What's His Motivation?

Some kids are burdened with the weight of parents' unfulfilled (and perhaps unfulfillable) dreams.  You see them on Little League fields, in Pop Warner classes and ballet classes.

A few of those kids may actually want to become ballplayers, dancers or whatever, and will do whatever it takes.

What about this kid?

Striders: The Future Peloton?

When I first became a dedicated cyclist, during my teen years, I started to follow bicycle racing.  In those days, before the Internet and 24-hour news cycles, it was much more difficult to do.  There was little or no coverage in any of the mainstream media.  Bicycling! ran stories about the Tour, the Giro and some of the classics, but that came out only once a month.  You pretty much had to go to a large city to find a place like Hotaling's, where I used to find French, British and other European publications.

During my rides, I would sometimes imagine myself in the peloton with Eddy Mercx or Bernard Hinault.  I wondered, then, if I would have been like them--or one of their competitors--had I grown up in Brittany or Flanders or Tuscany and pedaled in the midget and youth races in the days when I was playing Babe Ruth League baseball (and high-school soccer) in New Jersey.

What I would have done to ride in a Strider race!



This one was just held in Fort Worth, Texas.  It's part of a series of Strider races that will culminate in a Strider World Championship on 21-22 July, in Salt Lake City.

I mean, really, how can you not love it?

Strider, the sponsor of these races, is the leading brand of so-called "balance bikes", which have no pedals--or training wheels.  Proponents of this type of bike claim that the most important skill in cycling is balance, and a kid learns it more quickly than on a bike with training wheels.  Moreover, their advocates argue, because balance bikes don't have pedals, chains or sprockets, they are free of the sharp surfaces that can hurt a kid or simply snag his or her pants.

If I had a kid, I don't know whether I'd choose a balance bike or training wheels.  Well, maybe after watching Strider races, I might be swayed!

Don't Try This While I'm Grading My Papers!

I am in the middle of grading papers and exams.  So, today's post will be short.

How short?  You will be able to read it in as much time as it took for this kid's wheelie to abort:



Funny Cycle Accident with Small Kid by extremelymagnificant


So, kiddies (of whatever age you are):  remember to eat your vegetables and make sure your front wheel is on good and tight!

What Cycling Can Teach Your Children

I have no children and don't plan on having any.  Still, I sometimes look at one thing or another and wonder what children or young adults might learn from it.  Perhaps that is a consequence of my being an educator.

(By the way, it's also one of the reasons why I find the Trump presidential campaign so abhorrent.  How can you teach your kids about honesty, respect and just plain good behavior, when someone like The Donald is one of the wealthiest people in the world and might become the most powerful?)

Anyway, I would like to think that if I had kids, they would learn a lot of good things from seeing me ride to work, and for pleasure.  I am sure that there are kids who are learning all sorts of great lessons from parents who ride bikes.    One might be simply that you're never "too old" to ride a bike.  Another is that you can have fun while doing (or getting to) the things you have and need to do.

From Kidical Mass Rockville

The author of the Bike to Work Blog once wrote about the "5 Things Your Bike Commute Teaches Your Children".  I might have come up with numbers 1,2, 3 and 5, or things like them.  But I'm not sure that I would have come up with number 4 unless I'd had kids.

Anyway, here they are:

1. Think outside the box. Riding bike to work is powerful because so few others are doing it. When you bike to work, you are teaching your children that there is more than one way to do something–even something as mundane as the daily commute. In a world in which the jobs your kids will have haven’t been created yet, the ability to “Think Different” is a powerful key to success.
2.  Be Frugal. We try to teach our children to understand value, thrift, and priorities but the average American family spends more on transportation than on food. For most of us, that means a car that sits in an expensive garage all night and in an expensive parking spot all day. By not spending a lot of money on a car, I am powerfully teaching my children what I value.
3. Be Active. We tell our children to eat right and be active (“go out and play!”), but we gain five to eight pounds each year. Many of us exercise before the kids get up or after they go to bed and they don’t see it. When you ride a bike your kids see you leave and come home under your own power; they know you value exercise and a healthy, active body.
4. Be Proactive and Self-Reliant. We want our children to anticipate problems and opportunities and we strive to empower them. When my daughter once asked why I was a little late getting home, I told her that that I had a flat tire. She seemed surprised and asked how I got home; I responded that I had “fixed it.” Watching her face as she processed the lesson that such a thing was fixable was priceless.
5. Tread Lightly. Regardless of your views on climate change, the excesses of the 20th century have to be recognized as unsustainable. I don’t consider myself to be a tree-hugger, but I want my children to recognize that we must consume less and think more. By choosing a bicycle over a car, I am demonstrating an awareness of my impact on the planet that I know my children are absorbing.

