Literally the week I moved up to New York, I found myself working for one of my favorite nonprofit organizations: Bike New York. Dedicated readers may remember this organization from the Five Borough Bike Tour, my interview with Emilia Crotty, or the Savvy Cyclist class I took back in 2009. Now I’m an excited teammate. Bike New York has 2 sides. There’s the event side including the 5 Borough, which fund the organization and generate excitement and advocacy for bike riding. Then there’s the education side. Bike New York provides free classes all over the city. Last year Education Director Rich Conroy piloted a program allowing New York City youth enrolled in summer camps to use Bike NY’s bicycle fleet (depicted left) and learn about safety skills from trained ride instructors. There were only two locations. This year the program expanded to include additional locations throughout the city.
I really, really wanted to work for Bike New York. I was so excited to get involved with this holy grail of bicycle advocacy organizations (seriously, the name contains two of my favorite things on this planet “bike” and “New York”) that I agreed to work at whatever locations they needed me. A few weeks later I found myself in Van Cortlandt Park up in the Bronx. When all was said and done, my enthusiasm was tempered by the growing realization of the daily commute. Despite research and rerouting the minimum distance I could calculate was 18.5 miles. When calculated with a less direct, but easier ride on the way home it works out 40 miles of commuting per day… I’ll shed some light on this a little later.
On top of the 40 mile commute, I get to bike around with the campers all day: three two-hour sessions to be exact. My co-instructor Elena and I teach the Bike Drivers Ed curriculum. The first thing we do is proper helmet and Bike fitting. Next we walk them through an A-B-C-Quick check. This is a procedure designed to ensure the bike is ready for safe operation. Students check air, brakes, chain mechanism and quick release levers.
Invariably some kids need to be taught how to ride a bicycle and we take care of them separately. The others are brought into our main training area (depicted left) for drills. It sounds simple, but we begin with starting and stopping. It’s amazing how many kids seem to stop with their feet instead of braking, so this is essential. Next we move onto scanning so kids can be aware of their surrounds while they ride. After this we cover signaling. From this came one of my more creative teaching ideas. Since it’s New York State Law to use signaling motions on the road, I turned the camp counselors into police officers. Any time the kids swerved out of line, passed or failed to repeat one of my hand signals while riding around was issued a ticket. After three tickets they “went to jail.” The kids really got into it, choosing to follow the rules instead of getting caught by “the po-po.” Even the counselors had a good time issuing siren noises and verbal citations. One counselor, apparently a force veteran, actually whipped out an NYPD badge and had a field day. After some trail etiquette we take them on rides throughout the park. Unfortunately rules in the area are very stringent as far as where bikes can and cannot go which leaves us with some very difficult terrain.
I’ll describe the rides and the commute in more detail, but this is the basic structure of our youth classes.
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