Bike Safety Rodeo to be restarted

ANTIGO — Charlie’s Bike Shop and the Antigo Optimist Club will host a free Bike Safety Rodeo at the Skate Park on 1011 1st Ave Saturday, June 22 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m.

The rodeo, which prior to the pandemic had been hosted annually, will include a bike safety course, mechanical check-ups, a petting zoo, as well as several equipment giveaways, according to Manda Morrison, the coordinator of this year’s event who, along with her husband Charlie, runs Charlie’s Bike Shop.

She said the primary purpose of the event is to educate local youth about driving their bikes safely.

“Especially in our city streets, kids don’t recognize you should be turning your head and looking up at every driveway and stop at every stop sign and not be confusing to motorists by being as predictable as possible,” Morrison said. “Also, it’s the summertime, so we all know the traffic picks up as people are driving through to their cabins and stuff, so I just think it gives you that peace of mind to know the kids are thinking about their safety while they’re out there.”

Morrison took over the event’s organization from the Optimist Club and the Antigo Bike and Ski Club, which will still send volunteers to this year’s event and lead certain portions of it, including a safety course children must ride their bikes through with challenges that emulate real hazards they might encounter biking Antigo’s streets.

“The first one we put a lot of emphasis on is the intersection event — safely going through intersections,” said Nick Salm, a longtime Optimist Club member who previously helped lead the Bike Safety Rodeo. “Then there’s riding in an area where there’s parked cars. Another one is diminishing clearance. We use the sawhorses and the kids ride through this course where it keeps getting narrower and narrower. We also have a zig zag event where we have cones lined up and the kids zig zag between the cones and then make a circle when they get to the end and ride back through the cones. Then there’s a slow riding balance test. We have little wedges of wood set up and the kids ride as slow as they can without falling off or their feet touching the ground. The kids really have fun doing the course.”

Morrison said the family-friendly event will include other features.

“We’re going to have a bike check-up station so the kids can bring their bikes down and my husband Charlie, who’s been a bike mechanic for 28 years, is going to give them a little checkup,” she said.

“There’s some other volunteers from the Optimist and the Bike and Ski Club that will also help do the checkups. Beyond that, there will be a petting zoo, which is going to be brought in from Clark Estates, which is down in Birnamwood, so they’ll have some fun little animals for everybody to come and love on.”

The first 40 kids that arrive will receive free helmets that were provided by the city’s Parks and Recreation Department through the Fire Department, as well as a bag including items like a bike lock and bell provided by the Optimists and Bike and Ski Club, according to Morrison.

“We also have some refurbished bikes that we’ll do drawings for to give away to kids that participate, and we’re hoping to have some sponsorships lined up — I’m working on that — just a handful of businesses that might want to sponsor one as a giveaway. We’re not certain of those specifics yet, other than that we know there will be refurbished bikes to give away,” Morrison said.

Even if kids don’t win one of the refurbished bikes, she said they could still get one through an existing Charlie’s Bike Shop program through which community members donate their used bikes, which then are repurposed for children.

“They can also put in a nomination on our web site for the ‘Every Kid on a Bike’ program, which is about a mission of ours,” she said. “We want to get every kid on a bike that we possibly can and be stewards of our planet by diverting bikes from the landfills, and if nothing else, stripping them for parts and giving those a second life. So we take these bikes, refurbish them, Charlie goes over them and makes sure they’re all safe, and then we give them to kids that don’t have a bike. Since last summer, we’ve already given away 12 bikes to kids that didn’t have them.”

The event will also serve to promote further use of the Rotary Bike Park (located at the same location as the skate park), which has been open for over a year and, according to Morrison, has been well-used by the community.

In addition to teaching bike safety, Morrison said an underlying goal of the event is to encourage community members to live healthy lifestyles.

“We just want to see kids outside being active as much as possible,” she said. “I think we all know that this is an age of technology, and it’s getting harder and harder to get kids to choose outside versus tablets and screen time,” she said. “So our heart is to really find a way to show kids how to play safely and take care of their bikes. Now that the city has this bike park in place, which is where the event is going to take place, it’s kind of like another grand opening for that as well. This hopefully is going to encourage more outside time for kids, and hopefully even their parents.”

To learn more information about the Bike Safety Rodeo, contact Charlie’s Bike Shop at 715-216-2690.