Big Brothers & Big Sisters

I was originally an Elementary Education teacher.  That was my degree.  I couldn't get in the door of any of the local elementary schools in our community so I dragged my feet out to the Cathedral Home with wild ideas about how abnormal the kids were.  I thought that I would see kids who were crazy, drooling, spitting, incoherent psychopaths with missing teeth, and instead I found out that my dream job was actually working with treatment kids...and here is the kicker...they are all so eerily normal.  Granted I did find the toothless psychopaths, but we are not talking about the people it takes to work with treatment kids...(joking of course.)

I started as an English Teacher, but quickly grew bored of the curriculum filled with rules that aren't followed anywhere but the classroom.  I did, however, fall in love with the kids because they were so real.  They wouldn't accept anything but the truth from a teacher, and they even challenged the facts found in the truth.  It was fantastic because it made me focus in on the things I love about life, and I wanted to share that love for life with the kids.  My love for life has always, as long as I can remember, been most intense when in the saddle of a bicycle.  So, we started working on bikes, and to make sure it looked somewhat like English, we started writing about our process.  Now, some nine years later, and thanks to a plethora of people, there is a Vocational Education Program based entirely on the concept of fixing bicycles.  It is a dream job.

Well this past Saturday I was able to share the fruits of the Vocational labor (of too many people to mention) with the local community.  The Cathedral Home Advanced Bicycle Mechanics class, in conjunction with the Pedal House, held a 2 Hour Basic Maintenance class for the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization here in Laramie.

As you can see, the snow cut back on our participation, but the kids and Bigs that did show up were AWESOME!  Not to mention how fantastic my advanced kids were in helping assist with the instruction.

Overall, I think it was a big success.  David, Michael, Dezarae, and Katie learned how to service a couple of parts on their bicycles.  My advance class was able to demonstrate their knowledge in a real world setting while meeting Wyoming and California Vocational State Learning Standards, and I was able to enjoy the company of both groups.  It was a pretty good day.





So to everyone at the Cathedral Home, and everyone at Big Brothers and Big Sisters, thanks for sharing your life with kids.  And to all the young people who have been in both programs, thank you for sharing your life with us.  Until next time, Happy Trails from the Pedal House. 

A brief history of the Pedal A Way program.

Riding bicycles with kids has given me a great deal of pleasure, and as much as I appreciate recognition for the work I have done, I would also like to ensure that those who have matched (if not exceeded) my efforts should also be recognized. Recently there was an article published in the Laramie Daily Boomerang by one of cycling's closest friends, Eve Newman, whom I recently request Facebook friend status with. (Fingers crossed for good luck.) The Article was in Friday's Paper, and featured some young people from the Cathedral Home's Pedal A Way program out on the trails of Happy Jack. In the article, Eve said that the bicycles are provided by the Pedal House, and that is not 100% accurate. We do provide service and parts for the kids, much of which we donate, but the bicycles are provided by an unlikely source; bike thieves.

Ironic I know, since the slogan of the Pedal House is in fact, "We Still Hang Bike Thieves In Wyoming". But, before we digress, let me explain. Back in 2002 I was on a backpacking trip with a man named Dann Harvey. We were hiking with kids from the Cathedral Home for Children in the Four Corners area of the southwest. One of the kids said we should start doing bicycle trips because they would be more fun. The next summer the Cathedral Home for Children accepted a proposal to let me take a couple of cottages our into the woods for a week and go mountain biking. The first trip was Brush cottage; 9 girls, three staff, some tents, some Colman stoves, lots of spaghetti, and a bunch of bikes I pulled together from my own supply. It was awesome, but we needed more bikes.

That summer I was lamenting with a colleague of mine named Ann McIntosh, about my bicycle woes. I was a decent mechanic, but I had little resources to work with and she sympathized with my efforts. About an hour later she asked if I had anywhere to put 50 bikes, and I almost fainted. She had called the Laramie Police Department and asked if they could donate a few bicycles to help out the program. They donated their entire recovered/stolen bicycle stockpile. We were in dept to them, but they didn't stop there. They have been donating their bicycles to the kids at the Cathedral Home ever since. The Program at the Cathedral Home wouldn't exist without their kind donations.

So, to Eve Newman, Ann McIntosh, Laramie Police Department, and a whole bunch of people that we will mention on the next installment of this history lesson, Thank You So Much for making the Pedal A Way program possible.