There’s a new bike gang in town.
But don’t worry, this one is made up of grade schoolers who want to wheel up and down the city’s steep terrain with a group of like-minded riders.
Local writer and father-of-two, JJ Lee hatched the bike club plan. He’s calling it the Royal City Rangers. (The name was inspired by a Boys Life magazine ad for the Ranger bicycle from 1913.)
The club was only a couple of weeks old when The Record talked to Lee from his New West home, but he had already launched a website and had at least two fellow members, his nine-year-old twin boys, Emmet and Jack.
Lee explains how he came up with the bike club plan:
“A week ago, the warm weather finally started … I biked to school (with the kids), thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, there will be so many bicycles today. There will be lots of bikes.’ There were no bikes, except the boys, and we’re regular cyclists,” Lee says.
After looking at the barren bike rack at the kids’ school, Lee started thinking about ways to boost ridership in the city.
He talked to other cyclists and city staff about the challenges local riders face and saw a need to address New Westminster-specific barriers to riding.
“For example, many of the kids that go to John Robson (Elementary) live in apartment buildings that don’t have bike lock-ups,” Lee says, explaining one of the reasons there are so few riders at his sons’ school. “The problem is responding to a problem like that is it takes a lot of development … so, what happens if we just make bike riding fun, which it already it is.”
Lee says New West riders can’t just saunter down to Canadian Tire and grab the first bike they see, like a heavy cruiser.
“Hello! Beaches are flat,” Lee says. “My bike is a modified mongoose mountain bike frame that I bought for $15 at a garage sale, and I’ve stripped all of the weight off of it.”
He rebuilt it and turned it into a hill climber.
“I never break a sweat going uphill,” Lee says.
“That’s a perfect example of having local knowledge inform your bike choices,” Lee adds.
His twins’ bikes are also customized to their needs, and Lee says his boys never complain about riding.
The Royal City Rangers bike club will also have incentives besides the fun of riding. There will be merit badges.
“Ideally, as a fashionista, I’d like you to wear it on a denim vest, just like a motorcycle gang, so it’d be like your colours. That’s what my boys are going to do probably,” laughs Lee, a men’s fashion writer.
A high-visibility scarf is another option Lee is kicking around while he plans the final formula for the bike club.
For those who want a denim vest for their kids, Lee says go to the thrift store and cut off the sleeves of a jean jacket and throw it in the wash.
“Make sure you put it in the dryer, so it kills whatever is on it, and cut off the sleeves, and you’re ready to go,” he says. “The thing about a vest, and that’s why the Scouts do it, it fits a child as they grow, so the sleeves never get to short because there are no sleeves.”
Plus it looks cool.
The vest aside, Lee notes the club is really about biking, having fun and exploring the city with your pals on two wheels.
“I don’t have a sponsor or anything like that, and it’s a totally personal thing with some moral support from Patrick Johnstone and (school trustee) Jonina Campbell and Jen Arbo,” Lee says, naming some of the locals who have expressed support for the project. “It’s off the cuff still.”
The club will require parent-and-child participation because kids biking to school at a young age require a parent by them, Lee says.
“The goal, I simply want to see lots of bikes in the bikes racks,” says Lee, who has never had his driver’s licence. “Is it me using personal interaction to promote biking or is it me using biking to promote personal interaction? It’s kind of both. It’s about being a person in your community. But, ultimately, I’d love the rack full before the end of the year.”
Lee wrote the critically acclaimed book The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit, about his relationship with his charismatic-but-troubled father in 2011. His father’s many DUI-related car accidents is one reason Lee never got his driver’s licence.
As for the next plan for the Royal City Rangers, Lee is contemplating a trip from the New Westminster Quay to New Westminster Pier Park where the club can hang out, chat and check out each other’s bikes.
He also wants input from other parents on what they’d want to see for the club.
It’s still a work-in-progress, but Lee hopes it will take off.
“Ultimately, I just want to have the ability to have families come together and bike ride and change the way they think about bikes,” says Lee.
For more information about the Royal City Rangers, visit bikerangers.tumblr.com.
