Manhattan Bike club

So last week Ben Turner, Danny Hiller, Robin Eckmann, and myself helped out with the bike club at Manhattan middle school. This was the first time for me to be back at my old school after a year and for my brother it was 3 years. When we started of there were about 17 kids to rock and roll on the ride. We rode over to a park that was just a view blocks away. We got into 3 groups. Each group work on a station. The first station I was in was cornering. In my group there were    5-6 kids. I set up a little course with a lot of corners in it so we can practice it really good. The adult in my group talk while i demonstrated how it is done, I also showed them the wrong way so they can see which way is faster. After 15 minutes we moved on i took the kids over the next station were another adult was waiting to teach about that. For me it was dismounting and mounting back on. After we showed them again they had to try it and everybody almost did it perfectly from the beginning on. They knew how to dismount and remount pretty well and Ben and myself were really impressed. After we learned the basic we went to the hurdles to practice it over something like in a race. After another 15 minutes we change one more time i took the kids over to the next station and Robin and Danny took their kids also to the last station but not the same as me. My last station was how to ride up a very steep hill and how to ride down the hill. We did that for another 15 minutes and than we all gathered together again to do a race on the end. So the race was all the stuff we did learned that day. It started of with the cornering and the the hurdles and last but not least the down hill and up hill. Robin, Danny, and I showed them how we do it and to show them how important the start is sometime. We took of and rode as fast as we could for a little bit and the kids were right behind us. That was probably the best ride of kids i did with because they really wanted to ride and do that stuff and also have fun with it. So when the race we done we rode back to the school. The teacher thank us for helping out and every thing and we thanked the kids for coming and for having fun with us that afternoon. When I talked to my old Manhattan teacher who is running the bike club said to us that we were the heros for them. The Kids really looked up to us and some kids i bet want to become some racers like Robin, Danny, and myself. 

I would give a big thank you out for the kids for coming. Ben Turner who managed to do a ride with Manhattan Middle school bike club. Tim Downing who helped out with coaching the kids. Andy Feeney who let us do a ride with them and teach the kids.

Thank you so much and we are looking forward for doing it another time.

By Yannick Eckmann

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