An Olympic Road Racing Cyclist Turned Pioneering Bicycle Lawyer

John Reed: [00:00:09] When I was a kid, a bicycle was synonymous with independence. School, camp, a friend's house—I had the wheels to get there. No ride from mom necessary. But even as a kid, immortal as I was without a helmet, I appreciated the dangers of sharing the roads and sidewalks with cars, trucks, pedestrians, and other cyclists. I may have experienced my own simple freedom, but legal rights? They didn't even cross my mind.

[00:00:36] Switching gears, pardon the pun, I have been an Olympics junkie for most of my life, particularly when the athletes were all amateurs competing at what was often the pinnacle of their sport. And some of those sports I would only get to see every four years. I played sports, but never at a level where the Olympics was even a thought. Nor did I even think about law school until after I graduated from college and had my first job. The thought of an Olympic athlete becoming an attorney in an area related to their sport. Come on. Who's ever heard of a luge lawyer or a synchronized diving attorney?

[00:01:11] But then there's my guest today. Bob Mionske arrived on the competitive cycling scene later than many of his peers and competitors, but in a short time, he was winning races domestically, then he represented the U.S. in the summer Olympic Games, achieving a record for a U.S. road race cyclist.

[00:01:28] How do you top that? You become a lawyer. A first-of-a-kind bike lawyer. A Sticky Lawyer.

[00:01:36] Hi Bob. Welcome to the podcast. 

Bob Mionske: [00:01:38] Thanks, John. I'm really happy to be here.

John Reed: [00:01:41] Your story actually is probably best told chronologically. So, starting with cycling and particularly road racing. How old, or I guess how young were you when you began competing?

Bob Mionske: [00:01:51] I started racing at 21 years old. I was a ski racer, but I, I did everything, you know. We're all failed baseball players, and I played football and wrestled and played hockey. Pretty much everything, you know, there was always something going on year-round for me.

John Reed: [00:02:06] You competed in college, though.

Bob Mionske: [00:02:08] I did. I went to the University of Wisconsin and found out they had a ski team pretty late in the fall. I saw somebody with a jacket on and asked a few questions, went to a meeting, and there was always a spot for another racer. And I worked my way up to the A team.

[00:02:23] And then that season ended, and I wanted to keep going. And somebody handed me a brochure with a picture of Mount Hood on it and said you could ski in the summer. So, I got on the Trailways Bus and headed out to Oregon, where I still live to this day.

[00:02:39] When I got out here in 1981, I saw the U.S. Ski Team. They didn't deign to speak to a lowly guy like me, but I watched them and I saw them surprisingly on road bikes riding up to the resort, up to the lodge. I always liked working out, you know, I was kind of a gym rat just for the fun of it. And so, I worked all summer and bought a road bike down in Portland and started pedaling that fall.

John Reed: [00:03:05] It may have started as training, but what was the attraction to go further with it?

Bob Mionske: [00:03:10] I think, for me, when being kind of a poor kid with lots of dreams and not many options, I wanted to try to get better at something. I thought about it. I got magazines, and I did my own form of dry land training. My neighbors didn't know it because it was a summer home, but I skied down their lawn for most of that season on that pair of skis. It was barely steep enough to get moving. So, the bottom line is I was always thinking about how to improve. It was something I could get a handle on. There was no cost to entry, and I enjoyed it. So, the bike just entered into that regimen, and I just took off with that.

[00:03:48] I was out here in Oregon towards the end of summer when I got on that bike, and just riding around the forest was its own reward. And then watching your body change while you were doing it. And again, at this time, I didn't know that I had any ability at it. I was riding by myself and getting gassed on the hills and not really looking to go out and ride with people that were faster than me. I was doing it just to get leg strength, and it's an addictive sport, and it just pulled me in in its own right. But I was still looking at skiing as being the thing I was riding for at that point.

John Reed: [00:04:21] When was your transition from skiing as your primary activity, primary form of competition, to cycling?

Bob Mionske: [00:04:30] Well, it didn't happen the first few years. I was still focused on skiing, and it worked pretty well. I started doing better and better, although not nearly as good enough. I guess my dream was to make the U.S. Ski Team, and the reality was I kept downgrading my goal. Like, well, maybe I could get on the C team, or maybe I could get on the development team.

[00:04:47] And meanwhile, one of my teammates was a bike racer, and I happened to be over in Milwaukee, and there was a bike race, a place I didn't visit very much from Madison, even though it's a short drive. And I saw there was a bike race on the lakefront. And I went over there, and there was a breakaway, a group of riders in front of the Peloton, the main group, and the guy that I was training with and riding with who was trying to drop me and leave me behind and really push me. He won the race, and he was in the highest category, and that was a real eye-opener for me. I had no idea he was good, let alone capable of winning at the highest level in our region. So that inspired me to join up. And you start at the very lowest, and it's a crash fest.

