March 22 was the national Ride To School day. Andrew and I found it surprising that Nathan’s school was actively involved in Harmony Day, Earth Hour and Clean Up Australia, there was a lot of discussion about exercise and healthy eating in Nathan’s class, and yet there wasn’t even a whisper of any promotion of Ride To School day by the school.

Nathan rode to school nearly every day of term 1. We walked a few times and drove once to school (when we had to take Andrew to his work before dropping the kids off at kinder and school) and we drove every Tuesday afternoon because we only had half an hour between finishing school and getting to swimming lessons. I’m quite proud of our effort at riding to school and I hope that the good start will mean that the kids consider riding to school the norm rather than something you only do when the weather is perfect….if then.

Technically the school doesn’t want Nathan to ride to school yet. Until this year the youngest kids they allowed to ride to school were those in grade 4, but it was reduced to grade 1 after Bicycle Victoria had a chat with the principal (after Andrew tweeted a photo of the school policy to Bicycle Victoria last year). We did sign the bicycle form which says that the kids have to wear and approved helmet and aren’t allowed to ride in the school grounds, and we figured that because Nathan is supervised to school it would be ok. I’m so confident of his road skills that I have thought more than once he could probably ride to school by himself and have wondered how old is appropriate to let him ride unchaperoned. It’s just the chance that he could meet a car coming out of a driveway and be unable to stop in time that has me riding beside (or a long way behind when Toby rides with us) him. I may not be able to stop anything bad happening, but at least I’d be there to pick up the pieces….and constantly remind him to look and listen for cars going in and out of driveways.

Anyway, because the school makes you sign a form before you can actually ride to school I guess it all becomes too hard to promote ride to school day, even though the day is more about leaving the car at home than being specifically about bikes. Riding, scooting, walking and skating to school are all suggested in the information about the day on the bicycle network homepage. Still, I was disappointed to see no more bicycles than normal in the bike rack. The most I have seen is 6 bikes and 3 scooters, though generally Nathan’s bike is one of 3 or 4 in the rack. In a school of around 700 kids I think it’s a bit of a poor effort. I wonder if more would ride if the school promoted it as a great, healthy and environmentally friendly way of getting to school.

My seat needs to be put up!

Up the hill in the park

Made it!

That was hard, now I need a drink

Crossing the road to the school

The nearly-empty bike rack on Ride To School day