SNAPSHOTS; He Bought a Bike, and Now He’s on a Roll
Dave Schlabowske bought a bike.
It was new, but nothing spectacular: a Trek Antelope 820, a trail bike, white with blue speckles.
In those days, Schlabowske lived in a studio apartment on the south side. He shared a building with a detective agency, a massage parlor and a school for professional wrestling.
Schlabowske was a photojournalist Time and Newsweek were clients and he took pictures of the sort of things most people try to ignore: people living in Guatemala City’s dump, violent elections in Haiti, needle exchange programs in Milwaukee. His pictures expressed his view of the world.
He smoked a couple or three packs of cigarettes a day, and he hit the bars nearly every night.
He didn’t mind smoking, and he didn’t mind being drunk. What bothered him was driving when he was drunk. It wasn’t the idea of dying in a car wreck that bothered Schlabowske; what bothered him was the idea of hurting someone else.
“I felt the odds of getting into an accident and killing someone were going up and up,” he says.
So 15 years ago, Dave Schlabowske bought a bike.
“I thought with a bike I could get back and forth to the bars, and if I was in an accident, I wouldn’t kill anyone but myself,” he says.
A few friends thought Schlabowske’s buying a bike was a great idea. They invited him to go riding with them in the Kettle Moraine State Forest.
Schlabowske had to explain to them that biking wasn’t his sport; drinking was.
But Schlabowske enjoyed getting on his bike. He started taking longer routes to the bars, ducking down alleys just to explore, using side streets just to see what was on them.
When it got to the point that smoking interfered with his biking, Schlabowske cut back. He took up his friends’ offers to ride through the Kettles. He got interested in racing. He quit getting drunk. Quit smoking entirely. Bought a nice bike. Changed careers.
It wasn’t that Schlabowske set out to change his life. He bought a bike, and over a period of years, an entirely different life was where the bike took him.
“That bike probably saved my life,” he says.
Schlabowske gave his Antelope to his brother, a musician in Chicago with the sort of unwholesome lifestyle that musicians sometimes lead. It had a similar effect.
Schlabowske’s now the Milwaukee program manager for the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin, a non-profit advocacy group.
As for Schlabowske’s old Antelope, it met the fate of many city bikes: It was stolen.
“I hope whoever stole the bike stole it to ride it,” he says. “I hope it helps turn the thief’s life around. I hope it’s still out there, saving someone’s life, one trip at a time.”
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Contact Crocker Stephenson at (414) 224-2539 or by e-mail at cstephenson@journalsentinel.com.
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