This is like a welcome to the year? Building community? "Taking up space" huh?
Just want to take up some space. We talk a lot about leadership. And I need our kids in this political climate, to know that they can take up space, but I've got to demonstrate what that looks like. So not only does it have to be for them, but they also have to lead. And so I'm hoping that next year, we can turn this into an organized ride where it's led by kids organized by students, and a way for us in Prescott in this way to just get a little bit of exercise. Start the year, right.
You can do so many things with just a bike ride. As you're figuring out. There's a lot that goes into organizing, like it's been quite a project for the kids, right?
It really does. But then it teaches inclusivity, and you understand, just different degrees of proficiency on a bike. So we had to think about our little-littles with the training wheels. We had to think about our corkers. So your most emerging riders, to your experts... She's riding, she's learning how to ride on this ride. She was used to training wheels and they didn't have any left. And she didn't want to be left behind. And so the community just said, 'Well, we'll ride with her.'
So, say a little bit more about taking up space. Like, on a bike on a bike ride, how that translates. You're saying you want people to be confident. So the last time we talked, you said something about, and I get this, especially being a Black woman on a bike. There's a vulnerability. There's a vulnerability you open yourself up to a lot of stuff. So is that? Is it a similar thing with sort of telling the kids, "Hey, take up space, get in the neighborhood be on your bike? Don't be afraid," is that kind of it tell me more about that.
So it's it is always that right? It's it's that we get permission. When we see people who look like us doing the things we dream to do. And we get, we get permission. So representation matters. But it's also it's also working alongside when you're in schools with children, and you realize that transportation is a right for us to be able to move about our cities, we oftentimes see cycling as a white-centered, white male centered field, and I need our young people to know that it belongs to you, in the different ways that you make it yours. So in our Latinx Hispanic culture, there's the low riders, and there's the Schwinns, right? And there's the choppers. And our black communities there's the BMX bikes, and the wheelies and the and the handstands. I want them to be able to know that you can have both and — that there's a way that you can use transportation to get from A to B. But then there's a way that you get to create community on your bike with your crew. That's a different kind of ride. This is a different kind of ride. We're not writing for transportation, we're writing to intentionally take up space, and that they're both can exist in cycling. And I know we're kind of seeing the dominant way of of cycling primarily by means of transportation. And it's really around the dominant culture. And I want our children to know that there is a duality. That both things can exist at the same time.
