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Don’t you remember being a scraper kid?

Monday, January 23rd, 2012 by

Interested in donating a bike? Drop off your gently-used bike at our office, 7400 Sand Point Way NE, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. For questions, please email our Youth Programs Assistant at ypa@cascadebicycleclub.org.

 

When you were a student, an elementary student, didn’t you want to make your own class rules? I’m sure at some point you wanted to have a whole class devoted to supporting your art and your experience. Do you remember wanting to spray paint things, get your hands dirty and ride bikes? If any of this sounds familiar, you might have made a good scraper kid.

The Scrapers program this winter gave six awesome and creative kids a chance to maintain, design and earn a bike they could keep for themselves. This winter students were asked to come to the first class with a song they wanted to use as the inspiration for their scraper bike. They were empowered with art and creativity to communicate with the world via a custom bicycle: scrapers are art bikes with spray painted frames and duct taped spokes, replicating spinner wheels. Over the course of eight weeks they learned how to:

-Lube a chain
-Fix a flat tire
-Rebuild a hub (no small feat, I must say!)
-Rebuild a bottom bracket
-Spray paint
-Make scraper wheels
-Lock their bikes up securely

If they successfully completed these tasks and attended six of the eight scrapers sessions, the students would be given the bikes as well as a helmet and bike lock.

But the program is about more that just walking away with a colorful bike after two months. It’s about building responsibility, creating your own rules and hands on learning.

From the very first class the students are asked to think carefully about a song they feel represents themselves, and then they are encouraged to turn that song into a bike design. Each kid came up with a wildly different design than the next: from tiger stripes and solid taped wheels to a gold frame with silver rims to a toxic waste bike.

One student even incorporated a project he was working on at school by having the whole class vote on whether or not people should text while driving. He then applied this theme to his black and yellow bike. This same student even came and helped out with the Bicycle Maintenance Parties I was running every Wednesday. His attitude encouraged volunteering and positivity among the other students.

Scraper kids learn resilience and embody an excellent DIY-spirit. A nine year old was having a particularly rough day and suffered a flat tire. When he was told that one of us could help him fix it he said “I can do it myself” and proceeded to, indeed, do it himself.

I couldn’t be more proud of the students that came through the program over the winter. They show us how effective bikes are, not only as a mode of transportation, but also as a learning tool and a community builder. If only we all got to be scraper kids…

Posted in Education, Kids on bikes, Photos | 1 Comment »

Bicycle maintenance parties: Why volunteers are awesome

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 by

It doesn’t take long working here at Cascade until one realizes just how important volunteers are. Over the past month I have been able to see, first-hand, just how much they do.

Over the winter break, we will be receiving bikes back from the schools that run our Basics of Bicycling program. Trailers full of 20″-wheeled, coaster-braked BMX bikes have already started piling up and the work to maintain them during the “off-season” has started in earnest. Each trailer has 30 bikes inside, most in need of basic maintenance. Some in need of something a little more intensive.

Through November I’ve had the pleasure of leading teams of volunteers on Wednesday nights to come in and get these little bikes back in rolling condition. We’ve changed countless tubes and tires, tightened a mind-boggling number of bolts and lubed over 100 chains. Some bikes have needed to have seats replaced, hubs repacked and bottom brackets cleaned and tightened.

They’re a dedicated bunch, these Bike Maintenance Party Heroes. They come in on blustery nights to enjoy pizza and work on bikes they’ll never get to ride themselves. Some are members of Cascade, some are employees and some live as far south as Tacoma. Some are even members of elementary schools in the area (our tire-pump champions!). All are committed to the cause, though. Every night, and it never fails, at least one or two of the ladies or gentleman attending tell me they “want to help get kids excited about bikes.” And if this is how you can help, by keeping their little cycles in good working order, that’s awesome. Your help doesn’t go unnoticed.

Last Wednesday I had to delicately respond to some volunteers why I postponed the prior week’s maintenance party. When I told them I went home for Thanksgiving and that I assumed people would want the holiday off they simply said, “I would’ve come in, no problem.”

We have more bikes to get through – five more sets of 30, to be exact. Bike maintenance parties will be happening on Wednesday evenings from 5:30 to 8:30 through December (except the 28th) and also on the first three Wednesdays in January.

Until the next party, though, I’m giving a shout out to all of our awesome volunteers so far: Sue, Ralph, Andrew, Rebecca, Chris, Jenny, Bent, Robin, Xavier, Peter, Saul and Erica: you are all rock stars!

If you’d like to get on the bike maintenance volunteer list to receive party notifications, please drop me an email. We’d love to have you join us.

Posted in Education, Kids on bikes, Volunteer | No Comments »

Sand Point Elementary: Building a friendship

Friday, October 21st, 2011 by

Today I will be meeting with Dan Warren, principal of Sand Point Elementary. It will be the first connection the Cascade Bicycle Club’s Education Foundation has made with any staff from the school here in North Seattle. The meeting will be focused on grant proposals and, if you could call it such, “business.” But for me as, a rookie intern, it goes beyond that.

