Introducing children to the joys of biking is a passion and mission for this Chiloquin couple
Some people love kids and some bike riding, but it is rare for individuals to love both. That is Hannah Levine and her partner Richard’s full-time job.
Levine is currently overseeing the renovation of the Hirvi Building in downtown Chiloquin and her bike business. “I’m not a commercial real estate developer. That’s not what I do at all,” she said. “But teaching kids to ride bikes at Chiloquin Elementary School is a job she takes on in earnest.”
The couple moved to Chiloquin in 2018 from southern California. They said it all started in 2021 when she decided to teach kids in Chiloquin to ride bikes. Hannah and Richard ran a biking business called Ninja Mountain Bike Performance in California, which boasts over 200 instructors nationwide who provide mountain biking skills for individuals.
“We have a product side of our business, and we sell mountain bike jump ramps and other products that we manufacture in Klamath,” Levine said. “Okay, so a couple of years ago, we opened a manufacturing facility in Klamath, and we sell these really cool, portable jump ramps that are made out of wood cut on our CNC machines. They are all sold out of our office in Klamath. Our background is in mountain biking and in the mountain bike industry, and I love riding my bike. I love helping other people ride their bikes, and I particularly enjoy working with kids and helping to show kids the joys of being on a bike and all the things that you can learn by gaining confidence with your biking skills. So, a couple of years ago, I started an initiative to start a youth biking program in Chiloquin.”
Levine said that the first step was obtaining 30 strider bikes for the children at Chiloquin Elementary School to ride. Levine explained that a strider bike was a bike without pedals that helps kids learn to balance on two wheels. She said training wheels are a thing of the past, and modern thinking says that if kids can push themselves on a bike and balance, they will be just as balanced when they add pedals.
Levine explained that all her strider bikes can be refitted with pedals when the kids are ready. “Those bikes were secured through the all kids bike program, which is somehow associated with the strider bike foundation,” she said, “but they supplied us with 30 strider bikes, a teacher bike, helmets, and a curriculum, with the intention of helping to teach all kindergarten and first-grade students how to ride a bike. So that was the first step because you can’t teach biking or have a bike club if kids don’t know how to ride a bike, right? So, that means that any kid that goes through Chiloquin Elementary will learn how to ride a bike in kindergarten or in first grade, and I’m still doing that program now.”
When asked why she needed to teach kids to bike in school, she answered, “I think that’s a good question. There are a lot of factors. I think it’s important because I think having kids get outside and do fun things is important. I think it’s good for the mind, good for the brain, good for the body. I’ve also learned in my own experiences of riding a bike that you can gain a lot of confidence in kind of improving your skills on a bike, and it can be a real opportunity for kids to learn problem-solving skills, resiliency, all those things through riding a bike, through falling down and getting back up again, through riding over an obstacle they didn’t think they could ride over. So, I think it’s just a wonderful skill builder for kiddos.”
Levine recounted one story of a particular student who they assumed would not engage in the program, “I will never forget. We had one day that we were teaching bikes to the kids, and there was a helper from elementary school who was in one of the classes who was assigned to really support a student there who oftentimes struggled in PE class and really struggled to engage with the class and participate. And we brought the bikes out, and this kid was just riding laps without problems, without behavior concerns. He had the biggest smile on his face, and that support person came over to me and was like, ‘I’ve never seen this kid engage in PE like he has since you brought the bikes out. We need to get this kid a bike at home.’ It touched him, so it made a difference for that kiddo. So, I think that’s really important now.”
Levine explained the need for a bike program, citing that some children may know how to ride a bike and are learning at home, but there are also a lot of kids who report having broken bikes. “They’ve got a bike that’s been sitting in the backyard that’s got a flat tire, and we don’t have services here until when to fix that flat tire, and a lot of families probably don’t have the time or means to drive to Klamath and go to a bike shop and figure out how to how to fix it,” she said. “I think there’s some financial costs involved with getting involved with biking, whether that’s, you know, buying a bike, repairing a bike, getting a bigger size when your kid gets older, all that is a limiting factor. And being a rural community, you know, there are limited safe spaces to maybe go out and ride your bike.”