[00:05:30] I mean, people don't know how to handle their bikes. And, you know, these are small courses in downtown areas, like four turns, and you just go faster and faster, and a little crowd forms around. And the truth be told, that first race, I thought, well, all right, I've learned my lesson. I'm out. But then, after my lungs healed, I started riding again. And then after that, it really went well. I started winning those races. Get away from the guys that were crashing, which is a mixed sword because in our sport, you like to ride right behind somebody. There's quite a bit less work. It would be as if you were out running with your friend, and you could run directly behind them and do 60% of the effort. Getting out away from everybody has its costs as well.

John Reed: [00:06:12] For the first few races, you were competing individually. At what point does becoming part of a team enter the picture?

Bob Mionske: [00:06:21] For the first few categories that you progress, you may have a teammate, but that just means you have someone to go to the race with that, you know, and they may try to help you in the race, but generally they're after their own ambitions at that point. So, when you progress to the categories, they start like at five, which is a low, then 4, 3, 2, 1, and then pro. When you get up towards the top, if you've earned your way up to that position, teams will approach you. And at that point, you might even get a bike, but generally, you just got a jersey and maybe a little help with the entry fees and a group of fellow competitors to work with as a unit.

[00:06:56] And again, even there, people are usually after their own ambition, but, you know, as they say, the cream rises to the top. Eventually, if you show that you're stronger than the other riders, they'll want to help to be a part of your success. And conversely, I helped other riders that were clearly superior to me until I got near the top of it.

John Reed: [00:07:14] Like many people, I'm most familiar with the Tour de France. Obviously a team sport. From what I've learned—thank you, Netflix—there are the climbers and they're the sprinters, and there's the designated lead rider, and that's the person that the rest of the team is going to help win. Did that type of strategy enter into your team racing when you first got there? You said cream rises to the top. Were you the guy that was being helped by all the riders, or did you have to put in time being the person they drafted behind, or the climber, or the sprinter, or whatever other position?

Bob Mionske: [00:07:48] In the racing we were doing 40 years ago, there were these pretty well-rewarded races. There was prize money in the Midwest. There were primes. You could make a thousand dollars or more, which was a lot of money back then, if you had a successful race. So, there was some kind of what we call combines or coordination in those races, but we weren't racing stage races, so we didn't really have these designations of different types of athletes like climbers or sprinters.

[00:08:14] Generally, we were doing hard, hilly little road races, or we were doing these criterions, which were loops right downtown where it was high speed. And there were a lot of speed skaters, so there was a lot of muscle around, and they were high speed and fast, and there was no faking it. If you couldn't keep up, you weren't gonna be in there for more than five or 10 minutes. And so, whoever remained, you'd look around. If there was a guy with your jersey on and a teammate, you might work together. And it was understood in those scenarios that if your teammate was in a group away, and people were trying to catch them, and you jumped on their wheel, they wouldn't expect you to help chase your own teammate. So, in that regard, it was a win-win for two different riders of equal ability, could take their chances and support each other. And it was the luck of the draw in some cases.

[00:09:06] So there was some teamwork involved. It was later when I got on trade teams where that became, you know, we had a coach and a director and a sponsor that wanted results, and we had to coordinate like a football team might in a regimented way. But that was years away at that point.

John Reed: [00:09:21] You mentioned the term trade team. That's an organized team, as you say, with a coach and a director, and maybe some sponsors. How does that work?

Bob Mionske: [00:09:28] I would say the sponsors come first and then there's some money, and then they can hire a coach, and you can get an equipment sponsor, and then you can recruit racers. Then you'd wear their brand and all the other subsidiary brands or equipment, and maybe some smaller sponsors. Somebody's family business might throw in a little bit of money, and then they'd get their name printed. And interestingly, some of the bigger teams would have one name, maybe a couple small names, and some of the really small teams would have 20 different names as they leaned on all the soft market to generate some money to make a team work.

John Reed: [00:10:05] Talk to me about the sexy life of an amateur competitor. You're getting some race winnings here and there. You're getting a jersey, you're on a team. How are you supporting yourself? 

Bob Mionske: [00:10:14] Well, a lot of people obviously had to work, and I was lucky that when I jumped into racing, I got on a team and with a jersey and a bike, and I was able to get around to the races. And as I said before, the Midwest had a circuit where if you could finish in the top 10, you could pay for your trip, your hotel, or, I guess, it would be more like a motel. And then have some money left in your pocket to pay rent and buy groceries. So, we raced, we lived by our winnings. I don't know how many riders were able to do that, but maybe a couple dozen in the Midwest.

[00:10:46] And interestingly, the amounts of money you can make now are smaller than we were making 40 years ago. So, it was kind of the remnants of a neat league. A time and an era that's passed where the top riders could win the race, and win these primes, which were within the race contests of cash. And then they would split it amongst themselves and make several thousand dollars on a weekend, which was a lot of money. I could live a whole summer on a thousand dollars back then.

John Reed: [00:11:14] This is early eighties?

Bob Mionske: [00:11:15] Yeah. Early to mid-eighties.

