With the long weekend on the horizon and the pull of family in different places around the Salish Sea, my partner and I crafted a backyard adventure plan that would ensure no turkey dinner was missed. My family was over on S,DÁYES (North Pender Island) and my partner’s family was in Victoria. In order to make it to all of the dinners and see all of the family, we needed to find our way out to the ferry, over to S,DÁYES, and back again in a two day span. Instead of taking the bus or hitching a ride, we decided to ride our bikes! Conveniently, there are all sorts of bike routes that criss-cross lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ territories, and you can pretty much stay on them all the way from downtown to the ferry terminal. This makes it super easy to get out there by bike.

Now, full disclosure, we visit family on S,DÁYES fairly frequently and have previously lived over there without a vehicle, so this bike ride was not new to us. In fact, we’ve done the same ride dozens of times. So, is it still an adventure? I think so. I don’t think you have to travel anywhere new to have an adventure, and really, the whole point of this project is to appreciate and learn more about the place I live. While this may involve visiting places new-to-me within my local area, I don’t think it always has to. Each time I do this ride it’s different, and in that way, each ride is a new adventure. The season, the time of day, the angle of sunlight hitting the trail, how busy it is, the quality of the pavement, the leaves on the trees, how many times I have to swerve to avoid horse poop – all of these factors change on the daily and on a bike, you are perfectly positioned to observe them. When we rode out to the ferry on Friday evening, the sun was slanted low in the sky, and the lighting was beautiful. There’s something special about cycling at this hour, side-by-side with your shadow, and with no one else on the trail. On the way back into town on Sunday afternoon, the sun was shining high in the sky and the ferry and bike trails were packed with cyclists. There’s also something special and really quite joyful about cycling in critical mass. Two different bike rides, two different experiences, two adventures, both special.

Sit-Spot-Cycling

Reflecting on this adventure reminded me of an activity I learned about while working with environmental education programs on S,DÁYES a couple of years ago. A pair of youth program leaders introduced me to the practice of sit-spots. A sit-spot is a place you return to regularly to observe your surroundings and cultivate an awareness of patterns in nature. Although, I haven’t really thought about it in this way before, the bike ride out to the ferry is a bit of a sit-spot (or sit-ride?) for me. I am familiar with much of the route down to the individual pot-holes on the trails and because of this I am attuned to how the route changes. For example, I know that a particularly bumpy section has been re-paved since I last rode the trail a month ago. I have observed the progression of one of the trail-neighbours veggie gardens throughout the seasons and the growth of native wildflowers in another garden just down the road. I also know that the pigs that live just off the route are even more ginormous than when I last saw them (which I didn’t think was possible). Maybe sit-spots don’t have to be stationary. Maybe we can also observe changes in our surroundings by moving through them at a slower-than-driving pace and maybe this is something that can be brought into the classroom.

One of the wonderful and ginormous pigs that live on the side of the Lochside Trail.

Bringing Cycling into the Classroom

Riding your bike is a great way to move through an area slowly and give yourself time to observe your environment. As you pedal, you quite literally feel the topography in the quickness of your breath and soreness of your muscles. It is also super fun! In one of the outdoor programs I have worked with, we take fifty or so ten-year olds on a bicycle and camping trip along the Galloping Goose Trail. It’s quite literally, the best. But beyond elementary schools, I haven’t heard of many programs that incorporate bicycles or cycling. I would love to find ways to incorporate bikes and cycling into the high school curriculum. Here are some programs I’ve heard of which either support youth cycling or incorporate cycling and bicycles into secondary and post-secondary curriculum:

  • Wild Rockies Field Institute Cycling the Rockies course – A university course that involves students undertaking a nearly month-long bicycle tour across Montana exploring energy infrastructure and climate change.
  • Project Bike Tech – A high school course offered in several states in the USA which teaches students the skills they need to work as bike mechanics. In a similar way to how many schools offer auto-shop courses, this is a bike-shop course. Similar programs are offered in some high schools in Toronto.
  • Capital Bike – Organization which offers bike skills and safety courses in the Greater Victoria region. They have courses designed for youth and adults.
  • Bike Works Seattle – A community bike-shop that offers bike repair skills courses and an earn-a-bike program to youth, youth riding clubs, summer programs, and job-skills training.