Kids ditch the bus for adventure
Fresh air, exercise and the bus rebate spur cyclists
At one time, the image of a group of kids on bikes filling up a residential street on their way to school was nothing special.
But in 2012, where helicopter parents and long bus rides are the norm?
On a brisk -15C November morning? While it’s snowing? But there they were one morning last week, a gang of Grade 5 and 6 students with oversized backpacks slung over their parkas, feet crammed into their Costco boots, and toques stuffed inside their helmets. Some were on nice mountain bikes with disc brakes and suspension.
Others rode rickety hand-medowns.
And all of them, when asked why they didn’t just take the nice warm bus like regular kids, offered some version of the same answer. “The bus is boring.” In a city where most school mornings are typified by blearyeyed children stumbling out of idling SUVs and buses with highrolling odometers, seeing a gaggle of kids tearing up the powder on residential street can be novel, to say the least.
I found this gang after a prompt from Calgarian Michael Gray, who was inspired when he came across a gang of prepubescent cyclists on their way to school one snowy morning.
He alerted me on Twitter, and, a couple of tweets and a few days later, I found myself heading out the back door with Grade 6 student Oscar Dewing on his way to school, joining him in a wave goodbye to his mother.
Oscar, it turns out, is a kind of quiet ringleader of this gang.
He started riding his bike to school last year. He liked it. So this year, he figured he could do it every day. His parents liked the idea too, so they agreed to split the school bus rebate with him. A couple of Oscar’s friends caught on. Then a couple more.
On the day I visited, 11 kids showed up at the usual meeting spot.
For the kids, there’s nothing big-picture about riding their bikes to school.
They think it’s fun. Some of them like the outsider status it gives them.
Others like seeing the shocked faces of school officials when they emerge through the snowfall. Oscar doesn’t think much about those things.
“It’s fun, and it’s an adventure,” he says, with a look that wonders why people think it’s a big deal.
It’s not that big of a deal ... There are so many benefits
LORI
BEATTIE
Parents of the gang members, however, see something bigger. “It gives him an identity,” said Troy Nixon of his son Ben.
Oscar’s mom Lori Beattie, herself an avid urban outdoorswoman (she operates a company called Fit Frog Adventures that guides and encourages walking and hiking), can talk for hours about the big picture.
She likes the independence it provides her son, especially in an era when that is rare.
She likes that it forces him to overcome challenges like bad weather, scraped knees and flat tires, without an adult around to bail him out. And she likes that it gets his body moving.
“I know there’s a lot of fear about this kind of thing, that people don’t want their kids to bike and they worry about traffic, but it’s not that big of a deal,” Beattie says. “There are so many benefits. And it’s three-and-a-half kilometres, for God’s sake. Yes, he might fall, but he finds things to be little adventures.”
The Elboya bicycle gang isn’t the only group of kids that ride bikes to school in Calgary, of course.
But such groups aren’t as common as they once were. A few parents said school officials, while never opposed to the idea, were a little slow to embrace it. Beattie, for one, wishes walking and cycling was encouraged more.
She thinks it’s good for everyone, and good for the city.
Oscar may wish that too, but he doesn’t show it, at least to me. We chatted amiably as we took the back roads from his house toward school.
He instinctively took the safe routes, avoiding busy streets, and crossing roads in low-traffic areas.
When I got off my bike to walk down a hill that was a little too icy for my bones, he reluctantly followed suit, to spare me the embarrassment.
When we joined up with the larger group of 11 students, the kids, warmed by the prospect of getting their names in the paper (here you go: Ty Sheppard, Ben Nixon, Nick Sherwin, John Plunkett, Tazman Abramowicz, Chloe Richardson, Owen Cleveland, Gabby Cleveland, Jonah Dahlin and Luke Sherwin), turned the ride into a bit of a party.
They laughed and teased and showed off.
It was a kick to see them take over a residential street, with cars keeping a wide berth, proving that adage about strength in numbers.
And there were adventures. We had a wipeout, a dropped chain and some cold fingers (only some of that came from me).
But the kids solved their own problems and made it to school safely, with time to spare. By the end, I could relate to Oscar’s nonchalance about the whole thing.
And his practical advice to other kids made more sense than ever.
“Just try it. If you don’t like it, don’t do it.”