Join us for a friendly bicycle ride in Central Vermont
Take a Kid Adventure Biking Day
We’d like to share an idea with you called Take a Kid Adventure Biking Day:
Take a Kid Adventure Biking Day was created by Vermont Bicycle Shop as a way to encourage folks to get together in their communities and encourage kids to use their bicycles for more than just transportation. With Take a Kid Mountain Biking day Vermont is often left out due to trails closing for the season and more. Take a Kid Adventure Biking Day happens the Sunday following Mother’s Day in early Spring, when everyone is excited to get out and ride. No special bicycles, equipment, or trails are required. Adventure biking can be anything. It can be an easy 30 minute bike ride on a new route to a familiar destination. It can be riding with a picnic lunch to a new destination. It can also be that great first overnight bicycle adventure packed with camping gear. We encourage you to head out on your overnight on Saturday so you can time your return trip on Sunday and possibly come home to a community day ride organized near you!
We typically host our event in Plainfield, VT and ride along the old railroad bed trail out towards Nasmith Brook Rd. It’s a route that is easy enough for the youngest kids while still being fun and challenging for the older kid in us all. We post an official event notic to our page the closer we get to the event. You can host your own Take a Kid Adventure Biking Day as well! Read the letter below from Vermont Bicycle Shop to learn more!
Hello my name is Darren Ohl.
I own Vermont Bicycle Shop in Barre, VT. Thank you in advance for taking the time to read this long winded letter! We’d like to share an idea with you called Take a Kid Adventure Biking Day.
In the working class towns of Vermont we’ve always struggled with National Take a Kid Mountain Bike Day. It’s an amazing idea that introduces thousands of kids to the fun of riding bicycles in the woods and the fun that fitness by bicycle can be. For residents in Vermont the problem is that it happens in October, when conditions are not ideal and many are turning their focus to hunting. Even if they aren’t hunting, it isn’t always the safest time to be in the woods. This rings true for many places outside of large population density areas.
At Vermont Bicycle Shop we love mountain biking, we also feel like the kind of riding we do is so much more, mountain biking is only a part of the riding we love, mountain bikes are only a part of the kinds of bicycles that can get us there. The better word for it is adventure. We often love to take those mountain or road bike trips and extend them to adventurous destinations rather than ride the traditional trails and loops. What if we could ride that trail, connect it to the other trail by taking that old carriage road marked on the map? Does that old carriage road still exist? We could stop for lunch along the old pond and make a day of it. No rush, no heart rate zones, let’s go somewhere people might not have been for 10 years. A simple adventure. For us the wonder is insatiable and endless. We also love inclusivity. We want to share our adventures with everyone.
At a young age we are often engrossed with the nature that is the bicycle adventure. From our very first bike ride alone to the playground up the block, the bicycle has been a vehicle of freedom for adventuring. As adults we at Vermont Bicycle Shop love crafting bicycle adventures, whether an hour or a week, with the notion of reclaiming that wonder of going somewhere new by bicycle, or going there in a new way.
With Take a Kid Adventure Biking Day we can really expand that sense of wonder and create new adventure bicycle riders of all ages. Holding Take a Kid Adventure Riding Day in the early Spring we open the possibilities for many more places around the United States to participate. We can also teach our children about responsible trail and road use early in the season, when they are most excited to go out in the world. We can ride with them and teach them which trails are closed and why or what a trail too wet to ride looks like. We can teach them when trails are in good shape for riding as well by showing them instead of telling them.
Below you will find a link to download a generic graphic where we have removed our branding so that you can use it with your shop or club logos to share this idea. Just right click and save the image to your desktop. The image is registered and protected under a creative commons license so feel free to use it on promotional materials as you see fit, however you cannot sell anything with the supplied image or the Take a Kid Adventure Biking name. We hope you find it useful. If we all use a branding that becomes recognizable it will help make Take a Kid Adventure Biking easier to recognize and establish. We hope you will choose to join us in your own communities and Take a Kid Adventure Biking each year in May on the Sunday following Mother’s Day there after.
Introducing kids to the ever expanding wonder of bicycle adventures will lock in their insatiable desire to get outside. It will teach them to go out into the world in search of happiness and health and that thru bicycles and cycling it is easy to find.
