One thing about Minneapolis City Council Member Lisa Goodman -- and we know constituents who love her and those who passionately dislike her: You'll never fall asleep while she's in the room. She's a woman of enthusiasms -- opening sidewalk cafes to dogs, allowing more street vendors downtown, and now, bicycles.

The bike like started over Memorial Day weekend with a new bike. Goodman explored the pathways out to Lake Harriet and Victory Memorial Drive. Later, she tackled the downtown streets from her condo at S. 12th St. and Hennepin Avenue to City Hall. Her 13-block route was a revelation.

Goodman hasn't been unfriendly to accommodating bikers on downtown streets. She hears from lots of constituents who bike. And best friend, Kim Havey, bikes to his downtown job.

But Goodman gained a whole new perspective on two wheels that she didn't get on four wheels or even on two legs. "To direct policy at the city, you really need to have that experience," she said. "It was a real eye-opener for me."

One overarching conclusion she reached is that downtown needs more bike lanes, which give a biker a space of her own. And she's learned just how intimidating motorists can be: "Oh my God, it's like people are mean. I used to be that mean person. I went from honking at people to being honked at."

So, if you see a sturdy blonde woman in a pink helmet riding a cruiser-style bike downtown, you might want to give her some extra room.

Nice Ride; wrong place

Colleague Vince Tuss notes that he's seen a fair share of people on those rentable Nice Ride bikes riding in the wrong place downtown -- on the sidewalks. We can only assume that these are novices unaware of the city ordinance that prohibits riding on sidewalks in a business district. That covers most of downtown, and we've also seen signs banning sidewalk riding in Uptown.

The principle here is that these are pedestrian-heavy areas where bikes and walkers don't mix well, which is the same reason they get separate paths on parkways. The city's biking website -- www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/bicycles -- suggests that bikers consider a business district to be any place where more than half the buildings are occupied as businesses. So if you're in such an area, you have the option of riding in the street or walking your bike.

Two words

Dateline has two words for a group of Edina residents who oppose locating a bike trail along Nine Mile Creek: Minnehaha Creek.

Stop by Minnehaha Creek in Minneapolis any weekend and you'll see bikers and walkers of all ages enjoying trails along that creek. Or portions of Bassett Creek. Or Shingle Creek. We understand that you may not want that traffic by your house, but the cure for that is not to buy next to publicly owned land.

Dateline is comfortable riding on the street and has biked across whole states on 24 inches of highway shoulder. But not everyone is that daring. Moreover, riding an off-street path yields a much more soothing journey than dodging potholes and broken glass.

There's also something about a winding trail that seems to motivate kids to see what's around the next bend. With Edina ranking as the state's second-oldest city in terms of its share of population over age 64, perhaps a family-friendly trail would diversify the city.

Use those feet

But enough about bikes. If you're a walker instead, you may be interested in one of a series of upcoming heritage walking tours being offered this month. Tours remain for such places as the warehouse district Wednesday night, the Washburn-Fair Oaks and Milwaukee Avenue historic districts, North Side synagogues and the city's tree canopy. Some require registration. More information is available at http:// tinyurl.com/25gd99e.

Return of the elm

You have to be tough to survive at City Hall, and city foresters think they've found just the tree to survive there. Dateline belatedly noticed that elms have replaced the ash that used to grow near the S. 4th Street entrance to the building.

They're not the stately arching American elms that turned streets into tunnels that we remember from when we first moved to the city. But elms nevertheless.

We inquired further and learned that they're Asiatic elms. We learned quite a bit about them from Gary Johnson. He's a professor of urban forestry at the University of Minnesota. As it happens, he studied under George Ware, the dendrologist at Morton Arboretum outside Chicago, who introduced the Accolade elms that are planted at City Hall.

Ware collected varieties of elms in Asia, and the Accolade's parentage mostly like comes from China or Mongolia. We gathered from Johnson that the Accolade is sort of the elm version of the Mongol Horde.

"Kind of obstreperous, aren't they?" Johnson said. "They're a very aggressive grower."

That habit means that Accolades require persistent work, especially pruning. "If you don't put enough care into it in those first 10 to 15 years, they can be a mess," Johnson said.

He's been working with the Minneapolis and St. Paul foresters on best practices for care of the new elms, which can grow four feet in a year. With time, they can develop into a stately tree. Witness this example from the Morton grounds at tinyurl.com/2aqppjh .

The big advantage of Accolade is its resistance to Dutch elm disease. Johnson has seen some Accolades get Dutch elm, only to recover fine when the infected branch is lopped off. Ralph Sievert, the Park Board's forestry chief, has even seen infected trees repair themselves with a new layer of tissue.

Besides prettifying City Hall, the Accolade elm has the added advantage of ranking as one of the better "junkyard dog trees" that Johnson has seen. These trees do well in hostile terrain, including brownfield sites.

That quality is one reason you'll see a number of Accolades planted on Nicollet Island, which Johnson considers one of the worst tree-growing environments in the city.

The Park Board has planted more than 700 Accolades during the past three years.

Steve Brandt • 612-673-4438