John Reed: [00:11:18] So you're on this Midwest circuit, did you get to other parts of the country? Um, did you compete internationally? We're gonna talk about the Olympics, but I'm curious as to how your coverage, your geographic coverage, expanded before you got to the trials.

Bob Mionske: [00:11:32] The Midwest, as I said, had a really good number of races seasonally. And when you're centrally located, you have Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana. So, in that range, you could do all the racing you wanted to do. And if you traveled outside of that circle, maybe New York is an exception, there wasn't really any prize money in some of the other races. I know Colorado had a great racing circuit, but in the summer, they'd come to the Midwest to try to make money. There was nothing happening out there. You know, you could win a couple thousand dollars for a win in that area that I described, but out west you might make $150 or I came out and we won a stage race where we got second and third in a stage race here in Oregon and we got a ladies extra small jersey and a bag of coffee beans. And we were like, well, these are the primes, I assume, where are the winnings? And it turned out those were the winnings. So that didn't even buy our gas money there. And so, we stayed tight to the region I described until probably two or three years later, when I got on a bigger team that traveled.

John Reed: [00:12:39] That's surprising. I would've thought the West Coast would've been the payday, not the Midwest.

Bob Mionske: [00:12:45] I think what happened was there was the speed skating and it all started in Michigan, as I understand it, a little bit in Indiana. They had the Little 500 there, a collegiate kind of festival bike race. And then they had these races around downtowns around Detroit and Chicago, Milwaukee, and big crowds would come out. It was like a party at night. Downers Avenue being an example on the east side of Milwaukee. A massive crowd. It was just a huge festival. And, you know, to be racing at night under the streetlights with thousands and thousands of people, it didn't get any better, really. It was more like what you would see in Belgium. Yeah, it was fantastic. You'd go as a lower category, they'd have a race for you, and then you'd watch the big boys go at the last race. And it was a dream to even be in that group, you know? And years later, I won Downers Avenue, and so that was the process. It took a long time, but it happened eventually.

John Reed: [00:13:40] So you had your U.S. Ski Team dreams. When did the U.S. Olympic Road Race Team come into your head?

Bob Mionske: [00:13:46] I think in probably ‘86, there was an opportunity to go and ride and train with the U.S. coaches in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center, which was formerly an Air Force Base. You know, three to a room. We had Air Force-issued wool blankets still at that time, and a little bunk. We were thrilled to be there. And there were riders from all over the country. And there was a few glimpses of the U.S. A team there, but they would take off for California in January. Colorado is where we stayed. And then there was the B team, who were there with us, but we were invisible to them as well. And then there was the development squads. We would call ourselves the C team or the development team; that was probably a little generous on our part.

[00:14:33] The coaches would occasionally take a look down and see who was available. And I think the big break for me was the United States Cycling Team would get invitations from other countries for their national tours. And at that time, it was a novelty and a high demand to have the American team with the U.S. jersey show up at a race in Italy or Belgium or Japan, or the Middle East, South America, anywhere. So, they would have what we called Fed trips, which is U.S. Cycling Federation team participation. And you get a jersey, the U.S. jersey, which was just unbelievable to put that on. And then, you get your tickets and off you were going to another country. And I got invited.

[00:15:13] My first race was in Italy in ‘86, at the end of the season in August. And we raced in Sicily, in Calabria, down by the toe of the Italian Peninsula. And we did a number of hard races. And that's how I started. And I did okay in a few of those. They award points when you're in these races, which would be like winning a big race in the United States if you could get points in Europe. And so, at the end of the season, I had enough points to make the U.S. B team.

John Reed: [00:15:42] Then it's 1988 and it's time for the U.S. Olympic trials to make the team to go to Seoul, South Korea. When you went to the trials, how did that work? 

Bob Mionske: [00:15:52] So new sponsors were gearing up in anticipation of the Olympic year, and I got invited to be a part of a bigger budgeted team. And what they did is they went and cherry picked all the kind of up-and-coming stars and a couple other more developed riders and throw us all in one team to compete against a half a dozen other trade teams in the United States that would all go to the Olympic trials.

[00:16:17] Our whole team showed up. There was no designated leader at that point. I was getting good results, but so were a lot of my teammates. I made the first big group, and we stayed to the finish on the first stage, and I finished second, so I was a protected rider, going into the second and third stages of the Olympic trial. So, at that point, a lot of the focus turned to me, which was really beneficial. So, I had some teammates to help me in the next two stages. 

John Reed: [00:16:45] You are on a sponsored team going into the trials. You do well individually. Do you and individuals from other teams now come together to make up the U.S. Olympic team, or does your team, the sponsored trade team become the U.S. Olympic team?

Bob Mionske: [00:17:04] Yeah, that's a good question. So, what happens is whoever wins the Olympic trials, and then there's two team coach selections. We were all from three different trade teams, so it was individuals.

John Reed: [00:17:14] And how'd you do in Seoul?

