Easy as riding a bike

Fort Rouge

Transcona

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/07/2024 (640 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the fourth year in a row, Variety Manitoba hit the ground rolling with its two-week bike camp, something which CEO Jeff Liba describes as his “favourite two weeks of the year.”

The camp, the largest of its kind in North America, brings in coaches from the U.S.-based ICan Shine organization, as well as local volunteers, to create a safe, accessible avenue for young kids facing disabilities as they learn how to ride bicycles.

The two-week program, consisting of two, 75-minute sessions each day, has an 80 per cent success rate, Liba said, but success isn’t the main aspect.

“To just see the excitement in the children … and even the kids who aren’t successful, they have grown just a ton,” he said.

The camp accommodates 40 kids per week, and has helped more than 300 overall, Liba said.

Kids at the camp start with a roller bike, which features a unique wheel on the back shaped like a rolling pin, offering extra support as they build up confidence riding on their own. Then, once they’re up to it, they’re “launched” onto a two-wheel bike, donated by Woodcock Cycle Works.

At the end of the camp, if they’re ready to continue, the kids are then able to take their bicycles home with them.

The first portion of the camp takes place inside of the Transcona East End C.C. hockey rink (517 Pandora Ave. E), and gradually moves onto the parking lot outside.

Volunteers guide the kids the entire way, running alongside the bikes, shouting encouragement, and holding on when riders lose their balance.

Sometimes, learning to ride a bike is a child’s first ticket to independence, Liba said — a way to get them out into the communities with their friends and families.

This especially rings true for eight-year-old Lucy, who, brandishing her decorated pink helmet, soared around the hockey rink during a session last week.

Lucy is autistic, and for the first period of her life, was mostly non-verbal, said her mother, Erin Smith. Now, though, her world is growing at a very fast pace — both figuratively and literally.

Smith said that this year’s bike camp was a huge source of excitement for her daughter, who is known for taking off on-foot.

“She loves to go on her bike,” Smith said. “Right now, we use a ride-along bike … that, from a safety point of view, is great, but she’s outgrowing it.”

Lucy has a bike with training wheels at home which works, Smith continued, but without a ride-along, she doesn’t know quite when to stop.

“If I don’t have confidence that she will stop when I ask her to, even just around our street, there’s just too many cars,” Smith said. “So my hope was that she will grasp the concept of stopping and that would lead us to be able to go on family bike rides.”

Whether or not Lucy will be able to achieve that goal, Smith enjoyed seeing her daughter enjoy herself around other kids.

“As a parent, I’m so excited for anything that would give her (confidence) going forward, and we like to be active, so I really hope that this can lead to going around the street safely … which would make me feel better,” she said. “We gotta keep doing these things, because Lucy will do what Lucy will do. You know, the more we tools we give her, the more things we try to do with her gives her that opportunity to try.”

“When you learn how to ride a bike, you’ve now become more and more part of your community, because we see people riding bikes all the time,” said Paul Human, a volunteer and community policing officer with the Selkirk RCMP detachment.

Human learned about the camp last year in “a stroke of luck,” and cam back to help out a second time.

“Do the kids fall? Yeah. Yeah, they do. Do they crash into stuff? Yeah, they do. But we just deal with it … Do we fall down sometimes? Yes. What’s the most important thing, is we get back up and get going again,” he said.

Registration for Variety’s bike camp opens up every year in early spring — and it fills up fast.

Headquartered in Fort Rouge, Variety Manitoba is a not-for-profit organization and offers programs throughout the year – all of which are funded through donations.

For more information, visit varietymanitoba.com