed some interest in owning a single-speed of her own, so we may be on the lookout for another road frame that fits her we can convert to a single speed.

So, even as our bike herd is culled, we expect it to grow in the future.

In case you thought hysterical elected leaders were confined to big cities, and the federal government, the Village President of Black Earth, Wisconsin gives us proof that short-sighted, hysterical alarmists are in our small towns, too.The e-mail below was sent by Jeanne Poast, Black Earth Village President, to Wisconsin’s Governor, Senator Russ Feingold, county, city, town, and village leaders in Dane County, and state legislators.

Subject: Bicycling on the west end of Dane County

Allow me to address some of Ms. Poast’s points. The idea that bicyclists use Wisconsin roads without paying for them is ludicrous. Most bicyclists are forced (by incredibly poor infrastructure and transportation planning) to own cars. Those cars have license plates and are filled with gasoline. In Wisconsin, a portion of the gasoline tax is specifically directed to be used for roads. So, to say that bicyclists use resources without paying for them is prima facie false.

Also, the city of Madison already requires me to purchase a license for each bike I own. If law enforcement stopped me on my bike for some reason, and if I didn’t give my name (though doing so would contravene recent Supreme Court decisions and would lead to jail time for yours truly), law enforcement could just contact the city of Madison and find out who owns bike license “blah blah blah.”

Bicyclists do not, in fact, have more rights than automobile drivers under state law. In some cases, it may appear that we have less rights than automobile traffic. For instance, bicyclists are barred from traveling on certain roads (the Madison Beltline, for instance), while being forced to follow the same rules of the road as automobile traffic in all instances. If Black Earth feels like passing a law to keep bicyclists off its roads, it woul open the door to all kinds of goofy traffic regulation. For instance, I could agitate for a movement to keep SUV’s, dump trucks, semis, vehicles carrying Black Earth politicians, and other vehicles I disdain off the street in front of my house.

In addition, many of those who live in Black Earth, Mazomanie, and the like commute daily into the City of Madison for work. Do we complain about how the city’s infrastructure bends every day to accomodate the travel needs of those who do not pay property taxes to the city? Do we write angry letters saying “Something needs to be done…” when the residents of those bedroom communities cause two-lane highways to become four-lane highways because they can only commute to work at reasonable speeds (instead of unreasonably fast speeds) on the two lane roads?

Maybe Ms. Poast ought to clean up her own messes before trying to fix a nonexistant problem.

The bicycle races about which she writes bring hundreds of visitors to Black Earth and the surrounding area from all over the globe. Why on earth would those people ever visit Black Earth if it wasn’t for rides like the Horribly Hilly Hundreds? Nobody travels from Germany to see the “public library, three church congregations, two daycares, a preschool, the largest independently owned shoe store in the Midwest, and three elderly facilities.”

Hopefully, the public firestorm of criticism from bicyclists and bicycling advocates this ill-placed volley has created will cause Ms. Poast to re-evaluate her opinion on bicyclists. I’m sure that if Black Earth merchants don’t want hundreds and hundreds of out-of-towners on quiet, non-polluting vehicles spending their money in Black Earth, thousands of other towns would gladly step forward to have us.

This morning, Dalla and I were out for her morning walk when we saw a kid on a bike get hit by a guy driving a Jeep Grand Cherokee.The accident occurred probably 50 yards in front of us. The kid, a middle school-aged kid who was heading to the school two blocks from our home, was in the act of crossing a very busy street, Midvale Blvd. He was riding his bike in the crosswalk from east to west (Midvalue runs North to South).

The Jeep Grand Cherokee was trying to turn left (North) and was paying no attention to the kid. The driver of the Cherokee was, instead, fixated on only the cars and trucks. So, when he saw a small opening in traffic, he gunned the moter of his Jeep Grand WasteOfCapital and roared out into the road like demons from the lower regions of Hell were hot on his trail.

Too late, the moron driving the Jeep saw the kid on the bike. He stepped on the brakes, but even with squealing tires, the Jeep’s front end made impact with the middle schooler.

Being the angry bicyle/pedestrian that I am, and seeing as how this was a kid lying in the street, Dalla and I hurried the rest of the way to the scene of the collision.

The kid was lucky. He was wearing a helmet and he didn’t appear to have any major injuries, but his bike was banged up. He was shaken, to say the least.

A woman in a Honda Accord stopped to see if she coulder render assistance.

The driver of the Jeep got out and started to brush the kid off while collecting the kid’s bicycle for him.

I asked the kid if he was okay and if needed me to call for the police. The kid replied that he needed to call his teacher at school so that she would know why he was late. I suggested that he call his parents instead, and let them call his teacher.

Just then, a cacophony of sirens filled the air as an ambulance and fire truck arrived on the scene. (There is a firehouse just two blocks away, so they didn’t have to come far).

Seeing as how the kid was in the good hands of firemen and paramedics, Dalla and I started walking again towards the library (our original destination).

Seeing that kid get hit by a Jeep made me really mad. What will it take before motorists start actually looking for bicyclists and pedestrians? Will nearly everyone have to lose a close friend or relative to a needless fatal collision with a car before they pull their fat heads out of their asses and realize that when they take the wheel of a car, they actually need to open their eyes and pay attention to everyone using the public road?

Confidential to the Jeep Grand Cherokee driver: Dude. Your’re a tool; a gullible tool. No one who’s anyone who ever has to travel offroad buys a Jeep Grand Cherokee. If you actually needed an offroad vehicle, you’d be driving an Isuzu Trooper (with an offroad package) or a properly outfitted pickup truck. Jeep Grand Cherokees are marketed at people who like to think about going offroad once in a while, but never really get farther than the visitor center at the nearest national park. Our Saturn wagon almost has more ground clearance than your supposedly mighty machine. More than anything else about you, Dumbo, your choice of transportation tells me plenty about you.

