Hillside School Bike Rodeo

The Bike Rodeo, absolutely one of the most fun events you can attend as a bike shop employee. These things are usually set up by the P.E. instructor at an elementary school, generally for 3rd graders. The idea is to get kids up to speed on bicycle safety and traffic laws. They are run through an obstacle course complete with mini-stop signs then given a test. If they pass, they are issued a license which allows them to ride their bike to school. It's impressive how many kids actually ride their bikes to school these days and it's definitely essential that they learn the rules of the road.

IBCer Adam Burns goes the extra mile,
fixing a flat so one of the kids can get out on the obstacle course on time.


Adam removes the bead and prepares to take the tube out.

Faster than a NASCAR tire swap, Adam has the wheel pumped up and back on the bike just in the nick of time.

The kids fill out the written portion of the test in crayon. It was amazing not only that most of them got the questions correct, but that they understood the test at all. The level of vocabulary words used in the questions was nutty.

Apparently blue water bottles are the best. They went way before the others. Next time we'll bring exclusively blue bottles.

One of the questions on the test pertained to which direction you ride on the road, with or against traffic. "What kind of question is that? Ride against traffic? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard!". I guess the training worked on this guy.

Thanks to The Hillside School and Rob Tatro for putting this thing together. Encouraging kids to ride bikes is a great thing to do and you guys do an awesome job doing it!