Bob Mionske: [00:17:16] I made the winning breakaway, and just a few miles before the finish around, I took a long pull, which means I made my turn at the front. And a pretty storied rider named Olaf Ludwig took off right when I finished my pull. And I looked back at someone amongst the other 11 or 12 guys to see who had helped start to chase him.

[00:17:36] And only one rider jumped, and I was out of position, and I don't know if I could have gone with him anyway. Also, another German, an East German, and a West German. And then it became kind of tricky because you had two riders off the front and the remaining half a dozen of us, and each few minutes, someone would try to launch away from us to bridge over to them, and then we'd all chase that individual. I was one of those individuals on a couple efforts.

[00:18:02] If we had all worked together, we could have caught them, but we were all looking at our own interests. And so, eventually, they developed enough of a gap that it was clear we were not going to catch them. We had the Peloton, the rest of the group chasing us, so we had to keep the pressure on. And it was only a few miles to the finish. As we were coming into the finish, it was a slightly downhill sprint. We were all together as a group. The first two had already finished. We didn't see who won, but we were right behind them. And we sprinted for third place, which is the bronze medal. And I missed by less than an inch against another rider.

[00:18:36] I beat a rider named Abdoujaparov, who ended up being and was the fastest sprinter in the world at that time, which was quite an accomplishment for me. But unfortunately, there was a third rider from Germany named Christian Henn who was in the draft behind the group. And when you're going downhill, he caught all the momentum of the group and exploded out on the side. And he beat me by, I think it's less than an inch. So, I missed the bronze by just a whisker, but I was pretty happy to have gotten the result. We were not anticipated to be in the medals.

[00:19:08] Previously, the Americans, in the three World Championships that were right before that, no one was getting in the top 10. The Americans were really not doing well. So, fourth place was kind of a big surprise for everybody. And, naturally, it was kind of hard to believe I was there in the first place, let alone almost getting a medal.

John Reed: [00:19:26] Well, don't sell yourself short. According to my research, you had, and I think you may still have, the best performance by an American cyclist at a full participation or non-boycotted Olympics. So, at that time, you may have been in fourth place, but in terms of Americans finishing the road racing Olympics, it was the highest place ever.

Bob Mionske: [00:19:45] Yeah. Yeah. That's true. And it's interesting because there's been three other guys that have gotten fourth place since in that event. So that still stands, friends of mine, no less, but years later.

[00:19:57] It's a funny thing is you have a race only once every four years. Anything can happen on any particular day. So, there is a degree of luck, I'd say now less so. They design Olympic courses to try to determine who the strongest rider on that day is. Sometimes they design the Olympic course to come down to a sprint, which means almost anyone could win. But the home country has a really good sprinter, so that's what they're thinking when they design the course. But the last few winners of the Olympics have been the strongest rider in the race won the race.

John Reed: [00:20:27] And so in between Seoul and Barcelona, you kept competing on an amateur level. You were on a team at this point.

Bob Mionske: [00:20:34] Yes. I was on a trade team during those years, and the designation between amateur and professional is kind of lost at that point. We did the same races. In fact, some of the contenders of the Tour de France were the Colombian amateurs. You know, they were getting on the podium and almost winning the Tour de France.

[00:20:50] So the rules of our cycling are very strange. You could make up to $3,000 a day and remain amateur. And we race together in almost all races. The national team gets invited to professional races. So, we did all the same races. So, it was a weird hybrid thing for those years. It's no longer the case.

John Reed: [00:21:10] Did you ever do the Tour de France?

Bob Mionske: [00:21:12] I never did, and I didn't want to. The racing I did was like, it was like a long day, five hours, six hours, and then you might not race the next day, or you might not race until the next weekend. They're doing that day after day after day. And so, it's a lighter, better climber, better time trialist than I could be. Especially at that time when I was racing, there were only four or five Americans even racing in the Tour de France: Greg LeMond and Jacques Boyer, and a couple others. Towards the end of my career, there was the American 7-11 team based out of Michigan. They had a full team, they finished. These are guys I raced with. And, you know, the very best guys were better than me, and the middle guys were guys that I could beat on a regular basis. But the idea of being able to recover day after day like that, I never cracked that code.

John Reed: [00:22:00] So a year after Barcelona, you turned pro. What prompted that decision? 

Bob Mionske: [00:22:05] The whole team decided the Olympic thing was over, and it was going pro the next time anyway, so everyone, all the trade teams that were going to continue, decided to change their status and be professional racing teams. And my team, which was Saturn, also based in Michigan, the car company, they decided to turn professional. And so, I did one year racing professional. Again, it was pretty much all the same racing.

[00:22:31] The year after I became a director on that team and the year after that, the team started going to Europe and racing in the big races over there. So, I never made that jump over, as we called it, over the pond as a pro.

John Reed: [00:22:44] What led to the decision from racing pro to then not competing, but becoming the team director for Saturn?