On Thursday morning, I was installing some new electrical fixtures in the bathroom, when the telephone rang. Sarah had just left for school on her bike, and I didn’t really like talking to a telemarketer, so I let the phone ring. The answering machine picked up, and Sarah left a message asking me to call her as soon as I got the message. She sounded very upset.I dropped what I was doing, grabbed my cell phone, and called her back. She asked me to come pick her up because she had been hit by a car.

My first question, obviously, was if she was OK. She responded that she was a bit bruised, but other than that, she seemed to be healthy.

So, I grabbed my keys, got in the car, and headed to the corner of Kendall and Grand, where she was waiting.

Sarah had been biking to school, when an [expletive deleted] driving an 80′s vintage station wagon turned left directly in front of her. She did not have a stop sign, nor was traffic in her direction of travel required to yield to traffic from the moron automobile driver’s direction of travel.

Fortunately, I’d recently tuned up the brakes on her bike. New brake cables, housing, pads, and correct alignment of the same were all part of the tune-up. So, when she grabbed the brakes and pulled, the wheels on her bike grabbed hold of the pavement and held on tight. Unfortunately, the distance between her and the car was not great enough for her to stop and she crashed into the car’s right rear quarter panel. The impact threw her off the bike, broke the rim of her front wheel, shattered most of the lights on her bike, shattered the covering on her bike lock, sheared off her front brake cable, and forced the handlebar/fork alignment way out of whack.

The [expletive deleted] driving the car immediately got out of the car and accosted Sarah verbally. He blamed her completely for the accident. He started telling her how she had better have automobile insurance and how she was going to pay for the damage to his [expletive deleted] car.

Unfortunately, neither of them called the police, so now we have to fill out an accident report form to get the police to assign blame for the accident. Simultaneously, we have to start persuing a claim through American Family Insurance (the [expletive deleted]‘s insurance company).

Sarah escaped the accident with a few bruises and some bumps. Doctors checked her out and found no major injuries, so she is just watching what she is doing, and taking plenty of extra-strength tylenol.

Having said all of that, it is important to note that being loud does not make you right. The [expletive deleted] who hit her, essentially assumed that if he got out of his car and made a big scene, everyone would just assume that he was right. Fortunately, the world doesn’t always work that way. If it takes hitting this [expletive deleted] in the wallet to get his attention, and make him start looking for bicyclists on the road, I’ll make sure that hit is large.

There are exactly two reasons that I occasionally fire up Windoze at home:

1. TurboTax
2. Quicken

I really enjoy how Quicken allows me to easily track where and how I spend my money. For instance, in the last twelve months, I spent just over $568.00 on bicycles and accessories.That figure includes the purchase of two new bikes (a combined $42), but is mostly comprised of parts for bikes. New cables, housing, saddles, brakes, chains, fendors, racks, tires, handlebar grips and the like all add up over time.

Unlike most people who replace bicycling gear because it has been sitting around for too long, I do actually wear out bicycling gear. My bike saddles wear out, my brake pads get worn down, the tread on my tires disappears due to wear, and my chains get stretched.

However, even spending $568.00 per annum on bicycles and accessories is cheap compared to owning and operating a vehicle. Heck, one monthly payment on a new GMC Yukon would total more than I spent all last year on bicycling. Forget, making twelve of those payments, in addition to insurance and licensing costs.

Sarah and I were commenting this morning over breakfast how people will complain, and loudly, when gasoline prices spike this summer. We both said, laughingly, that we’ll just have to bike more.

The weather in Madison over the weekend was a delightful 50°F this weekend. Everywhere you looked, people were breaking out their bicycles. Bikes that hadn’t been outside for months (generally, really nice bikes or bikes owned by fair weather bicyclists) were on the streets again.On Sunday, Sarah and I decided to hit the trail ourselves. Our original thought was to head out on the Military Ridge Trail. However, word came back through the grapevine that the trail was all but unridable muck, so we turned our attention to the (paved)Capital City Trail. We rode the Southwest bike trail in Madison to where it joins with the Capital City trail just outside of town. Fifty yards later, we discovered that the Cap City trail was still very much snowy and icy in all the forested areas.

Of course, the state doesn’t plow the Capital City Trail, even though bicyclists must pay a user fee to ride the trail. And, of course, that fee was ramrodded through as a disguised maintenance fee, for things like mowing the sides of the trail (which they don’t do either).

Since the trail is never plowed, commuters can’t use it in the winter (even though the state supposedly believes strongly in alternative transportation). And, because the trail is not plowed, the snow and ice sticks around on it longer than on the streets and sidewalks.

Right now, biking is one of the few good outside activities to engage in around Madison. The lawns and gardens are not ready to be worked, and even if they were, we’ll get at least one more snow storm. The lakes are still covered in ice which prevents people from boating, but the ice is too thin to support people walking on it. Most of the hiking trails are mud pits with another name.

So, here’s this wonderful paved trail, and no one can use it because the money we’re spending on it:

• can’t be traced;
• isn’t used to benefit trail users;
• is most assuredly going to fund something else.

This morning when I walked the dog, the temperature was -8°F and the windchill was -25°F. To make matters even worse, Madison has a had an unfortunate weather pattern so far this year. We get freezing rain to make all the streets and sidewalks icy. Then, before the ice even has a chance to melt, we immediately are treated to frigid temperatures and a good coating of snow. All of this combines to produce less than ideal biking weather.