Good health (and brakes that work): BikeWalkKC gifts LINC kids with bikes, safety training
LINC Gladstone students, left to right, Garry, Alcario and Zkyha talk about their new bicycles from BikeWalkKC.
It’s not the sparkling green paint job that Garry mentions first when listing favorite things about his new bike.
Not the smooth glide. Not the speed.
The Gladstone Elementary student in LINC’s Caring Communities program was in love with the brakes. He stood astride his bike, squeezing the levers on each handlebar, watching the pads flex against the rims of the wheels.
“It’s really easy to, like, stop it,” he said, “and get it slower in case you’re going too fast and you think you might fall off.”
He and a dozen classmates on this late fall Friday afternoon had just taken their first spin around the block on bikes gifted to them by BikeWalkKC, culminating a week of after-school safety lessons at LINC.
LINC students at Gladstone learn how gears work with BikeWalkKC.
“I love how you can switch gears,” student Alcario said about the red-and-black bike he’d picked out. “And I love how there’s nothing wrong with it.”
These were some of the testimonies from LINC’s latest collaboration with BikeWalkKC to join BikeWalk’s vision of a healthy, safe city for all.
The students had held up their end of the bargain. They’d watched and listened as a team from BikeWalkKC came to Gladstone with a collection of bikes and led the students in a week of after-school lessons on bike safety, operation and maintenance. The students had studied and passed the written test.
Now the students, many of whom either didn’t have bikes or had bikes that were too small or in disrepair, were getting these finely tuned and prepped bikes straight from the mechanics’ garage at BikeWalkKC’s midtown base of operations, complete with new helmets, safety lights and locks.
Clearly, LINC’s partnership with BikeWalkKC was right on track.
BikeWalkKC since 2010 has been carrying out a non-profit mission to advance a biking- and walking-friendly city to build what Education Director Laura Fox calls “a culture of active living.”
A lot of BikeWalk’s work is visible in the growing number of bike lanes and redesigned pedestrian-safe intersections throughout the city. But education supports the mission as well, Fox said, and LINC’s after-school time provides a great opportunity to bring that message directly to children and their families.
“The work LINC is doing in the community works perfectly with a lot of the populations we are trying to work with,” Fox said, “and with a lot of the services we’re trying to provide.”
Covid, screen time, obesity (oh my)
Health and fitness has long been a part of LINC’s overall vision in helping build stronger communities, said LINC Caring Communities Director Sean Akridge.
“Getting youth away from so much screen time and safely reclaiming their neighborhoods through BikeWalkKC is a welcome strategy,” he said.
At the national level, health leaders have described an epidemic in childhood obesity since the isolation of Covid, Akridge said. And schools, because of pressure to regain academic losses from the pandemic, have struggled to make necessary time for recess and health and fitness activities.
The Caring Communities teams, he said, are eager to use LINC’s programming time with its partners “to connect with families . . . and close the gaps from Covid.”
The bikes that come to BikeWalkKC are donated from the community, said Education Outreach Director Kat Murry, and the work of BikeWalk’s mechanics in the garage are an essential part of making sure children — and adults — feel happy and safe.
Every bike given out to the LINC students at Gladstone got one more safety check and tuneup that last Friday afternoon, said Murry, who then led the children on a celebratory neighborhood ride around the school.
Mechanics in the BikeWalkKC garage tune up bikes for Gladstone students in LINC.
They rode with joy and confidence.
“I feel good,” said Gladstone student Zkyha about her white and green-trimmed bike. “Because riding my bike was actually so fun, and I like how we learned how to fix the bike, because if my bike breaks down I’ll know what to, like, do.”
Speaking for everyone, she said, “I love the bikes.”
As they pedaled around the school, sometimes swaying, laughing and calling out to each other, it was easy to imagine the possibilities ahead when spring weather returns, said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Edina von Hofman at Gladstone.
“It brings us out of our houses and into the community,” she said. “And these kids can ride these bikes to school or home the way I did when I grew up.”
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