Bob Mionske: [00:22:52] I had a mortgage and I had a job offer, and I was used to making the money. And you know, I had finished college, which was different than almost every one of my teammates because they, as you mentioned earlier, they all started racing when they were teenagers. And a few of them went to college later, and a few of them tried to get a couple semesters in. But generally, nobody could do both college matriculation and stay at this level. So, I did have a degree, but there was no job available that I wanted to do. And essentially, I had been working for myself as a racer. And so, the idea of going at eight in the morning to a job didn't appeal to me. So, I took one year to kind of catch my breath and become a director, which I was not cut out to be, but I got through it, and I learned a lot.

John Reed: [00:23:40] What did you learn, and what did you learn about it that made you say no more?

Bob Mionske: [00:23:46] Well, when you're racing and you're traveling, and cycling is a sport where you, you know, isn't like track and field or some sport where you can stay home; you gotta be on the road constantly. From January through the end of the season, you are traveling and doing races for the sponsor. That is a really hard life.

[00:24:03] And I thought, well, at least I won't have to train and worry about my fitness. But what I didn't realize is that how pampered we were and how good we had it. Because now I was making all the arrangements, and I had a staff that I had to manage, and it just wasn't my cup of tea. And I got through it, and I knew it wasn't for me. So, I did one and done.

John Reed: [00:24:25] Better to be the pampered than the pamperer.

Bob Mionske: [00:24:27] That is exactly right. I'd rather be the CEO of my own ditch-digging company than one of the underlings, and or the guy that was making their lunches and driving them to the ditch work. It was just wasn't for me. All the praise to the people that support the riders. And you'll notice a lot of good riders when they have good results, will first thank their teammates, and then they'll thank the staff because they are like your family. And, we have what we call soigneurs. These are people that give us our food, and move our bags, and take care of us, and dress our wounds. And we get massages from massage therapists, and they check in on your psychological health, and they're indispensable in that world. And they all answer to the director, who answers to whoever owns the team.

[00:25:13] And I was in that position of driving the car in the race, which was fun. That was pretty fun. And making all the travel arrangements and moving around the country. So now I wasn't home still, but I wasn't getting the adrenaline and the high motivation of the potential of a big win and all the things that kind of motivate you to keep going.

John Reed: [00:25:31] You pivoted from rider to team director. Then the bank waved their hands and said, remember us? And you had a mortgage, and you had to take care of that, leaving the sport entirely. What was that like? What was that pivot?

Bob Mionske: [00:25:45] You know, at that point, I was glad to be done with it. I had done it and immersed myself in it. Year-round, you're thinking about the bike in November, December. You go to the holidays, and knowing your competitors are ski racing or they're in California riding. And so, it was this pressure that I just took off, and I was just so grateful to be away from it at first and have what I would call a normal life. And part of that is figuring out how you're going to make a living. I made okay money. I didn't have to worry too much about covering the cost of living. And now I did. So I had to figure out how I was gonna get income in, and I was close to 30 years old.

[00:26:26] I could have kept racing. I had an offer for another three or four years, but I knew I wasn't gonna go to Europe. I wasn't gonna go any higher. And so, I got out while I was still fairly physically able to race, and I had to figure out how to make a living. And so, the first thing I did is I bought a coffee shop, a little kind of boutiquey coffee shop in the middle of an office building. We got a little business started, and it was fine. And I sold that for more than we paid for at least. And, so then I was stuck with thinking of what to do, and that's when I first started thinking about being a lawyer.

[00:26:59] It had been mentioned to me. My pugilistic tendencies and my argumentation that maybe I should be a lawyer. I had been hearing that since I was a preteen, and it sounds like a competitive endeavor where you didn't rely on your physical strength. And so, it had some appeal to me. I'm a lifelong learner, and I thought, well, why not? Why not give this a shot?

John Reed: [00:27:22] Did you have in mind that you would perhaps do something related to your sport or to sports in general?

Bob Mionske: [00:27:28] Yeah, no, I went into it just to start up and see where it took me, and I had no idea. I believe there was a sports law class offered, and I didn't find it germane to anything that I understood would be usable as a living. 

[00:27:43] Our profession knows that people need real experience right away. So, we start clerking after our first year for a real lawyer, a law firm, or someone involved with law and agency. And I did that. I worked for a criminal defense attorney and a couple of them. And, we were able to do trials. We represented defendants in misdemeanors and in felonies, believe it or not, which I find hard to believe to this day. And, I guess after that would be after my second year, actually. I won a rather big trial for me, and I thought I'd found my calling. I did enjoy that, but instead I went into civil litigation and all that entails.

John Reed: [00:28:24] You graduate, you pass the bar. What was your first job? 

Bob Mionske: [00:28:28] I got hired by a personal injury law firm in Madison, Wisconsin. And so, we got a lot of calls, a lot of car crashes, and slip and falls, and that kind of thing. You realize right away a lot of the practice was just about managing the cases, finding out who had a legitimate case, and how to prosecute those.

John Reed: [00:28:48] When did bicycle-related work enter your practice?