I’m pretty new to this organization (and by “new” I mean “I’ve been here for two weeks”) but without a doubt, in every aspect of my experience here, the mission statement of the club has been resoundingly strong. All of the staff, both paid and voluntary, take this very seriously: “Creating a better community through cycling.” I have noticed it in how welcome the staff has made me and other new Americorps feel. I have noticed it in how the Basics of Bicycling program reaches from North Seattle to Lake Washington to South Park. Now I get to see the statement come to life in our very own backyard.

Over the past two weeks I’ve come to see how much Cascade has grown in just the last few years. As the Club has grown so has its mantra: keep everybody involved, be inclusive. It has expanded its programs to include many areas of the Seattle Metro region but it’s important to remember that our community is right out our back door, too. Across the grasses of Magnuson Park and through the intersection of Sand Point Way and 65th is a small elementary school that we have yet to forge a relationship with. Today is the first step towards not just a new demographic and a new body of students and parents but also the first step towards a new friendship.

Posted in Kids on bikes | No Comments »

Friday slice and dice

Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 by

I’ve begun looking at Bike Delivery Fridays as an adventure.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Basics of Bicycling program, let me preface by telling you that it is hands-down a really awesome program. Started nearly six years ago, the Basics program serves nearly 12,000 elementary school students in four different school districts every year.  Through on-bike drills, the program teaches the importance of riding safely and effectively.

Where do I come in? On Fridays, I drive a cargo van towing trailers full of bikes to each school, making sure that the bikes are delivered on schedule and in good working, and that the teachers have all necessary equipment to run their lesson. When a school is done with the bikes, I retrieve the trailer and bring the bikes back for upkeep before moving them on to the next school.

No Friday is ever the same.

Two weeks ago, I picked up a trailer from which the license plate had been stolen. A month ago the trailer was covered in graffiti. The taggers adorned all the photos with mustaches, horns and eyeglasses.  But last Friday took the cake.

Three weeks ago I parked the trailer on a school playground. Let me add that it was locked inside the playground.  When I went to pick it up last Friday, much to my surprise there was a flat.  No big deal, right? Wrong. There was an eight-inch gash where someone had decided to slash our tire, steal the emergency brake chain and tamper with the electrical system.

I tend to think in positives (plus we sure weren’t going anywhere with a flat tire) and gave the lucky fifth grade class an extra hour with the bikes. It sure threw a ‘knife’ in our delivery schedule to 1) file a vandalism charge with the Seattle Police Department and 2) to wait for the tire repair service and 3) to repair the spare which happened to have a screw stuck in it as well. The long wait could have been boring, and I could have spent it complaining, but not when we had bikes, kids and time.

While the trailer was receiving its TLC, I was given the best Friday gift ever!  I had the opportunity to teach a fifth grader — who had never been on a bike before — to ride her first two-wheel bike. You have to keep learn-to-ride lessons positive, even when balance is the real issue, and the student’s eyes are tearing up.  We worked together for 20 minutes until she decided to join her classmates.  And let me tell you, I was the first person to jump and holler and high-five and fist-pump when she finally linked her pedal rotations together.  Comfortable and happy with herself, she flew around the playground and it couldn’t have come any sooner because just as soon as the tire was back on the trailer, I headed off to the next school.

Like I said, Bike Delivery Fridays are an adventure. It’s not every day a slashed tire leads to the reward of helping a kid learn to ride a bike.  It’s all in how you look at things.

Posted in Education, Kids on bikes | No Comments »

Bike to School month is so magical!

Monday, May 17th, 2010 by

We have 35 elementary schools participating in Bike to School month this May, and they are doing some pretty creative things to get everyone excited about biking! Check out these photos below, taken by Tim King, a parent at Bryant Elementary.

That’s the Bike Fairy (in this case, Leslie Loper, Bryant’s BTS coordinator), a mythical creature first created by Ellen Aagaard, a parent at Laurelhurst Elementary and a Cascade instructor. As Ellen explains it, “The bike fairy rides around the area of the school & tries to “catch” kids riding to school–if she/he catches you you get a little prize.” It was a great hit last week at Laurelhurst when Mr. Brown, the librarian, was the Bike Fairy. He rode a dirt bike and a black multi-sport helmet, and also sported giant pink wings!

Nancy Denney, at Ben Franklin Elementary in the  Lake Washington School District, has been using international biking photos (sent out to coordinators each week by yours truly!) to generate biking enthusiasm. She posts the photo each week on a Bike to School bulletin board with a list for kids to write down their guesses as to where the photo was taken. In the first week of May, Ben Franklin had over 300 riders. Keep up the good work!

Posted in Bike Month, Kids on bikes | No Comments »

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