With success in the kindergarten and first graders program, Levine expanded the program to second through twelfth grade. She said they could join her for the after-school Bike Club once they get to second grade. “It’s changed a little bit over the years to accommodate more kids coming in different levels of riders. But as of this last year, and what we’ll probably do again next spring, it’s a six-week after-school program, and I have different days for different age groups of kids. I do second and third graders on one day, fourth, fifth, and sixth on another day, and then the junior, senior high schools, and high schoolers on a third day, and we ride together after school.”
For the first couple years of the program, Levine said they were riding in the empty grassy lots behind the school, where there was no track for our high schoolers to ride on. “We were able to ride the Forest Service road that follows the river behind the high school, just kind of a fun adventure ride,” she said. “And we were doing different drills and skills, and I’d bring out cones and ramps and obstacles and hula hoops and different things to make it fun while secretly also teaching kids skills on the bikes.”
Levine said they had dreamed about providing a place where they could take those kids to ride that was designed specifically for mountain biking and riding bikes. Last year, they went to Chiloquin to inquire about building a bike park there. She asked if any land could be utilized for a bike park, which would be their gift to the city. “We just want to build a place where these kids know they have access to bikes,” she said. “They get to ride their bikes. They’re learning how to do it. Let’s give them a cool place to go and ride that’s safe and fun.”
She said they worked with the city to identify a piece of land over at Spinks Park. “It’s got beautiful, big trees on it, which means it provides great shade,” Levine said. “It was primarily fenced all the way around, and I want to say it’s about three acres, and the city gave us permission to build trails on that piece of land. So, we built the Chiloquin Bike Park, which is really fun.”
Based on the success they had with the afterschool program and the bike club, Levine and her husband went to the Klamath County School District, where they had a trailer full of bikes. According to Levine, they had a trailer full of bikes that had been sitting in storage that nobody was using, and she heard about it and made phone calls until somebody told her that she could come pick it up and borrow it. “So those are the bikes that we’ve been using, but the bikes are quite a few years old, and they’re kind of starting to fall apart,” she said. “It became clear that we were at a point where we needed to get some funding to secure additional bikes.”
Earlier this year, Levine and her husband were awarded a $110,000 grant from the Cateena Foundation, which supports the bike program in many ways. They used the funds to purchase 50 new bikes, a new bike trailer, and maintenance supplies.
“We have funding to do all that,” she said. “We have funding to pay for all the snacks and drinks. You could argue that a bike club is also known as snack club, because I like to provide really good snacks, so I get a lot of kids who love the snacks, and then that funding is also going to allow us to add some new bike features at two locations. One is at the bike park, and two is at Chiloquin Elementary School.”
The additional funding will allow Levine to add unique features to the dirt path behind the school where they began their activities, including fun bike-friendly features, such as a giant tunnel that the children can ride their bikes through. “There’s big, colorful hoops that you can ride your bike through, and there’s a little up-and-over bridge made out of wood that you can ride your bike over,” she said. “My goal is to also solidify the surface of that track to the point that it’s really friendly for the Strider bikes. Right now, I ride the Strider bikes in the gym. Thirty kids on Strider bikes in a small gym. It’s tough because there are a lot of kids on Strider bikes in a small space.”
Levine said that one of the reasons she and her husband moved to the area was for mountain biking. “Klamath has some amazing trails at Spence Mountain and Moore Park,” she said. “So that was a great motivator for us to settle in the area. Chiloquin is surrounded by a million acres of forest service land that’s beautiful and wonderful and has some great gravel grinding, like dirt roads, forest service roads, type of riding, but there’s not a lot of mountain bike specific, single tracking. Sure, it would be amazing if we could do that here. In the long run, I think Chiloquin could benefit by being known as a beautiful place to go for a bike ride, whether that’s road bike riding, gravel riding, or mountain biking, and it could be a great way to bring people into the community to shop at our local restaurants or visit our local retail stores or grab something at the market down the road.”
