For, me, I needed to find some outlet for me to focus my energies toward so I wouldn’t become obsessed with why I wasn’t getting X job or being called for Y interview. That thinking can become a horrific bottomless pit that is sometimes very difficult to climb back out of.
Last summer, my son Lucas began expressing a little more interest in riding his bike. At least I think he was. It’s highly possible I was just projecting this upon him, but he seems to really enjoy riding his bike and rarely fights too hard when I suggest we got for a spin. So I began looking for additional avenues for him to enjoy the beautiful sport of velo.
Well, needless to say I was just a slight bit surprised to find that there is little to no youth cycling organizations across the Valley. Tucson has a really good one. Heck, Colorado has a high school mountain biking league! But here in the Valley, the 15th best bike city in the US, there’s nothing of any real organization or scale.
So I began thinking of how I could create a youth cycling club or program for Lucas and other kids to get exposure to cycling and really enjoy this great activity. This coincided with the incredibly wise passage of Arizona law known worldwide as SB 1070, and I began to take greater notice of the neighborhoods I would pass through on my own rides around town. I regularly pass through heavily Hispanic areas like Guadalupe, South Phoenix, Mesa and Laveen, and I began wondering if the kids in these neighborhoods travel much beyond their own blocks. I also knew that Lucas and most of his friends have little to no experience in these income challenged yet culturally rich communities. Hmmm.
So this is how I decided to put together what I am calling Nuestro Velo Club, an organization devoted to getting kids on bikes and exposing them to the greatness of cycling fitness, safety, and the wonders that our greater Phoenix community has to offer. I have been fortunate to find partners with the Phoenix Children’s Hospital and their fitness and safety programs, and I think I am on the verge of launching pilot programs in a local elementary school as well as a local community organization focused on family and community fitness and welfare.
I hope that the meetings I have scheduled over the next several weeks will allow me to get kids on bikes in structured programs by the end of October. I’m also submitting my first grant for this project this week and hope to have filed the organization as a 501c3 by the end of the month. Ultimately the goal is that these initial pilot programs can successfully develop and expand throughout the Valley and eventually integrate other community-based programs that deal with healthy living and healthy expression such as community gardens, urban mural projects, and cultural story-telling in ways that will help define a community identity that the Metro-Phoenix region has been lacking. Keep your fingers crossed.
There’s a cycling expression for good luck that goes “Keep the rubber side down.” With any venture, there will be some faceplant moments such as the one above. You just hope it’s mostly rubber side down.
I was able to get some personal riding in, and while these numbers may be meaningless to pretty much anyone who reads this, welcome to the training diary portion of the blog:
• Sunday, Sept. 5 – Medium ride into Ahwatukee with my brother Wyatt over rolling terrain. Weather was nice if not slightly warm. 41 miles, 2hrs 25 mins, 1921 Kcalories, Avg HR 139, Avg Speed 16.9, Avg Cadence 84
• Monday, Sept. 6 – Hard ride to South Mountain TV Towers with San Juan Rd. Weather was muggy and hot. Legs slightly tired from previous day’s ride. 57 miles, 3hrs 24 mins, Kcalories 3134, Avg HR 151, Avg Speed 16.5, Avg Cadence 77. TV Tower climb (from old ranger station and back) lap time 52:18
Until next time…keep that rubber side down.
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