| August
2007 |
|
Youth Bicycling Trail Design Draws on Students' Vision 'I Struggled More Than I Could Ever Imagine' Teen Brings Bicycling into Home, Everyday Routine Memorial Ride Transforms Grief to Brighter Future Students Become Teachers in Junior Ambassadors |
Teen Brings Bicycling into Home, Everday Routine
While the program focuses on safe and confident bicycling, it also serves as a youth empowerment program, offering students who might not explore their communities an opportunity to venture past familiar streets and become engaged in their surroundings beyond their own neighborhood. Starting out with rebuilding bikes, donated by Bank of America, Schwinn and Kozy Cyclery, the Ames students have mastered confident bicycling. They are busy traveling to destinations like Lincoln Park Zoo, Garfield Conservatory and Millennium Park, exploring parts of Chicago they don’t often visit. Matt, who stands a thin 5’7”, at first comes off as kind of quiet — until he starts talking about his basement filled with bikes, boxes overflowing with rims and tubes, and a homemade bike rack that hangs on the wall there. While he rides around in these warm months, you probably won’t see much of him in the colder season. That’s because he’s in the basement, hard at work. “In the winter, that’s all I do every single day,” he said, suddenly animated. Matt converted his parents’ basement into a bike shop two years ago, fixing some of the neighbors’ bikes free of charge and soon building his own. He gets energetic again, talking about his favorite thing to fix on a bike – repacking the crank. This winter’s project will be building a three-wheeler with a sound system on the back, he says with a wide smile. He looks up to the ceiling, imagining how it might look, with some knobby white-wash tires and 144-spoke wheels. In the basement, where it stays warm during the freezing Chicago winter, Matt will also work on his first road bike. Until now, he has been riding BMX bikes. Matt joined the Ames program as a graduate of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association’s Build and Ride program, which is supported by proceeds from the annual Herron Memorial Ride and Walk. Lucy Gomez-Feliciano, of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association, took notice of his passion for bicycles and invited him to join the Ames program as a peer leader. “Matt is really a leader. He is great with the kids here,” said Pete Rangel, who leads the program. While Matt’s expertise as a bike mechanic grows, there is no way he will pass up a driver’s license next year when he turns 16. “I love cars. I’m gonna be a mechanic,” he said. “I’ll still love bikes though.” Margo O’Hara is the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s communications manager.
|
