joe_5700

I cannot help but comment on this. After work when I pick up my son from day care, I often see middle school to high school age kids always walking their bikes up a hill that I ride on almost daily. I have noticed these bike pushers are riding on multi speed bikes and this hill is not very challenging at all. What gives? I want to yell out the window at them to get on their bikes and just pedal.

chs4

Why do you jump to the conclusion that they are walking because the hill is too hard to ride? I see kids in my area walk their bikes up hills, on flat roads, heck even down hill sometimes. I also see many of them toddle on up some pretty big hills on BMX bikes with relative ease.

Kids are different...we all were when we were kids. They ride their bikes for fun, not for fitness or training or any of the other nonsensical reasons a lot of adults ride. They don't need to prove to themselves that they can take that hill. They ride when they feel like it and walk when they don't.

Please let them be kids for a while.

Doohickie

Why?

Blindrage

If they have an ill adjusted Walmart special than I can totally understand walking it up the hill.

arej00dazed

my 4yr old daughter struggles up a particular hill and anymore she gets off and has me push it up the hill. however, my 4yr old son just peddles his *** and gets to the top. as for those kids, they could just simply be talking to each other or just wants to take it easy. I see BMXers around my neighborhood doin things I wouldnt think twice bout doin.......now if I was their age, I'd be right there with them.

joe_5700

I find it to be lazy to not be able to pedal up the hill with a multi speed bike. Also, have you noticed the number of fat children compared to a few decades ago?

joe_5700

Then why wouldn't they just walk without pushing a bike around? When I was younger, I rode my bike for transportation and I never pushed my 10 speed up any hills. When I had a BMX bike, I did walk it up some challenging hills.

StephenH

Walking a bike up a hill actually probably burns more calories than riding it up, although at a slower pace. But I would suspect that either gearing is totally messed up, or when they crank into it, it pops out of gear, etc., or they're with friends.

I-Like-To-Bike

I can't help but comment on the wackiness involved of a motorist ranting and (thinking about) yelling at kids who are walking to/from school.

alexkar000

Kids walking their bikes up hills aren't causing any obesity epidemic.

The kids playing videogames and riding virtual bikes up virtual hills are.

bizzz111

Next time yell at them to stop breaking up the peloton and that they will never match their personal best if they don't increase their RPM's.

That'll learn 'em.

caloso

Hey you kids! Get off my lawn! I mean, HTFU!

joe_5700

Really? Why is it that walking a bike up a hill doesn't raise your heart rate nearly as much as biking up the same hill? I see this phenomenon on this stretch of road just about everyday and also with adults too.

oldranger

Good Grief! Their choice to walk their bikes is none of your concern. Get on your bike andset a good example if their actions bother you. Keep your comments to yourself.

Sixty Fiver

I'd be happy to see kids walking their bikes up a hill as that means they are probably also riding them... and easy is relative.

My 9 year old daughter often screams at hills ("YOU CALL THIS A HILL !?") and climbs them with a high degree of aggression while my 11 year old will often walk up the same, and rather steep hills.

MMACH 5

Uptight much?

Sheesh. They're kids with bikes. Are you seriously going to hold them to the standard of being able to match YOU? As if they could give a flying crap about what you think or how you would drop them like a bad habit on that hill.

Guess what, I ride my bike with my daughters and some hills are just too much for them. We either take a different route or I pedal along side with my hand on their backs to help them up (yes, sometimes it takes me two trips). I suppose I should tell them to suck it up, wind it up to 400 watts and get to the top before I leave them there.

mikewille

I have some adult friends who still haven't quite got the hang of shifting gears yet, they
walk up the hills too.

terraskye

::face palm:: I still walk my bike up certain hills and I'm definitely not a kid. Of course I've only been biking again a month after a 15 year hiatus so I'm sure in time they will be a lot easier just to bike up

joe_5700

I am also glad to see these kids out and about and not glued to their TV sets. I think you guys are misunderstanding me and not fully reading my first post. I have a 5 year old myself and I wouldn't expect him to get his bike up any hills as he is still learning to ride with training wheels. I am directing my post to near highschool age kids to adults.

joe_5700

I really have nothing against people who have to walk their bike up a hill. Let me be more specific.... It is just over the entire summer so far and passing that same hill after work I have yet to see a single biker pedal up the hill.

BlazingPedals

Darned kids! and anyway, GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

They're probably walking because it gives them more time to talk.

bkrownd

You don't remember being a kid? When I was a kid I remember thinking that every time I had to wash the dishes or mow the lawn was a fate worse than death. I was once forced to walk 5 miles and was surprised to survive the ordeal. I remember believing that I could not possibly run a single lap around the school track. I seldom ventured more than 4-5 blocks from home on my own for a decade. It was a very different state of mind, and I can hardly relate anymore.

Booger1

Their walking, because it's actually harder to ride up the hill than it looks on the computer????

Kevrob

I had a "geezer moment" recently. I was crossing a state highway that has a decent hill on it. Trucks descending it are warned to shift into low gear. There were two kids travelling against traffic, on the shoulder. The younger one, a boy, was pushing his BMX-style bike. An older girl, presumably his sister, was riding her bike, very slowly, so as not to outpace her "brother." I yelled out at them, "Ride with traffic or walk your bikes against it. One or the other!"

There's a lot of traffic on that 2-lane, but at least it has generous shoulders, except where it bridges some creeks. If the kids had an alternate route they could ride, they might have been smarter to take it. I have no idea what they thought of the safety advice from a 50+ Clyde in a helmet and orange vest riding a Fredded-out hybrid, but I've been buzzed when descending that hill with traffic.

A few days afterwards I was beginning to ascend that same stretch of road on foot, salmon-style, when I saw several middle-school aged boys tearing downhill on their bikes. I stepped off the shoulder onto the verge to give them clearance, as we'd had a few thunderstorms and the trees had dropped plenty of broken branches. (I must have stopped 4 or 5 times to chuck dead foliage back into the woods on my way uphill.) The kids thanked me for making way, and I wished them a good day. I heard one of them tell his buddies, "Dude, that is an awesome hill!" (or some such.)

Yesterday I was on the Connecticut shoreline, east of New Haven, which is quite a bit flatter than where I'm living. I was struck by how many bicyclists I saw. There were a few roadies, some commuters, and plenty of kids just getting around. I even saw a Grampaw type on an older city-bike with his "granddaughter" pedaling behind him on a trail-a-bike-style gizmo. Maybe the cyclists were out because it was just about the warmest, driest, nicest day we've had in awhile, but I think the geography must have something to do with it.

Perhaps some kids aren't confident enough to ride up a tough hill with traffic. Their bikes are rarely equipped with a mirror, and if chugging uphill is accompanied by weaving from the edge of the road into the traffic lane, it'd be smarter to cross the street and walk the bike.

Kevin

Little Darwin

So??? Maybe it is because those that ride up it spend a significantly lower amount of time on the hill.

Walking a bike up a hill definitely uses more energy than walking up hill without a bike... Do you feel like yelling at people walking up the hill without bikes too? Those are the real lazy *()(*&$$*(&^, if you apply your brand of logic.

The big problem here really isn't whether kids ride or walk up a hill, it is whether or not someone gets their knickers in a bunch over it.