Kick off Spring with a Bike Rodeo! Great way to engage your Scouts and recruit new Scouts!

With many of our units working through how to re-energize their Pack and find new ways to recruit, why not kick-off spring with a fun, safety minded activity for the community!

Consider a Bike Rodeo as an option to bring the Pack together for a fun group activity that can be done outside while maintaining social distancing.

• This can make a great Pack meeting and a great Joining Activity for prospective Scouts!
• Partnering with your local police department to present / help with bike safety and stations is a great way to involve the community in this event
• Consider inviting your local bike shop to participate and potentially staff stations. Many are open to supporting a program that helps kids enjoy biking.

Below are sample events and activities you can use to get the fun started. Each of these can be a particular station that each kid must complete in order to successfully “pass” the bike rodeo and be eligible for any prizes that you might choose to offer. Note that most of these events can be scaled up or down to fit the space you have available.

Wanting to have a competition? Treat each station as worth ten points, and points are awarded or deducted for the performance of each. Keep track of each kid’s score and tally them at the end if you wish to award prizes to the top performers.

Have you consider partnering with a Troop working on the bicycling merit badge? A great opportunity to make those connections for Webelos and AOL who will be transitioning to Scouts BSA in a couple of years

Sample Schedule, using Socially Distant / Mask Guidelines from Northern Star Scouting. Limit of 25 individuals at any given station. Stations are separated by a minimum of 20 feet. Dens rotate to each station as a group (no intermixing).

Safety Check – conducted with each Den by the Den Leader and/or Den Chief at their first station at 5:30pm

Cub Scout Bicycle Safety Checklist Check that each kid’s bike is road-worthy by inspecting tires, brakes, handlebars and chain. Here is a detailed guide of what to look for. This is also a good chance to make sure that the kids’ bikes fit them properly.  It doesn’t really matter what type of bike they have – road, mountain bike or hybrid – all should work as long as they are the right size.

Helmet Inspection: Each kid’s helmet should fit snugly, and come mid-way down the forehead. Check to be sure that the chin strap is tight enough and that it fastens properly, and that there are no cracks in the inner shell or outer helmet.

1.) Paper Boy / Paper Girl

This is a fun event that allows kids to play at being a newspaper delivery boy. You should include it if at all possible in your bike rodeo as it is always a real hit.

For this you’ll need is five to ten targets (clothes baskets, large tubs, trash cans, etc.) and an equal number of rolled newspapers, plus a bag that can be slung over a shoulder to hold the papers.

Lay the targets out one after another in a course, and have the kids ride the “route” trying to throw a newspaper from the bike in each target. You can award points based on successful deliveries, i.e., putting the newspaper on target. Naturally, you should feel free to modify the rules, awarding more points for difficult targets, etc., whatever you need to do to make it fit your particular situation.

2.) Figure Eight

Lay out a fairly tight figure eight path i.e., two thirty-foot circles that barely touch each other. Add additional markings so that the path this figure eight creates is two feet wide.

Have each kid ride the figure eight three times as slow or fast as they want. Deduct 1 point each time a kid’s wheel touches a side.

3.) Zig-Zag Course

Create a course using chalk, tape or paint to create a zig-zag path between 30 and 50 feet long with four or five 90-degree turns along the way. The edges should be about three feet apart. Deduct 1 point each time a kid’s wheel touches a side

4.) Stop on a Dime

Create a single straight line, about twenty-five feet long. One end is the start, the other end is the finish line, which you should mark clearly with a bold line, along with additional shorter markings every four inches a total of two feet in front of and behind it.

Have the kids begin at the start line, and ride toward the finish, aiming to stop pedaling and apply their brakes so that their front wheel ends up squarely on the main finish line. Deduct one point for each four-inch marking that the rider stops in front of or behind the target finish line.

5.) Long Roll

Find a spot that is either flat or goes slightly uphill. Create a start line and a mid-line about 25 feet past that.

Direct your kids to start pedaling at the first line and pedal like mad until they reach the next point, where they must begin coasting. The object of this event is to roll as far as they can, scoring more points the farther they go before touching the ground.

Give each kid a minimum of five points, and then add an additional point for each distance mark they hit beyond a certain point. You will probably need to have kids do a couple of test runs to get a sense of how far your kids can roll before you draw your lines showing scoring for distance achieved.

6.) Coasting Skills

This course will start with a 5 foot wide area about 50 feet in length.  After that, we’ll need a long area.. They can pedal as fast as they like through the first 50 feet of the course. When they reach the 50 foot mark, they must coast. We’ll mark how far each scout coasts on the blacktop.