SMS wrote:
On Monday night my son's boy scout troop told everyone to bring their
bicycles to the meeting for a bicycle related activity and safety check
(prior to a 27 mile ride this weekend).

To me, this meant, "ride your bike to the meeting" but apparently my son
and I (and one of his friends that came with us because his parents were
were busy) were the only ones that did this, everyone else had their
parents drive them to the meeting with their bikes (one of the main
concerns being that it would be dark when the meeting was over). We
probably live the furthest away of any of the scouts, at about 1 mile.
Well one kid that lives across the street from the meeting place did
walk his bike over.

I'd say of the 35 or so bikes there, 25 were way too small for the
riders. Maybe five were BMX bikes, so this was intentional for those,
the rest of them were bikes that these scouts must have had since they
were 9 years old and 10-15" shorter in height. Of course when your
parents chauffeur you everywhere, who needs a bicycle to get around town
on your own.

Maybe 50% were department store bikes, Magna (Target) or Huffy. Quite a
few Raleigh's which surprised me since I know of no shops in the area
that sell Raleigh, one KHS, one Jamis, one Scott one Giant, one Miyata
(the scoutmaster), one Columbia, one Schwinn, one Specialized (mine). No
Cannondales, no Treks.

I don't know how these kids plan to ride 27 miles on a BMX bike,
standing up the whole way. Maybe 6 of the 35 bikes had a water bottle
cage, and three of those were mine, my son's, and the scoutmaster's. The
scoutmaster had a pump on his Miyata, one of those foot pumps used to
inflate automobile tires, so I gave him a hard time about that. My
goodness, you can buy a mini pump for less than $10 at Performance,
probably less than that at some places.

The repair part of the meeting was pretty funny. Many of the bikes had
two flat tires, not because of any punctures, but because no one had a
pump at home to pump them up. Almost no chains had any lubricant, and
the dad running the repair clinic ran out of chain lube. Most of the
brakes were out of adjustment, and some could not be fixed because the
wheels were so out of true. One guy had his seat pointed up at about a
30 degree angle, and when I pointed it out to him, he said that he
thought that's how it was supposed to be (reminds of Idiocracy and "ow
my balls!).

I suggested that they should have asked a local bike shop person to come
to the meeting, but since the meetings are all planned by the scouts,
usually at the last minute, and the parents aren't supposed to
interfere, that's never going to happen.

Seems like some shops could do some marketing to groups like boy scouts
by pro-actively offering to present programs before being asked. There's
a big shop about 200' from the church where the troop meets.

I told the dad of the kid I escorted to the meeting, "Alex needs a new
bike, and don't go to Target!" I guess I should have added "or Wal-Mart."

The next night (last night) the troop had their committee meeting at my
house. Even though I'm not on the committee (they don't want first year
boy scout parents on the committee because they think we're too used to
Cub Scouts were the parents run everything rather than the scouts). So
one item of discussion was a concern that some scouts were walking home
from troop meetings by themselves rather than being picked up by an
adult. Jesus H. Christ, some of these kids are 17 years old and the
adults are worried about them walking 1/8 to 1 mile at night.

I could get into "back in my day..." like my dad used to do, but I won't.


I blame the parents. If the parents (dads, to be sexist) don't
understand simple bike operation & maintenance, how can they teach their
kids? "Helicopter" parents, chauffeuring children everywhere is the
rule, these days. Parents complain that it's "too dangerous" for their
kids to bike to school (actually banned at the local elementary school),
even though a lot of the traffic is just parents driving kids to school
(school is at the end of my street, so I see this every day).

My kid's friend's parents have expressed shock and concern that we allow
our kids to travel freely around the city, either on foot, bike or
public transit. They would love to ride bikes places with friends, but
none of their friends have working bikes or the skills to use them --
even modest distances on car-free bike paths or low traffic residential
streets.

As for bikes, I've got a garage full. Just this month I picked up 2
more. I didn't even travel far as both were discarded by neighbors. One
was a perfectly serviceable Schwinn, the other a Fuji. Both bikes could
be restored to as new for under $50, or way better than new for $150.
That makes 5 bikes this year that I've collected near my house -- all
nice bikes, I don't bother with the dept. store ones -- and I'm not even
looking. These days you can get a pretty nice MTB for ~$250 new, with
the knobbies replaced by slicks, you've got a perfect kid bike. When
they were younger, I bought starter bikes from other parents (for like
$50), tweaked them a little & passed them on to other families when we
outgrew them.

Maybe helicopter parenting is a recent phenomenon, but the dearth of
bike-savvy parents isn't. I remember as a kid in the early 60's how
broken bikes pretty much stayed broken as nobody seemed to know how to
fix them. A couple of years ago my son's friend came by with a bike he
had been riding that he had found curbside on trash day. The kid knew
enough to pump the tires & oil the chain, but when his freewheel packed
it up, he was clueless. Turns out it was a screwball Maillard
Helicomatic (Peugeot bike) & he was dismayed when I told him it was
unrepairable -- no problem, I just gave him a new rear wheel from my
small collection of 27" recycles and trued up his front while I was at
it. He was amazed. I don't get particularly concerned when a kid's bike
gets stolen (1), vandalized (1), or crashed badly (1), because I usually
have the parts (or bike) to replace them. It's a cheap and easy way to
give kids lots of independence.