Bob Mionske: [00:28:51] When I was working for this personal injury law firm, I largely had a caseload of automobile collisions. And there were no cycling cases coming in. But I had been hired, or actually, I just volunteered to do expert testimony for a bike crash case. And it was unsafe conditions; I think it was against the university. And someone got injured quite badly, and they needed an expert to break down the physics of the collision. There were competing arguments about what caused the individual's injuries, whether it was the road defect or it was his handling of his bike. And since I could offer testimony about bike handling, having studied the collision scene and the interview of the plaintiff, I offered that as expert testimony. The case settled.

[00:29:41] So I had that in the back of my mind that, wow, there's people on bikes that get injured. I wouldn't have to deal with car crashes anymore. I could kind of go full circle and come back around to something related to an avocation. I could make my vocation related to my avocation. And so that was the first notion I had in my mind. I didn't actually try to find people to represent until I quit my job, which was pretty early in the process. I think I made it four, maybe six or eight weeks in that job.

[00:30:14] And I hung a shingle, just cold right there. And so, I started marketing for bike cases at that point. I put out an ad in the cycling newspaper, and I put the word out, and I got my first, what we call a dooring case. This is where you're riding your bike and somebody in an automobile, usually the passenger, opens the door just as you're passing. And fortunately, most of the states, including Wisconsin, had laws on point. So, these were prosecutable cases. Winnable cases. Personal injury attorneys could handle them, but they weren't specializing in them, they weren't seeking these cases.

[00:30:47] And I still had some name recognition at that point in the sport. So, if I heard that somebody got doored or they got run off the road or hit by a car, which unfortunately, everyone that was riding at that time had stories of being hit 1, 2, 3, 6 times, and myself included. So, I knew there was a lot of this happening, and they would get lawyers, but nobody was specializing in it and saying that I'm a bicycle attorney.

[00:31:11] I used that phrase, bicycle attorney. It didn't really, to my understanding, exist. I got a lot of questions about that from a lot of people. But that's how it all started.

John Reed: [00:31:22] You've got motor vehicle and bicycle collisions. Dooring. Unsafe road conditions where there's no impact with another moving vehicle, it's just the pavement. How else would you describe your practice relative to the cases you've handled?

Bob Mionske: [00:31:37] Yeah. You got it. And I would also include product liability. And then, because I wanted to serve the cycling community and not just be what was derogatively known as an ambulance chaser, I also did what I would call civil rights aspect of riding a bike. Right to travel, the right to use the road, those kinds of things. Represent cyclists where there was no money involved, but it was the right thing to do to help our sport and people on bikes. You know, use the commons, the roadways, which belonged to all of us. 

[00:32:08] It was a time where people weren't even sure you could really ride on the road legally; it wasn't really talked about. For instance, I grew up in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. I never saw an adult ride a bicycle once. You know, and the idea that a guy could ride his bike down the drive along the lake to town, we did it as kids, but we got off the road when cars came.

[00:32:26] When I got to Madison, I saw people were using their bicycles like people used motor vehicles. And not only that, but Madison had bike paths, and they had painted lanes in the roads, and then when those ended, you would just stay on the road. Motorists were accustomed to seeing all the students on bikes, but as you left town, you'd get into the countryside. The people are pretty friendly out there, so they'd go around you; most of the time not a problem. Sometimes it would be a problem.

[00:32:54] So there was this issue of harassment, and then the police would show up and they'd usually take what we'd call a windshield perspective, where they saw the matter as a motorist and not as a cyclist. There wasn't a great amount of training in the police forces in every case. Once you got outta the city, and they would incorrectly tell you you had no right to the road. They would arrest people. They'd harass people. And the motorists, of course, would do the same. And so, there was this area that people thought they needed some legal representation. And so, I did those kind of cases as well.

John Reed: [00:33:29] You're credited with actually being the world's first bike lawyer, but it sounds like your work actually helped change the law, too. Is that a fair statement?

Bob Mionske: [00:33:38] I wouldn't take personal credit, but I was a part of a group of attorneys that were influential in changing the laws. I wrote a book about cycling in the law, and we did a lot of research for it. And the seminal cases from New York in the 1800s, about, you know, basically one of the first collisions between one of the automobiles and anyone, and it was with the cyclist, and they broke their leg. And the guy who was arrested, and they appealed that case. And so, we got a judgment that said the foundational right to the road was declared.

[00:34:13] It became codified in almost every state. Basically, it boils down to, with some exceptions, you have a right to the road. You have all the same rights as motorists do, and you have all the same responsibilities that motorists do. That's pretty much where the whole country has gone from that point forward.

[00:34:30] In terms of educating and establishing those rights from state to state and then fleshing them out and increasing them, specifically speaking about cycling, that was an endeavor lots of lawyers pushed on.

[00:34:42] And there's the League of American Wheelmen, which is now the League of American Bicyclists, and they had a lobbying group, and I was, for a while, a part of their legislative group. And I did a small part of helping establish our right to the road, along with a lot of other great, great lawyers that did a lot of work. I did a small part of that. I wasn't the leader of that in any way.

