LIFESTYLE

Got a spare bike? New efforts to help at-risk kids or a worker without transportation

Outdoor Adventures

Joseph Dits
South Bend Tribune

A year ago at this time, we were rolling into Michiana Bike to Work Week: group rides, a pancake feed, a social hour. Local organizers say this year’s plans are on hold until the COVID-19 fog lifts. May seems an odd time to mark National Bike Month this year, until you consider people who really need a bike.

Two brand new programs allow us to give a spare bike in good condition for A) at-risk kids who desperately need the outdoors or B) an adult who lacks reliable transportation. I’ll explain both.

“We know there are a lot of kids going unsupervised,” Jacqueline Kronk frets about youths in low-income homes, where stresses from the pandemic are likely mounting. The Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Joseph County, where she is CEO, is closed to the in-person programs that give the kids an outlet and educational help, reaching families now in virtual ways.

In 2016, Darlene Aguayo helps Reyna Percaste put on her new bike helmet at the Boys & Girls Club at South Bend’s Harrison Primary Center. With several kids getting helmets and safe biking tips, it was an effort that involved city police, fire department, the mayor’s office, Goodwill Industries and the Bike Michiana Coalition.

After the clubs’ main campus at 502 E. Sample St., South Bend, reopens — perhaps June 15, when a renovation is done, or later — she’d like to break kids out of their indoor spaces. The currently drafted plan calls for the kids to stay in groups of nine, with two staff per group, all wearing masks as they divide into separate rooms in the center.

She realizes that “it gets old.”

Enter Cindy Lattner, who hired on as operations director two months ago and who’d already aimed to start some kind of bike program and other outdoor adventures for its young members — never mind the virus. She’d started a youth bike program while working as a 4-H agent in Ohio, then spent some time owning six restaurant franchises out east. Arriving here, she reached out to me for contacts in the local biking scene, and I obliged.

Now the Boys & Girls Clubs are seeking donations of good-working bikes for ages 5 to 18, plus helmets and bike locks. The program has yet to be developed. Nor is it clear how soon it will start. But here’s the idea: Staff would teach the kids to maintain and safely ride bikes and take them for a rides. The bikes would remain the clubs’ property and stay there, sanitized between uses. Eventually, Kronk says, it could grow to a point where kids graduate from the program and keep the bikes, but for now they just need to get it started.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Joseph County aims to start a program to teach basic bike skills, like those shown by Zach Richardson in the 2015 Kids’ Triathlon at Potawatomi Park in South Bend.

She says the clubs were on track to serve 590 kids this summer at four sites. But, with three of those sites being schools that the state has ordered closed, plus the clubs’ own precautions, that’s been whittled down to 80 kids just at the main campus. The charity is looking at alternatives to the schools.

The clubs want 25 bikes for each site, for a total of 100 eventually. Eight have been donated so far. Volunteers are welcome, though Kronk says that people admitted inside the building will be “very controlled.”

Several bike and recreation groups and shops have pledged support. Among them, the Bike Michiana Coalition used to do bike safety presentations in dozens of schools, showing students the basics, then fitting each kid with a helmet that they took home. That program dwindled over the years until last year, when it didn’t visit any school, says coalition President Pete Jank.

“We need some new blood to keep that program up,” he says, citing a need for fresh volunteers. (Connect at bikemichiana.org.)

Bike Michiana Coalition volunteers lead a bike safety course for kids at Kennedy Primary Academy in 2013.

COVID-19 poses obvious challenges to bringing it back, but the need is still there. We’ve all seen kids riding sloppily or without helmets (not to forget their parents) while trails and parks are busier than ever.

If the bike program can start, Kronk says, “It gets them outside of the same old.”

To donate a bike, helmet or lock or to volunteer, contact Lattner at 574-232-2048 or clattner@bgcsjc.org.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of St. Joseph County are seeking bike donations for its members to ride. Here, in 2009, Ohemaa Barnes, 10 at the time, rode in the Kids’ Triathlon at Potawatomi Park.

