Wednesday, April 25, 2018

The bike lesson.

Yikes! Monday and Tuesday we had snow again. I had planned my bike lesson with my three volunteers for Tuesday but we decided to postpone it until today because better weather was predicted. And the Russian weather service was right! 
Adina, my colleague who was going to ride with me and who rounded up the other two riders came up with a great idea. We would have had to dig up a helmet for her because she didn’t have one. As she was getting off the bus the other day at the stop near my place, she noticed that the building on the other side of the gas station had a bike rental place. She suggested that she and the guys rent helmets and bikes from there. That would solve the helmet problem and the guys would not have to ride their bikes and hour to get to a 30 minute demo lesson. Ready for this? Helmet renal is less than a dollar, and for the bikes it was about $1.80. Absolutely! It wasn’t the greatest equipment in the world, but it was adequate for the lessons.
I remembered to look around, for danger spots, I remembered to check bikes, helmets and clothing. And I even had my duct tape with me so I could tape Sergei’s pant leg so it wouldn’t get caught in the chain. I explained, demonstrated, the rode, I corrected and they tried again. It was just difficult because these were level two lessons and they hadn’t been through the program to learn level one things. (And, oh crap.   Now that I think about it, I think I was supposed to do a level one exercise also. I’ll have to check the email again and then ask Ravil, Fouad and Sonia to see if they can jump in for me) we did two exercises and not too difficult. I just hope it looks good in the video.
Today for a snack in class, we made Nutella toast that looked like a monkey face, with bananas and blueberries as eyes, mouth and eyes. We used my toaster.   Some of the kids had Nutella from ear to ear. It was definitely a fun snack. 
Tomorrow is big excitement.. the lady from the Tatar government is coming to school to evaluate what we’ve done so far and offer assistance. She was just a genuinely nice person who is interested in supporting alternative transportation projects. It will be fun to see her again.

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