It Does It All For You!

Nobody, it seems, does practical urban bicycles quite like the Dutch.

It's been a while since I've been to Amsterdam. I'm sure it's as lovely as ever, and that cyclists feel right at home.  I hear, however, that because it's crowded, it can be a bit difficult to navigate.

So, being ever so practical, what would the good Dutch folks come up with?




Of course it includes an app to tell you what day it is.  

Santa In The Spring

I am an educator.  It's still strange for me to write those words.  You see, I resisted becoming one and  quit for a few years when I was having a midlife crisis.  I then realized that I didn't need to change jobs:  I only had to change my gender.

Anyway, one of the reasons I tried not to become a teacher (which was the only kind of educator I knew about) was that I hated most of my teachers.  I guess that's not so unusual because, well, most kids hate their teachers and some of my elementary-school teachers were Carmelite nuns. Yes, they wore the black habits.

I did, however, have teachers I liked, and not necessarily because they were "easy".  Rather, I realize now that they "got" me:  I wasn't the best-behaved or smartest kid, butI wasn't destructive and I loved to read and write.  So they encouraged me in those areas and even showed interest in whatever happened to interest me at the time.

Cycling wasn't one of those interests, though.  It wasn't that I didn't like to ride:  The reason why they couldn't help or encourage me in those areas is that none of them rode.  Actually, through all of my pre-adult life, adults didn't ride bikes and most assumed that a kid would "grow out of it", probably upon getting his or her driver's license, or not long after.

Now, I don't know whether South Carolina elementary-school teacher Katie Blomquist pedals to her school, or anyplace else.  But she surely understands how much having a bike means to her kids.  She also knew that many of them, or their families, couldn't afford one.  

So, last summer, she decided she would play Santa Claus and make sure all of the kids in her school got a bike for Christmas.  She started a GoFundMe campaign that would raise $80,000.  Donations came from as far away as France and Australia.  In the meantime, she worked with a local bike shop called Affordabike to pick out color schemes and other aspects of the bikes.  Affordabike also provided the kids with matching locks and helmets.




Katie's Kids, if you will, didn't get their bikes for Christmas.  But yesterday the bikes, helmets and locks were delivered to the Pepperhill Elementary School in North Charleston, South Carolina.  The largesse wasn't limited to the pupils of her class:  All 650 Pepperhill pupils received the bikes, helmets and locks.

So, while they didn't get the Christmas gift every kid dreams of, their wheels are ready for the beginning of spring break--and summer.

Pepperhill is a Title 1 school, which means that it receives extra funding from the Federal government for its students, many of whom come from low-income families. But, for a day, they were all equal in the wealth of happiness they experienced--and the kindness of a teacher they, I am sure, will always recall fondly! 

Keeping Kids Off Bike-Share Bikes

I haven't been to China.  At one time in my life, it was at the top of my "bucket list" of places to go.  That was after someone I knew spent a couple of months there about a quarter of a century ago.  She, like other visitors of the time, described it as a "land of bikes", where pedaled two-wheeled conveyances far outnumbered any other kind of vehicle "by about five hundred to one".  And she is an old-school New Englander who isn't given to exaggeration!

From what I heard, that started to change a few years later, as more Chinese people could afford automobiles.  I read accounts of bicycle-thronged streets that had become choked with cars ten or fifteen years later.  It seemed sad, but, really, no different from what happened decades earlier in the US and other places:  Once people had the means to drive, their bicycles were left to collect dust, or dropped in the dustbin.

These days, from what I've been reading, the bicycle has been making a "comeback".  A few years ago, Beijing's bike-share program seemed like a "bust", as automobiles came to be seen as not only symbols of prosperity, but as prerequisites to marriage, at least for some families.  But in cities like the Chinese capital, streets--particularly those in older neighborhoods--are narrow and in other ways ill-suited to automotive traffic.  Plus, thickening smog led to illness and in other ways degraded people's quality of life, and people found that their commutes were taking longer and longer due to snarled traffic.  

So the bicycle seems to be experiencing a renaissance in The Land of Dragons.  Beijing's bike share program is booming, as are those in other Chinese cities. (Of the world's 15 largest bike share programs, only two--those of Paris and London--aren't in China.)  And start-up companies like Mobike are eliminating the ports or docks other share programs use by offering an app that locates bikes that can be unlocked with a code that's sent to a user's phone.

Making bikes easier to access sounds great, at least for some people.  It has, however, led to some unintended consequences.  As someone who teaches and who didn't touch a computer until age 41, I know firsthand that kids are often more tech-savvy than their elders--in part because they have had access to the same devices, but at much earlier ages.

Using the Ofo bike-sharing app in Shanghai

Thus, a kid can access a bike-share or "Uber" bike as easily as anyone else can.  One problem is that Chinese law forbids children under the age of 12 from riding bikes on public roads.  But the consequences for a kid can be even worse than merely becoming a scofflaw:  Although bicycles are once again becoming a common sight, there is still a lot of motorized traffic on major thoroughfares, and even on side roads.  Adult Chinese cyclists, like their counterparts in other countries, have to exercise caution.  Even doing that, though, may not be enough to ensure a child's safety.

That point was driven home with the death of an 11-year-old boy in Shanghai.   While details of the tragedy haven't been revealed, we know that he was riding a bike from Ofo, one of the two main share companies in that city, on a busy road in the downtown area.  

Ofo is cooperating with the investigation and says it working on a way of deterring under-12s from using their bikes.  Some have suggested that the bright yellow color of its  machines (and the bright orange of Mobike, its rival) might entice young riders .  Others have said that Ofo, Mobike and anyone else who might enter the bike-sharing business should restrict access to their wheels in and around schools and other places frequented by children.