I'm On a Bike

Winding along the Clark Fork River Trail

On Friday I helped lead 50 fifth graders on a field trip to downtown Missoula for a picnic in Caras Park - on bikes. When I was in grade school I remember going on field trips to the Memphis Zoo, Pink Palace Museum and Elmwood Cemetery, but it always included a school bus or parent carpool. Sending 50 kids on an 8 mile bike ride in April in Montana is either awesome or just plain crazy. I'm going to go with awesome based on the huge grins on the kids' faces the whole time. Ok, except when one kid got his jeans so badly stuck in his chain I had to rip them out, or when another kid wiped out just blocks from the school and ended up with a bloody lip. You get the point...

I treated the field trip as practice for leading my Bike & Build trip this summer, because I'm sure that leading 50 kids on an 8 mile ride is just like leading 30 young adults on a 4,000 mile trip. There were highlights - hearing the kids talk about how proud they were for riding farther than they ever had, listening to their shrieks of laughter as we rode through tunnels and over bridges, and returning back to the school with everyone safe and intact, mind the bloody lip. There were also obstacles along the way - inexperienced riders, near crashes and collisions, whiners, stragglers, and a chilly headwind on the way back. One girl who had just learned to ride a bike the week before took a spill going into a tunnel where the group had bottlenecked. She was understandably shaken up and wanted to have her mom pick her up and take her back to school. A few deep breaths and words of encouragement later and she was back on the bike, riding confidently the rest of the way to school and stopping only to pose for a picture taken by her proud mother. I'm hopeful that the field trip will leave a positive, lasting impression on her and the rest of the students, just as I am certain that this summer will be an unforgettable experience that will instill a lifetime of cycling and service in myself and everyone else on the trip.

Before the field trip, I gave a bike safety presentation to each of the fifth grade classes to help prepare them for what was ahead. I started out by showing them a rap video that I created with some students a couple years ago. It's called "I'm On a Bike," and Adventure Cycling and Missoula in Motion have featured it on their social media sites. Maybe you'll pick up a couple tips from watching it...