Advocacy & Safety - Introduced a bunch of kids to Cycling this Weekend

I had a unique experience this weekend. I lead a Cub Scout Den and wanted to do some outside stuff with them this weekend. After the 9 boys, moms, dads and siblings showed up, I had one of the parents round them all up. I shocked them all by walking out of the house wearing my entire cycling kit, including the brightest jersey I own. I had 4 bikes lined up and told them about BMX, hybrid, Mountain and Road bikes, we discussed safety from hand and verbal signals, what side of the road to ride on, lights and bright clothes to gloves and helmets. We drove over to the bike trail and got ready to ride. One boy forgot his helmet, so his dad drove back to get one of my extra's. Me and my two young sons were the only experienced riders out of 21 in our group. We rode for five miles (huge accomplishment for many of them). Hopefully they will get the bug and ride more.

WAY TO GO srp!!!

That is a great Cub Scout activity, and you definitely gave all of those guys something that they will be proud of. Nicely done and thanks for posting. Keep the faith! ;)

Next thing to do is to see if there's a local Go-Ride club (see www.britishcycling.org.uk) for them to go to

I have done similar rides with Cub Scouts and Girl Guides. One other thing to tell them - seat height adjustment - they were amazed at how much easier it was to pedal with the seat at the right height.

For the kids whose bikes were actually the right size, most of them had seat height pretty close. A couple of them were running bikes that were way too small though.

What does the cycling badge look like?

I don't mean that as a joke. I think you performed a very important service to those kids. Would be interesting to create (if it doesn't exist already) a challenge to earn their cycling badges.

Good job. Applause ... applause.

d.tipton

I think God will have a special place for you in heaven. I love instructing people in cycling I got to take a group of first timers Mountain Biking in Colorado. At the end of the trail they were all weezing, and begging for mercy it happens that they were all a football players. I asked em if they wanted to stop, but their coach kept pushing them

Our pack did cycling as a summer activity in August. We met at the local Metropark, which has a 3 mile loop of MUP (the only MUP in the entire area is a useless circle that goes nowhere). Anyway, the leader intended for everyone to make a single loop then catch refreshments and go home. He jokingly said we could go around as many times as we wanted. I took the lead since there was technically a speed limit and I was the only one with a speedometer. After the first loop, about 6 kids were yelling that they wanted to go again. Next round, the one kid (about 9 years old) who is in a cycling family said keep going. After that loop (9 miles) I realized that he didn't have any water and forced him to stop. The leader was kind of amazed when we coasted up and said "9 miles."