Kids Bike (traffic) Jam

No ride over the weekend, except taking the boys to Kids Bike Jam, where i rode the course on teh SS with H on the toptubeseat. I can see why its called a bike "Jam" - think of Jam as in Traffic Jam... how-many-hundred kids and parents, all on bikes, all vying for limited singletrack space.

They say its to introduce kids to bike fun, but I wondered to myself how much its going to be creating 'change' - it sure appeared to me that the whole thing was preaching to the converted. The people that attended mostly appeared to be the kind of people who already have their kids on bikes, having fun on bikes, and experiencing places like Mcleans and Bottle lake with their kids on bikes...

It does, however, introduce kids to the culture of mass bike events, getting stuck behind people, overtaking people, being overtaken by people, so that, in the future, any that go on to entering races etc will find their first ones a lot less daunting. As far as serving a purpose, this might well be it, ie, seeding the future of NZ Mtnbike Culture and Racing... which is a very good thing.

O, while pretty fit and reasonably fast (on his 24inch wheel 15spd), doesn't appear to have a large amount of competitivism, whereas his buddy Tane does. The two rode together for the first stretch, then O got away from Tane first from the clusterfuck at the stopbank. Tom and me stopped to help numerous kids at the stopbank, running up and down to carry their bikes up for them, so it took us a long time to catch up with O, and by that time Tane was long-gone ahead. Tracey said Tane got back a good 5 minutes ahead of us.

All up it was cool to see so many people encouraging their kids on bikes, but at the same time i felt it was lacking a certain something. i wondered if maybe some sort of performances, trials or something, making it more of a 'festival' than just an event hundreds turn up to, spend half an hour riding, and then all drive home. Tracey thinks i should join the committee and get things going... maybe i should.