Biking

Trails

• Bike Raleigh
• Bike Beltline app
• American Tobacco Trail

Rodeo

Here are some notes about running this activity:

1. Get permission to use the FUMC parking lot and determine what obstacles are there (church buses).
2. The check-in process (tech inspection) will be your bottle neck. Have several adults to check bikes in parallel.
3. Definitely need water/cups, shelters, tables, chalk to mark sections, Boy Scouts that need service hours to help setup and run the events.
4. Block off areas you don't want vehicles to go. Only use one entrance/exit and park vehicles to block access.
5. Generally, it would be nice to do some basic cleanup of the chalk -- at least splash some water over the biggest areas to help hasten the rest of the cleanup that the rain will do.

Past Rodeos

2015, 2016

• Parking Lot Layout: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ql5zzvzUu8Klx_ZHYTlIipNIME71Ipmf
• Events:
  • Check-in / Maintenance (even deflated tires so kids learned to pump them up)
  • Pony Express
  • Slalom/ZigZag
  • Snail Race
  • Obstacle Course
  • Safety Town
• Cycling Spoken Here attended once, and were great!  The other year we relied on our own parents, who were capable, but still not quite the same 'authenticity' for the kids.
• Used a "driver's license"; Scouts needed to get each event signed off as they went through.  They could go in any order though, which helped with crowd control.  Kids with all events signed off got the frosty-treat at the end.

2010

Here is a document we used to coordinate the 2010 event. Use it as a starting point and update it with what worked best for you.

General Equipment

An incomplete list:

• tire pumps
• basic bike maintanence tools (allen wrenches, pliers and adjustable crescent wrenches)
• tire patches and spare tubes if you have any
• lots of water (it's hot, and you're in a parking lot)
• shade tents (it's hot, and you're in a parking lot)
• cones (for blocking traffic)
• First Aid kit (kids + bikes + pavement)
• A big box or two of sidewalk chalk.

Station Notes

Mechanic / Safety Check

The Scouts' bikes must be checked for safety prior to participation. 

• A few months in advance, call around to local cycle shops to see if they're willing to have a mechanic on site -- it's awesome to have someone 'official' talk up bike safety and proper maintenance for the Scouts.  The bike shops seem to enjoy the outreach, and bringing their truck with their shop name on it can't hurt their business, either....
  • We've had good luck with Cycling Spoken Here
  • Make sure to call early, as the shops are generally busy all summer providing support to various races and other bike events.
• In theory, the Town of Cary police have some sort of bike rodeo event that they'll host, but we've never been successful (in the last 8 years) getting anyone to come out.
• Helmet Fitting Guide: https://www.safekids.org/sites/default/files/documents/Helmet%20Fit%20Test%202013.pdf 

Safety Town

Setup here is a simple chalk-drawn town - diagram below, but basically a circle with a line bisecting it, and another at about 2 o'clock if you imagine the circle as a clock face.  Three color-coded routes are drawn with chalk -- it's only necessary to mark turns at intersections, really.  Assign kids to a path, probably one kid per color at a time.  They'll be biking slowly in the tight space, and you should "police" them for obeying rules and being safe.  Start the Scouts in the "Driveway" and emphasize the importance of being cautious when entering the road from a driveway, as cars are more likely to miss them there than at an intersection.  Note: you'll need some traffic signs.  I laminated a few STOP and YIELD signs and taped them to buckets.

Purpose: While we don't really expect Scouts to be riding on the road often, or to thoroughly understand traffic laws, we want to expose them to what it means to ride on the road and the types of things that they need to be on the lookout for while they're riding.

Main Objectives (go over these with Scouts)

• Stay in the right lane
• Stop completely at STOP signs (and red lights)
• Look/Stop at yield signs (most Scouts don't even know what these are)
• Use turn signals
• Pedestrian right-of-ways
• Bikes are treated like cars on the roads -- generally the same laws apply

The Course

Here's a picture of the course I planned.  In reality, I simplified the three routes a bit, but the "roads" were set up this way:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XKh1Kt86IHVmtppTfugtUewhsRZYjnpU

Obstacle Course

The easiest of all - bring assorted items from your garage and spread them out, then draw a chalk guideline around them.  Things that work well: cones, jumpropes, buckets, small ramps, etc.

Slalom / ZigZag Race

Draw two zig-zag lines for a drag-style race.  For an idea of size, the lines probably went 15 feet between 'zig' and 'zag'.  In a parking lot, this was the diagonal between two car spaces, with about a 90 degree turn at each angle.

Snail Race

Very simple, but effective:  Draw a straight line, 30 feet or so.  The winner here is the one that bikes the *slowest*, without deviating too far from the line.   Pro Tip:  It's best to do this on a slightly uphill portion of the parking lot.

Pony Express

Generally, have some number of "post offices", each with an assortment of garage-stuff -- tennis balls, boxes, and other "mail."  The kids start in one place, ride to a spot, pick up mail, and ride it back, all timed.  You can do this in a variety of ways -- as relays, as a quick out-and-back, a circuit of multiple stops, etc.

Pony Express Activity Revamp - I ran this in 2012 and it was the SLOWEST of the activities. We had the boys ride to a spot, fill a pack with "mail", and ride it back, all timed. This caused a major back-up in the lines, but also detracted from the fun quotient.

My suggestion is that this should be an active relay involving more boys. Set up a circuit with a series of stops, perhaps around the entire Rodeo zone. Have a pile of mail or some very small boxes/parcels at each station. Set up two teams to compete, but run them in opposite directions around the circuit. At each station they must drop off their parcels and pick up the parcels already there. When they reach the starting/ending point, they hand off the pack to the next rider on their team, and the relay continues. To prevent collisions, it will be important to mark the circuit with chalk and enforce which side each team should ride on, and to have the Start/Finish line end both teams side-by-side rather than head-to-head. It will help to have separate containers of "mail" at each station (marked Team 1 & 2) so there is no mix-ups or sloppy deliveries. To make the event more about biking than pack-filling, I would set up the circuit with larger distances between stations. It is possible the Tigers and Wolves would use a separate smaller circuit than the Bears and Webelos. This could be a good challenge game between Dens or between the age groups.