No matter the weather, Minneapolis City Council member bikes to work
Doug Grow, Star Tribune
Published January 25, 2004 GROW

       Minneapolis City Council Member Dean Zimmermann was in the final stages of preparing to head to the office.
       With help from his spouse, Jenny Heiser, he put on his sport coat, which went over the flannel shirt, which covered a turtleneck shirt. Then, again with an assist from Heiser, he pulled on his trenchcoat.
       You've heard of the GQ look. He was sort of a GQ man, Minnesota edition.
       Next came a wool cap. Then a hood.
       "Let's go," he said, heading out the door to his bicycle.
       Daily, with little regard for the weather, the council member, who represents the near South Side, rides his bike downtown to City Hall.
       "This weather makes me homesick," Zimmermann said Friday morning as snowflakes fell.
       "Where's home?" I asked.
       "North Dakota," he said.
       "Lovely," I said.
       "What's the temperature?" he asked.
       "About 8," I said.
       "Not bad," he said.
       There are scores of people who ignore the Minnesota winter and commute on bikes no matter the weather. But most of these commuters don't wear trenchcoats. And most seem to be a little younger (Zimmermann's 60) and a little less mature around the middle than the first-term council member.
       Long before he started biking to City Hall, Zimmermann was one of the bona fide characters in Minnesota politics. Always a progressive and a DFL activist dating back to 1968, he was essentially purged from the DFL Party for becoming active in the Green Party at a ward convention three years ago.
       He was told he couldn't speak at the DFL convention. He responded by sitting through the meeting with his mouth taped shut. Party hacks weren't amused.
       Now Zimmermann is Green Party all the way; he's one of two Greens -- Natalie Johnson Lee is the other -- on the council.
       His devotion to Green principles is an obvious reason for biking to work.
       "Biking means there's one less car belching garbage into the air," he said.
       But that's not the major reason for biking. Before becoming a City Council member, he made his living as a handyman.
       "You can't get 2,000 pounds of tools on a bike," he said.
       He loves his work as a council member. But the job is sedentary.
       "This job [council member] is deadly," he said. "You're sitting and sitting and sitting. I could feel my body falling apart."
       He could also feel his body expanding, despite efforts to eat healthy foods.
       With urging from an adult son, he got out his old bicycle last March. He's been riding the roughly 3 miles to work ever since.
       "I've fallen in love with it," he said.
       He's losing some weight. And, in nice weather, the mode of transportation gives his constituents easy access to him.
       "Hardly a day goes by when somebody doesn't yell 'Hey, Dean!' and I pull over and we talk," he said. "It's a rush."
       On Friday morning, there were no "Hey, Deans" because there were no constituents standing on the slippery, frozen street corners.
       From my perspective -- on a bike following Zimmermann through parking lots and down lightly traveled streets -- there was none of the rush he spoke of. Mostly, there was fear of falling and a yearning to be warm.
       He stopped only once. When we arrived at where 11th Avenue S. passes over the tangled mass of concrete that is the merging area of Interstate Hwys. 35W and 94, he got off his bike and bellowed.
       "Look at that!" he said, pointing his mittened hand to the jammed traffic. "Ha!"
       "Q-Q-Q-Quite a m-m-m-mess," I said, shivering.
       "Ha!" he said again as he remounted.
       Zimmermann hates traffic. It's the bane of urban development, he believes, and the bane of the environment. Soon, he plans to announce his grandest vision as a City Council member. He will be proposing that the city involve itself in the Personal Rapid Transit system long promoted by former University of Minnesota Prof. Ed Anderson.
       Zimmermann sees a 68-station system, webbing through the city. It will be cutting-edge, clean, convenient. His plan will call for private investment to cover the cost of a system he believes can be had for about $600 million.
       Meantime, though, there's biking.
       "We're on a bike lane now," he said as we neared downtown.
       "R-r-r-eally," I said.
       "You just can't tell it because of the snow," he said.

Doug Grow is at
dgrow@startribune.com.