John Reed: [00:35:06] Well, as you say, first, when you win, you thank the team and you thank the staff. That's what you're trained to do.

Bob Mionske: [00:35:11] You know, credit to where it belongs. I did a lot of pro bono work that way, and I looked around; there were a lot of other lawyers doing the same thing because a lot of lawyers rode bikes. They had skin in the game.

John Reed: [00:35:24] Bob, I'd like for you to tell us about some of your greatest hits, and by that, I'd say cases of which you're most proud, regardless of the result necessarily. The ones you look back on fondly and say, yeah, we did something good there.

Bob Mionske: [00:35:39] I would say that with regard to representing individuals that were hurt, there were a few good cases. I guess the issue there is you help people recover, but we use monetary recovery. And so, if there were big cases, that means they suffered greatly. It's a double-edged sword. We got people some help to get their lives along, but they couldn't really get back where they started.

[00:36:05] But in terms of advocating for cyclists' right to the road, and increasing our safety, I would say one of the ones that I was happy to be a part of, and it was a good friend of mine that was the lead on this, was the vulnerable user laws. This is a friend of mine, Ray Thomas, an attorney in Portland, and he recruited me to go in front of the Oregon legislature and became kind of a model for many of the other states to change the way the law handles people that injure someone.

[00:36:37] So, for instance, if you get hit and the police show up and they think, should I give this guy a ticket for hitting you? Oh, he's going to pay a price through his insurance. We'll let the price be paid there. Well, that wasn't really sufficient. There was no deterrent in that. In other words, if a person was driving unsafely, and they injured a cyclist, and they happen to have insurance coverage, they might not even know anything about it. Their rates may go up or they may not.

[00:37:01] The vulnerable user laws, which were borrowed largely from Europe, said that the individual had personal responsibility above and beyond what their insurance said, all the way to losing their driver's license if it was multiple times of causing these infractions, or having personal excess liability financially. And so that is something I was really happy to be a part of. Again, I didn't lead on that, but I testified at our state capital and helped promulgate that through my column and through podcasting in the early days and through a column that I wrote for Bicycling Magazine for years, and another publication called Velo News, which is more racer-oriented.

[00:37:43] But I got them to talk about these issues because it wasn't something that the industry wanted to talk about. They don't want to talk about how people were losing their lives and the grave vulnerabilities we faced when we just went out to do our sport or use the bicycle for recreation or for transportation.

[00:38:01] And another one in that vein would probably be the "stop is yield" laws. And that's where you see cyclists roll a stop sign. Idaho had, by happenstance, created a law. It was called the Idaho Stop, eponymously named, a maneuver where you treat a stop sign like a yield sign instead of a stop sign. So, if I'm riding my bike and I come to a four-way intersection, there is no one anywhere around me. I slow down, I make sure I'm not going to violate someone else's right-of-way, pedestrian or other vehicle, and then I slowly proceed through the intersection. In a lot of jurisdictions, the police actually expected you to stop your bike and touch your foot on the road before you began to get back on your pedals and head out. And that wasn't the law anywhere. So, you know, there was a lot of education. We spent a long time working on that until it finally passed in one state, and now it's in several states throughout the United States, and it's worked quite well.

John Reed: [00:38:59] You talk about developing your practice. Writing and speaking, pro bono matters, podcasting. I mean, it sounds like a very well-constructed marketing plan, but then there's other parts of it where it feels like it was just your public service. I know this stuff, and I feel an obligation to share it.

Bob Mionske: [00:39:17] It's both. That's the good news about it is if you are doing the right thing for society, and people come to know who you are, they'll seek your services out. You're doing the right thing, and it's not gonna hurt your ability to generate work. So, I didn't see a downside to doing it. For instance, when I worked at the first firm, they spent a lot of money getting the best ad on the back of the Yellow Pages. So in lieu of doing that, you could get in front of the public's eye while bringing a good message and doing a good deed, and then get well-known or better well-known than you would be otherwise, and develop a practice. So, it was a win-win.

John Reed: [00:39:56] It sounds like when you first started out, that because of who you knew and the communities in which you traveled, that your intended audience were professional cyclists, not necessarily recreational cyclists. Is that fair?

Bob Mionske: [00:40:10] No, I didn't care whether you were well-known or not. I guess what you're saying is the people that were likely to come across my name were people that were bicycle racers. And this is true, but word of mouth is also a way that people find legal help. I know that's true in other practices as well, other niches that people look, “Hey, do you know anyone?” You know, this is before people could type in in the internet for every question. It existed, but people weren't thinking that way. And to this day, people ask around when they have a legal need.

