Kids love bikes love kids

Last weekend, we partnered with Andree Sanders and Trips for Kids NY to co-host family bike rides as part of IMBA‘s “Take a Kid Mountain Biking Day”.

Take a Kid MTB Day - Cunningham Park, Queens

We don’t know who had more fun – the kids, or the grown-ups. The rain ended just in time for us to have some great rides out in Cunningham Park. (And a huge thanks to Specialized for the swag and to Andree for organizing the location and the route!)

Bike fun continues next week, up in Washington Heights. In September, 10 bikes were stolen from Dyckman Valley School, comprising the full fleet employed by the Children’s Aid Society in Dyckman’s after-school “CYCLE Kids” program, teaching students about bike safety, maintenance and health and fitness. 

CYCLE Kids sent out a plea and individuals and businesses quickly responded – a donation from Specialized Bicycles, individual donations from Oregon to England, generating just enough to replenish the bikes.

So, next week a few of our mechanics and staff are heading out to Dyckman Valley School (ok, confession, we also contributed a few bucks to the cause, but the more fun part is bike building) to build up the new bikes with the students themselves.

Since the program began in 2010, already, hundreds of residents have been touched by the program. (Here’s a photo of a few of them, below.) We look forward to getting them back on their feet, and are incredibly impressed that CYCLE Kids administrators so quickly united resources to get the program back up and running.

Cycle Kids get ready for a bike build

Part of the power behind CYCLE Kids is Julianne Idlet. Her passion for kids is as big as her smile – here’s a photo of all of us at Interbike last month. She’s the good looking one in the middle.

A meeting of the minds: Chris Facas, Specialized; Julianne Idlet, CYCLE Kids; and our own Charlie M., Bicycle Habitat

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