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This was Southern California in the late 1970s. I was 13, and I’d persuaded my parents to let me ride to school. This was done purely in the interest of survival.
The older kids on my bus were a bullying, drug-addled lot who tormented the weak. By which I mean me. One day a ninth-grader wearing a Black Sabbath T-shirt—Jessie, pronounced “Jess-eye,” as in Jess I do have discrete quantities of marijuana available for purchase—ripped my sneaker off and chucked it out the window.
They next day it was my hat. Eventually, I figured, he’d toss me out whole.
That’s part of a cool little story that I randomly came across today and liked quite a bit.
I liked the story because not only was the writing done well imo but the story itself made a good point… well I don’t want to ruin it, you can read the whole thing over at Bicycling Magazine:
http://www.bicycling.com/news/featured-stories/freedom
What did you think of the story, did you like it Y/N? The last half kind of made me nostalgic for all the adventures I used to get into as a kid roaming around on my bike.
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that’s a great magazine by the way. i don’t have a subscription, i read it at the library. in one issue, there was a a story about a kid who rode his bike to school and the school administration wouldn’t allow him to do it because they think it’s too dangerous. his mom even rode with him and still they threw a fit over it. here’s the story: http://www.bicycling.com/news/advocacy/why-johnny-cant-ride
i know that when i have kids, and i end up not homeschooling them, they’re going to ride to school, and i’ll ride with them. i remember riding all the time as a kid, though we lived too far away for me to ride my bike to school. i rode after school around the neighborhood, though. after a few years of giving up riding, i saved up for this:
http://www.diamondback.com/2011-della-cruz-24.
i rode it all through winter, and through at least one severe thunderstorm. fortunately i was almost home when the worst of it hit. the people at church think i’m nuts when they see my bike locked up to the railing at night or in crappy weather.
Anon,
Oh my word thanks for posting that article, it was certainly an eye-opener for me! Not having any kids yet I hadn’t realized that things had gotten to the point where some schools don’t even allow kids to ride bikes to school. How in the world is it even legal for schools to tell parents how their kids can and can’t move around outside of school grounds??
I’d heard of schools insisting on access to and having control of kids’ Facebook pages but I assumed that was just
technological idiocydue to the fact that the internet and social networks are a relatively new problem facing schools. Obviously it goes further than that.Seriously? Oh my.
How insane is it that riding a bike to school can now fall into the realm of civil disobedience 0_0. Somewhere in the distance I can hear Thoreau saying ‘I told ye so!’ in that half arrogant half wise way of his.
I think one of the major underlying factors to this problem was not mentioned in the article though. There might have been some allusions to it but it’s hard to be sure or maybe I just read through the article too fast due to the shock of things. Anyway the underlying factor I’m talking about is the consumer culture we’re awash in right now.
Think about the amount of money Mrs. Smith throws out ferrying her kids to school in an SUV. Gas, DVD’s for her kids to watch, a fast food drive-through breakfast, cell phone bills due to her and the kids sitting in traffic and texting/talking on the phone, and on and on.
Contrast that with Mrs. Smith escorting her kids to school with all of them on bikes, what would this consume? Practically nothing, maybe snacks and drinks if the bike ride was long.
So you not only get a situation where the schools are afraid of liability re: crazy lawsuits, but there are also always very strong forces tugging families towards the route of more consumption. And to pay for all this extra and in many cases unnecessary consumption both parents are having to be in the workplace and work a lot, meaning it’s even less likely that kids will ever have a chance to be escorted to school via bike or *gasp* ride on their own if they don’t live too far.
Anyways lol…I’m trying not to rant about this but I gotta say I’m still pretty outraged that things have come to this in many public schools.
That Della Cruz looks sweet! You’re making me want to take Jennifer’s and my bikes out of hibernation this afternoon and go for a leisurely ride (um, and I could certainly use the exercise). We have a pretty good and ever-growing bike trail system here in Anchorage thank goodness that has a nice mix of nature and city elements.
Do you have to do anything to your bike to be able to ride it in winter? Winter bikers here have to switch out to studded tires amongst other things.
ya know, i never thought of the consumerism tied to all this. let’s pretend gas for a 2012 Lincoln Navigator is about 80 bucks at 14 miles per gallon, and that a trip to McDonald’s is 25 bucks, and that DVDs are 10 bucks a piece, and if everyone in that SUV’s playing with their cell phones like it’s going out of style any minute, the bill comes to 300 bucks, that’s going to be one super expensive trip. multiply that by five times over the course of a week, and multiply that number by the number of days in a school year, and the amount of money spent is horrifying.
more than anything, i think it’s sad that things have been allowed to get to this point, not just that they have gotten to this point in the first place. i know that some sue-happy parents will sue the school for the school not being warm or cool enough, but to dictate how one can get to school is stupid. i was talking about it with my mom yesterday, and my mom thought it was stupid too. she rode her bike everywhere when she was a kid in the 50s and 60s, except to and from high school because of distance. compare that to my generation, who basically gave up the bikes once they hit middle school, add an overprotective school administration, and you end up with couch potatoes. and we wonder why so many kids are out of shape and developing health problems that were once seen only in adults? big bucket of DUH! i mean, these are the same people that howl and snarl about kids being overweight and how they need to get in shape, blah blah blah. how can we expect kids to have the artillery they need in order to make healthier choices when the school administration throws up roadblocks galore out of the fear of lawsuit junkies?
you and Jennifer should dig the bikes out. i wish more people rode bikes in the first place. where i live, there’s some bike lanes in the street here and there, but almost nobody respects them. there’s also some bike trails around town too.
as for winter, we got lucky last year. we didn’t really have much of a winter, though it did get icy and snowy at one point. otherwise, the weather was decent. i didn’t change my tires, but i got through it okay. snow wasn’t much of an issue, but the ice was. depending on the size of the snow drift, i could plow through it just from the weight of the bike. besides, finding studded tires that would fit a 24 inch wheel is like finding a needle in a haystack, lol.