[00:40:39] And so I guess this kind of dovetails into some other parts of my practice that are probably worthy of talking about. When I started doing this, other lawyers started doing it. And so if you were in Houston and you were a cycling nut or a racer or just liked to cycle, you'd be around a bunch of other riders, and someone might have a problem, getting a ticket for improper riding or get injured by a car, or, their bike might break and injure them and they would ask the lawyer that they knew. A lot of lawyers decided to learn up a little bit about how to help these people and add it into their practice. So pretty soon, I started seeing bicycle lawyers popping up all around the place, and around the country. We were able to generate work out of helping these people, and it didn't matter what kind of rider they were, you know, just somebody that was riding a bike. There's so many other issues, like do you need a driver's license? Can your insurance be raised when you get a ticket on a bike against your car insurance? Are you covered on your car insurance when you're riding your bike?

[00:41:47] And yes, you are in almost every case. So, this affects a lot more people than just well-known racers. It's anybody that puts their leg over a bike and heads out into the traffic. It could potentially be someone that would need our legal services as bicycle attorneys.

John Reed: Did you handle cases in other jurisdictions, either as pro hac vice or in federal court?

Bob Mionske: [00:42:14] I did. And in the early days, if you typed, "I was in a bicycle accident," my name would come up first, probably in every state for a long time, and I didn't really monetize that. I didn't try to grow. It wasn't really my interest at the time. Later on, I joined two different organizations which were making efforts to have a national practice to the extent you can within the rules of the various bar associations. That's what happened in the early years. It was kind of unchartered territory, and I had cases in Alaska, Hawaii, New York, Florida. Sometimes, I would pro hac vice. Sometimes they wouldn't go to trials. Sometimes I would just send them to the attorney in that state to help them, just as a service to an injured cyclist, you know, one of our comrades, so to speak.

John Reed: [00:43:07] Do you continue to market your practice now?

Bob Mionske: [00:43:09] I do. In fact, I would say that's more important and a bigger part of what I do than before because at this point, I'm Of Counsel at a firm in San Francisco, and part of my obligations with the firm is to be out in the cycling public and getting the good word out. And so, I think Coopers, that's the firm, they're a full service firm, but the principals are crazy bike riders, and love of the bike is what brought us together.

John Reed: [00:43:40] What do you think you brought from cycling to the practice of law? Certainly knowledge, and I get that, but what are some of the other transferable skills or mindsets? What about Bob translated well from biking to lawyering?

Bob Mionske: [00:43:55] Yeah, I've never been asked that question. But the thing that jumps out at me is when we were training and riding our bikes in all these states, we had all different kinds of encounters with the public. Whether we were riding in groups or we were on a road that they had never seen a cyclist. And, it's not a fair battle. You're on an ideally lightweight bike, 20 pounds, 25 pounds, and they're driving a two-ton vehicle, and so it's like the big ship and the small ship out at sea. And it turns out humans can, when they're given that kind of power over other humans, can have a range of behaviors. And one of the negative ones is they can be bullies or they could be aggressive, and it was terrifying. But coming from the racing background, we were nimble and fast on our bikes. We were young, unafraid. We'd chase these guys down and read them the riot act or call the police and hold them, whatever we had to do. We didn't run away.

[00:44:53] And so I think that mentality of being a stakeholder for the commons. That kind of shines through with a lot of the bike attorneys that I've worked with over the years, but to hold people accountable that otherwise will behave poorly, I think that that comes from my racing days.

John Reed: [00:45:12] Do you still get out and ride? 

Bob Mionske: [00:45:14] Yeah, we ride all the time. We moved recently to the mountains in Oregon, and as a consequence, I don't have all the city streets around here. But when I lived in Portland, I had different bikes for different things that I would do during the day, whether it was throw my dog in the basket and go to the park, or go pick up groceries, or head to the doctor's office. Everything was by bike. So, it's been a transition living out at the end of a three-mile gravel road in a valley like this. But it's great gravel riding. It's become a big sport. It's something everyone does, and I don't have a choice. So, we ride gravel when we leave the house, and I have mountain bike tracks that I'm looking at right now that I built with a shovel and, uh, pickax. So, I have a mountain bike, and I have a bike that I use on the gravel. And I ride pretty much every day.

John Reed: [00:46:05] Outstanding. Bob, this has been such a treat for me. Most of us might say we could have been a contender. You were in multiple areas.

[00:46:15] As we do with all of our guests, I'll be sure to put links in the show notes so people can learn about you. In fact, you may be the only guest or at least one of very few guests with a dedicated Wikipedia page, and we'll add that link as well. So, thanks for being here today and sharing your many stories. For an Olympics junkie like me, I really enjoyed it. 

Bob Mionske: [00:46:33] Thanks, John, and thanks for the opportunity. And I'm glad you're out there highlighting attorneys like me. It's great.

John Reed: [00:46:43] Listeners, this is probably the time when you've hit Stop and you're thinking about the next episode. But if you're still here, can you please take a moment to follow and subscribe to Sticky Lawyers wherever you stream the show? That way, you'll automatically get new episodes without even thinking about it. Pretty simple. 

[00:47:01] Until next time, I'm John Reed, and you've been listening to Sticky Lawyers.