Pedal down
Events beginning this weekend, continuing through June 10
Safety for young cyclists top of mind as Colchester Bike Week kicks off today with tips and tune-ups in Tatamagouche.
Colchester Recreation is taking their bike week activities on the road.
Normally, the rec department holds one big bike rodeo in Bible Hill and invites area schools to attend. But this year staff is going out to nine schools around the county.
“Last year we had 30 or 40 kids at the big rodeo,” says Craig Burgess, recreation manager for Colchester County. “We’ve been to two schools and already we had 100 students, so by the end 300 or 400 kids will have participated.”
At the rodeo, recreation staff checks over the children’s bikes, teaches them how to ride safely, including proper hand signals, and also offer prizes and rewards.
Colchester Recreation has been holding the Colchester Bike Activities for 11 years now. This year they have scheduled events from today to June 10; the big event is the Bike Revolution
and BBQ scheduled for Sunday.
The Revolution, escorted by police vehicles, leaves from the Civic Square downtown at 1
p.m. and does a loop on Prince and Queen Street.
“How often can you ride down the middle of Prince Street?” asks Burgess. “We want to encourage
people to ride bikes and to ride safely and we want to remind drivers to watch for and share the road with cyclists. The whole idea behind the bike week is encourage bike safety with cyclists and with drivers.”
Recreation staff has also hidden 10 polka dot bikes throughout Colchester County, and anyone who spots the bikes can enter to win a prize by taking a picture, or noting the location and two colours on the bike and
then emailing spotthebike@ truro.ca.
Burgess says there is already a lot of biking in Colchester County but there is still room for it to grow and plenty of room for improvement around bike safety and bike awareness.
“When you look at Europe or Quebec, when see all the bike paths, when you see so many people cycling, that’s something it would be great to see in Nova Scotia,” he said.