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bikes as their primary means of transit,”
says Jane Blew Healy, president of the
Chicago-based Active Transportation
Alliance, which helped organize the event
and provided hands-on instruction and
supervision to the kids. “Te goal is that
these kids will have real-life job skills, and
they’ll also have a beautiful bike.”
Each of the participants received a
brand-new, pearl-colored, $600 Fuji
Absolute 3.0 bicycle as their reward.
Tey spent another special day in June
in the temporary bike shop unboxing
and assembling their new rides and tak-
ing them out for spins—after donning
the new helmets they were given.
“It was phenomenal, the kids were so
excited,” says Rhonda Boose-Romano,
director of RTC’s Midwest Regional
Ofce, who took part in the bike-
building. “Tey had this real sense of
accomplishment and ownership of what
they were doing.”
In addition to their bicycle mainte-
nance work, the earn-a-bike program
requires students to spend time doing
community service on local bike trails.
“So it also instills in them an apprecia-
tion for trails and helps them become
better trail stewards,” says Boose-
Romano. “Hopefully they’ll take a love
of trails into the future and help fll
some of the gaps that are still out there.”
One local gap that’s currently being
flled is the Calumet-Sag Trail, a planned
32-mile multi-use path along the banks of
the Calumet-Sag (short for Saganashkee)
Channel and Calumet River. Te trail,
scheduled to open by 2014, will pass
through Blue Island and serve nearly
200,000 people in Chicago Southland,
connecting them not only to other trails,
but also to transit systems, retail areas,
parks, forest preserves and nature centers.
To learn more, visit Cal-Sag Cycles at
www.calsagcycles.tumblr.com, Friends
of the Calumet-Sag Trail at www.calsag
trail.org and the Active Transportation
Alliance at www.activetrans.org.
TEXAS
Bikes in the ’Hood
Most Wednesday evenings and Saturday
mornings in Houston, a unique bike
ride takes place. Anywhere from a hand-
ful to a few dozen people—many of
them youngsters from poor neighbor-
hoods—don helmets and climb on
donated bicycles, some for the frst time.
After brief instructions on the rules of
the road, the cyclists begin a slow 10- or
15-mile tour of the streets and bike trails
of the inner city (see page 27 for more
about downtown Houston’s rail-trails).
Tis ride clearly isn’t the Tour de France—
spandex, carbon fber and chateaux are not
on display. Tis is the Tour de Hood.
Te ride began more than seven years
ago and has introduced hundreds of dis-
advantaged children (and many adults) to
the joys of bicycling and healthy lifestyles.
“We’re not the glitz group,” says the
ride’s founder, Houston cycling advocate
Veon McReynolds, known as “Doctor
V” to tour participants. “We don’t have
fancy stuf, and we’re all on cruisers.
Tese are people who don’t own a bike,
or if they do, they don’t have air in the
tires. What I try to do is give them the
mindset that they can do it.”
McReynolds, 60, has had a long love
afair with bicycles. He started cycling
when growing up in Akron, Ohio, and
got into competitive road and track rac-
ing while attending the University of
Kentucky. He continued racing and rid-
ing after he moved to Austin, Texas, to
pursue a Ph.D. in psychology, and then
took a teaching job at Texas Southern
University in Houston in 1989.
In his new home city, he became a
civic activist, starting community gar-
dening projects in his neighborhood,
organizing eforts to feed the homeless
and addressing other health problems
plaguing the minority community.
“My neighborhood is a predominant-
ly black neighborhood, and if you think
of any disease—diabetes, heart disease,
cancer—they’re more prevalent right here,”
he says. “Tese are diseases that you can
prevent by exercise and diet and lifestyle
changes.”
Te Tour de Hood began as an informal
ride, McReynolds recalls: “I started of try-
ing to get family and a couple friends in
shape—and it evolved into what it is now.”
When he frst began advertising the
weekly rides to the public, some people
said they couldn’t come because they didn’t
own bicycle equipment. McReynolds didn’t
want that to be a barrier, so he started col-
lecting gear. Elves &More, a local founda-
tion, donated bikes, and REI, Bike Barn
and Bike Houston gave other gear.
To accommodate this equipment and
keep it in working order, McReynolds has
transformed the garage and yard of his
home—in Houston’s Tird Ward, about
four blocks from the new Columbia Tap
Rail-Trail—into a storage facility, staging
area and workshop. He’s also invested a
substantial amount of his own money and
time in getting people out on bikes.
He estimates that several thousand
people have participated in his rides over
the years, and many continue to cycle for
fun and health.
“One of the things I’m hoping to do
is get more people to view the bike as an
exercise tool. Like using it to go back and
forth to the store or going to work—you
get your exercise in while you’re doing
something meaningful,” he says.
A ride with “Doctor V” can be a life-
changing experience for kids from poor
neighborhoods, says Rebecca Roberts,
executive director of Elves &More.
“Riding with him, they see, ‘Here’s an
African-American, and he’s a professor at
a university.’ Tey suddenly realize they
have options in life, and that’s so important
to these children,” she says. “I wish we
had 100 Veons, just in the Houston area
alone—I would support them all!”
To learn more about Tour de Hood,
visit www.tourdehood.org.
Young cyclists take part in one of McReynolds’
weekly Tour de Hood rides through Houston.
Courtesy of Veon McReynolds