Imagine!

Who said this?:

 "As a kid I had a dream – I wanted to own my own bicycle. When I got the bike I must have been the happiest boy in Liverpool, maybe the world. I lived for that bike. Most kids left their bike in the backyard at night. Not me. I insisted on taking mine indoors and the first night I even kept it in my bed."

One clue might be "Liverpool".  I mean the one in England, not the one in upstate New York (where the locals joke that their town is so named because it has the same kind of weather as the British port city).  When you think of people from Liverpool, who comes to mind first?

OK, you can be forgiven for saying "William Gladstone" or "Clive Barker"--or, for that matter, Kate Sheppard or Peter Shaffer.  But if you're of my generation and know even less than I do about British or women's history, there is only one answer you can give.

That answer is, of course, The Beatles.  And who was the most literate and articulate of the "Fab Four".  You guessed it:  John Lennon.

 

Somehow it's not a surprise that he had such a dream, or was so happy that it was realized.  He had his flaws, but in the end, I think he really meant what he wrote in "Imagine". 



Ironically and tragically, a deranged man with a gun ended his life, thirty-five years ago today.  

The ensuing years have not lessened the shock of his murder.  I often find myself playing his songs in my mind--or even humming or singing them--as I ride and do other things.  It's appropriate, I think:  If more people, especially in developed countries, rode bikes to work, school, shop, or simply for fun, we might come closer to having the sort of world he envisioned. 

The World's Fastest Bicycle

At this time of year, it's hard not to think about children, whether or not we have any of our own.  After all, we were all kids once, and most of us have memories--for better or worse, or both--of this time of year.

For some of us, those memories might involve a bicycle, specifically finding one under the tree.  "The Retrogrouch" wrote a nice post about that last week.  I responded with a comment about the time I got a Royce-Union three-speed bike when I was seven years old.  The bike was much too big for me; I wouldn't be able to ride it for another couple of years.  That bike also holds a special memory because it was the last gift my grandfather gave me.  In fact, that Christmas was the last day I spent time with him:  He died the following March.

But whatever the circumstances, I think any bicycle found under a tree on Christmas morning always holds a special place in a kid's heart, even long after he or she is no longer a kid.  Even if it's made from gaspipes, nothing can be prettier or shinier or faster than that bike left by "Santa"; if we can't ride our new steeds that day, nothing seems more worth the wait, whether for snow to melt or, in my case, to grow into the bike.



I think children's author Ken Nesbitt captured that feeling nicely in his poem, "The World's Fastest Bicycle."

My bicycle's the fastest
that the world has ever seen;
it has supersonic engines
and a flame-retardant sheen.

My bicycle will travel
a gazillion miles an hour --
it has rockets on the handlebars
for supplemental power.

The pedals both are jet-propelled
to help you pedal faster,
and the shifter is equipped
with an electric turbo-blaster.

The fender has a parachute
in case you need to brake.
Yes, my bike is undeniably
the fastest one they make.

My bicycle's incredible!
I love the way it feels,
and I'll like it even more
when Dad removes the training wheels.

(From The Aliens Have Landed At Our School. a book of children's poems by Ken Nesbitt)

Childhood Summer Riding

Today was a good bit hotter than yesterday.  Yesterday's sky, as blue as the sea and clearer--as it always seems to be in those ideal memories of Childhood--turned hazier, as it often does when one tries to recall that blue expanse of yesteryear.  


The only riding I did today took me to and from work.  I was about a mile from work when Marianela's rear tube developed a slow leak.  I was just barely able to get to work, and before I rode home I had to fix it.  That, in the college where almost nobody else rides bikes.


But none of that took my mind off the riding I did over the weekend.  For some reason, I found myself thinking about a group of boys who rode in circles and did wheelies in the park at Point Lookout.  As it turns out, I had a photo of them:

Now tell me:  Does that look like someone's childhood memory of summer, or what?