THIS WEEK IN PRO CYCLING
Technical Q&A with Lennard Zinn - Something to believe in
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On a day when I pause every year to reflect on what the future may holdfor all of us, I think about the things that give me a little hope forthat future.
One of those things is seeing kids on bikes. The future seems a lotbrighter to me if lots of kids are riding bikes, ensuring a healthier nextgeneration of adults treading more lightly on the earth with another toolto combat global warming and oil dependence.
There are a number of great programs around the country that are successfulin creating passionate young bike riders, and I think all of them shouldbe encouraged. I am intimately familiar with a couple of school-based programshere in Boulder that are quite effective in inspiring a two-wheeled spiritthat I think serve as models that could be adopted elsewhere.
Since almost all kids are in school, that is the most direct place toreach kids. No extra effort is required on the part of parents if the cyclingprogram is part of school, and if kids make it a habit of riding to school,a reduction in parental effort can even be achieved.
Bike Classes and Cycling-Related Outdoor Ed.
When my eldest daughter was in elementary school, it seemed clear tome that the way to her heart with a bicycle was to include her friends.I constantly invited her friends to go riding with us, and part of thatincorporated educating them - and their parents - about what constitutedan acceptable bike for a kid who wants to ride far as well as over obstacles.I found myself taking kids and parents to VeloSwap (www.veloswap.com)every year and passing out my books and other maintenance advice and assistancelike candy.
My wife taught at the same school my daughters attended, so I begandoing some bike maintenance classes there. Soon that grew into teachingbike-riding classes for middle school kids with my wife.
Horizons K-8School is a public charter school and as such has more flexibility withcurriculum and scheduling than most public schools. The program for middleschoolers includes an elective “Exploratory” class for four hours everyFriday morning. Four hours allows enough time to go on some really goodbike rides on trails around Boulder.
I know I’m preaching to the choir when I say how great it is to seewhat happens when you get kids on bikes and ride a long distance on interestingterrain. There becomes sort of an Outward Bound element to it; many kidschallenge themselves in new ways, and in surmounting those challenges,they gain confidence in themselves that could serve them their entire life.Whether it is riding 20 miles on dirt, pedaling up a steep, rocky hill,or successfully negotiating a technical climb or descent, many kids accomplishthings they (and their parents) never considered themselves to be capableof, and it makes a profound difference.
Bike riding is also a way to reach some kids who otherwise are hardto reach in the classroom or kids who are so disruptive in class that theirschool experience is constantly about facing discipline. It simultaneouslyhumbles them and fills them with confidence, and it allows them to relateto their peers and adults on a new level.
Horizons School has an Outdoor Ed. program that includes a week-longtrip each September. The intent of it includes building community withinthe school – all of the middle school classes travel together, intermediategrades go on their own shorter trip, and primary grades go together ona yet shorter trip. It also provides an athletic activity and engendersan appreciation for the outdoors. After teaching cycling classes at theschool, it seemed to us that a bicycle-based outdoor ed. trip would carrysome of these goals even further, and out of discussions with my wife’sfellow teachers, a week-long trip to Moab was born. We do it every thirdyear, ensuring that each kid goes to Moab at some time during their threeyears in middle school (and that I get to accompany them!).
Again, I don’t have to tell you how great it is to see these kids campingand riding and rafting for a week in Moab. They are different kids whenthey get off of the bus at the end of the week. And it is a great timeto instill a love for bike riding, since middle schoolers don’t have driver’slicenses yet nor an all-consuming interest in someone particular of theopposite sex. Graduates of some of our trips to Moab have gone on to becomevery good bike racers, too; current U23 and NCAA national MTB cross-countrychamp Chloe Forsman of Luna Chix and current Elite and U23 and NCAA nationalroad and time trial champion Mara Abbott of Webcor Builders are among them.
FREIKER (FREquentbIKER)
Rob Nagler is a computer engineer who saw technology as a way to inspirekids to ride bikes. He built a solar-powered bike-rider counting metercalled the Freikometer that beeps as it records each trip to school byevery kid who rides under the meter with a Freiker chip taped onto theirhelmet (it only records once per day per helmet, so forget multiple passesunder the meter). He started the program at Crest View Elementary School(http://schools.bvsd.org/crestview/), the neighborhood school he rode towith his own kids. The Freiker program has since expanded to other Boulderschools, and Nagler has obligingly built Freikometers for all of them,at a personal expense of $2000 per unit, plus his time.
Nagler has created a system of rewards for riding frequently. The beepcounting their helmet passing under the Freikometer (usually refered toas “getting Freiked”) is reward enough for the kids on a daily basis, andthe other rewards are just icing on the cake. Each Monday, the winner ofa drawing among those who rode the most times the prior week at each participatingschool gets a green-painted bicycle cog on a neck sash and a crisp $10bill. Kids get a water bottle or bell for 10 days of riding, a Graham Watsonposter of Lance Armstrong for 20 rides, a Graham Watson calendar for 40rides, and a Cateye bike computer for 50 rides. Any kid who rides 90 percentof the school days throughout the year gets an iPod or a digital camera.
The program succeeds in producing bike riders every day, no matter theweather. This past winter in Boulder was the snowiest winter in over 15years; it seemed to snow almost every day, and there were some major dumpsin there. At Horizons, which also participates in Freiker, kids could noteven get their helmets up to the Freikometer without climbing a huge, rock-hardsnowpile that could not even be moved by a plow due to its density. Andthere was no place else to put it, given the plethora of snowpiles. Mywife, who is now principal of the school, spent an inordinate amount ofthe winter getting that snowpile removed to access the Freikometer, onlyto have it reappear during the plowing of the parking lot after anotherdump days later. Even with all of the snowy roads and cold this winter,there were kids at all of the participating schools who rode over 90 percentof the days of the school year!
Nagler’s www.freiker.orgsite includes a donation page, which allows him to keep it running andrewarding prizes as the number of kids participating climbs steeply. Ican’t think of a much better cause to contribute to and something betterto believe in than kids riding bikes on September 11.
