by Bettina Freese

I fly down Beaucatcher Mountain on my way downtown to work or for a beer and marvel at how the speed makes my eyes tear up, how the dogs bark, and the fences whiz by. And I can’t help but squeal.

My heart is as light as a 10-year-old’s…but wait…why am I the only kid out on my bike? There is no pack of dirty little kids tearing up the streets, cutting across yards and jumping curbs. In fact, the only kids playing outside are by the low-income housing. Maybe they can’t afford X-box, so they’re forced to go outside to have some real fun.

“We need to address this inactivity and obesity among kids,” says Hampton Hudson, owner of The Bicycle Co. in Hendersonville. “Once they start having heart attacks later, they’ll get back on their bikes, but that’s a little late.” In the meantime, 16-year-olds are dropping their bikes for the car keys. Bike shops say these kids come back in their mid 20’s when the novelty of cruising and road trips have worn off. Asheville bike shop salesmen say children’s bike sales are going to the parents who already ride. They say they sell approximately one kid’s bike for every 25 adult bikes, and those are to very young kids. As the child gets older, the propensity to ride decreases.

It sounds as if the adults are hogging all the fun. Folks under 18 were very poorly represented in the cross-country races last year and overall attendance has been down, according to Bio-Wheel’s owner Erik Kraus. “It was kind of depressing to see. The sport seemed almost all but dead.”

But hey, I guess that means the few who do show up have a better chance at winning if nobody’s there to represent. It’s amazing that in this age of BMX bikes, skateboards, and extreme sports that there aren’t more kids out there begging their parents to let them go outside and get gnarly. Perhaps it comes down to the fact that kids want to hang out with their peers, and their peers are inside on the couch. That’s why Hudson is encouraging the creation of bike clubs in the high schools.

“It’s that good old American fear, created from our car-based society,” says Pro-Bikes owner Fred Schuldt. “Parents are afraid to let their kids out on streets on bikes because there are more cars than ever before, and people aren’t paying attention.”

It’s difficult to believe that parents are less likely to send a kid into the street on a bicycle, yet more than willing to fork over the keys to the car to go cruising. “That sounds dangerous,” Schuldt says. “I totaled seven cars before I got out of high school.”

There is the rare family in which everyone has a decent bike, and they spend their weekends riding in the woods together. It’s how Willow Koerber, who races for Polo Ralph Lauren, grew up. Now that’s incentive. Bike shops rarely see those families, but doesn’t it sound like fun?

The cost of good bikes is another challenge to help parents overcome. Parents who don’t ride will see cheap bikes at the Evil Empire and decide to purchase instant gratification. These cheap bikes cost the same as video games, and they usually don’t last as long.

Events like the Mountain Sports Festival here in Asheville are good ways to get kids to understand the coolness of bikes. Maybe we can all take part by supporting the Eliada Homes bike program, fighting for more bike paths, creating school clubs, commuting by bike, and supporting local bike shops.

Bettina Freese’s best mountain biking skills are her blind passion, her reckless abandon, her love for Highland Gaelic Ale, and her propensity to wear pigtails.