Bike Match South Bend

The coronavirus birthed a program in New York City that has quickly spread to tens of cities around the world — and now here. It’s simple: One person needs a bike for basic transportation to a job, running crucial errands or helping a vulnerable person who can’t leave home. Another person would like to get rid of a bike for free.

Using an online program where each of them can fill out a brief questionnaire, a new website will link them up. Well, actually, Jack Jacobs will see their information pop up in a secure spreadsheet that he’ll check daily. If they’re of the same height, he’ll connect them.

The Bike Match South Bend website launched Monday.

“I can’t take credit for it,” Jacobs admits, other than stealing the idea from the New York advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, which freely shares its program. He works for South Bend’s Department of Innovation & Technology but is doing this project independently.

All that Bike Match needs now is you: a generous soul who needs to declutter and a worker/helper (for now, the program asks that your needs be “related to COVID-19 relief”). The bike should be ready to ride.

The place to exchange the bike is up to you, though it should be open and public. If you’re stumped, the South Bend Police Department at 701 W. Sample St. offers a space in its front parking area for the public to exchange any merchandise. It’s under camera surveillance.

The Bike Michiana Coalition is hosting Bike Match. Jank, the coalition president, notes how buses, including Transpo, have reduced their services while “car ownership can be prohibitively expensive” and carpooling may be hard to do with social distancing. Neither he nor Jacobs have any idea how many people will make use of Bike Match here, but Jacobs adds, “It’s a super-low investment.”

New York’s program started in late March, and within the first day, its website says, 100 people signed up and 10 bikes were matched to new owners.

Some basic rules: Before you exchange a bike, the bike must be disinfected first, neither of you should have a cough or fever or be exposed to someone who does, and you should maintain social distancing.

Find Bike Match at bikematchsb.com. Learn more about the New York program in a link with this column online.

Big rides

Some major bike rides this year have been canceled, including this month’s Fat & Skinny Tire Fest in Winona Lake, the Pumpkinvine Bike Ride in Goshen in June, Chicago’s Bike the Drive on Memorial Day weekend and RAGBRAI, which normally sends thousands across Iowa in late July. But the Amishland and Lakes ride out of LaGrange, Ind., on July 25-26 is still on the books (amishlandlakes.com), among others in late summer.

Stephan

Park champ lost

Mike Stephan, who has served as manager of the Potawatomi Wildlife Park south of Bourbon since 1991, died from cancer last week. He was a big, spirited bear of a man who was involved with Boy Scouts and who’d helped the park become a dark-sky preserve as vice president of the Warsaw Astronomical Society. You may have visited the park and its trails and canoe access to the Tippecanoe River after I listed it among the COVID-19 alternatives for getting outside. It remains open. Mike’s wife, Sharon, says plans are in the works to continue the park’s management. Learn about the park at getintonature.com.

Park reopenings

Mountain bike and equestrian trails at Potato Creek and other Indiana State Parks reopened Monday from their COVID-19 closures. Also, gate fees returned Saturday to Indiana Dunes while entry fees at all other state parks are expected to resume by Friday. Day-use restrooms and vault toilets will open by Friday. Nature Centers and historic facilities are reopening this week, too, but the hours may be reduced, and social distancing may limit the number of guests inside. Marinas reopen this week with limited operations. Park officials remind you to stay vigilant: Keep group sizes to fewer than 25 people. Bring your own drinking water and hand sanitizer. If you picnic, bring something to cover the table. If a parking lot is full, try another one.

• Camping: So far, Indiana plans to reopen camping on May 24, which is the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Michigan plans to reopen camping June 22.

• Dunes camps canceled: The Dunes Learning Center in the Indiana Dunes National Park has canceled all of its summer camps because of COVID-19 risks. Staff will still share family-friendly ideas at DunesLearningCenter.org.

In 2015, Alexandra Choinacky and other students navigate around cones in a former bike club at South Bend’s Jefferson Intermediate Center that teacher Michael Choinacky had started.
Jewell Lopez tries on a bike helmet that’s clearly too big for her at South Bend’s Hay Primary Center in 2014, when the Bike Michiana Coalition and Michiana Bicycle Associationis was giving about 1,000 helmets to third-graders.