Freiker Comes To Almond School

About a year ago I had the opportunity to go on a bike ride with Vasanthan Dasan, a collegue of mine from Sun Microsystems. He told me all about a wonderful program called Freiker (pronounced fry-ker) which was a program designed to encourage kids to ride their bikes to school instead of being driven by Mom and Dad. The program has some pretty simple goals:

1. Kides get fit! Riding a bike is a great way to burn off some extra energy and calories at the same time. I don't know if I'm average, but when I am out riding my bike hard, I burn between 1,200 and 1,400 calories and hour. What a fun way to fight childhood obesity!
   
2. Kids can manage! Freiker teaches kids to be a little more self reliant at running errands and going cool places. By not having to wait for someone to drive them around, the gain another level of freedom on the road to growing up.
   
3. Kids go green! By using kid power rather than automobile power to get to and from school, kids can help fight air pollution and global climate change. They get it! And they want to help out - after all, it will be their planet someday!
   
4. Kids have fun! Buzzing in on the Freikometer every morning is as much fun as winning all the cool prizes. You can even do cool things like have different competitions between schools to see who can ride the furthest!

Well, on March 17, 2009 - almost a year later, we went live with Freiker at Almond School. It was and instant success for the kids and a lot of work for me. The day was special and was highlighted by a special afternoon assembly and a bike parade of unusual bikes. Jelly Belly Beans sent me 3 cases of jelly beans to pass out to the kids. So, do you think that kids like jelly beans? In the first couple of weeks I have passed out 250 freiker tags and 500 packages of jelly beans. And I had a blast doing it.


News Coverage:

Well, there has been lots of that.... here are just a few of the TV broadcasts, newspaper articles and blog entries that have followed the launch.

1. San Jose Mercury News: Fisher: Bringing back biking
2. ABC News 7: Green commute program at Los Altos school
3. KLIV/CNN 1590: Los Altos school encouraging kids to bike
4. SF.Streetsblog.com: The Freiker Movement
5. Cyclelicious: Freiker in Los Altos, California

In addition to the above, I believe the Los Altos Town Crier (it's about time guys!) and the Palo Alto Daily News are about to publish articles. I'll keep you updated as we go along....

What About those Prizes?

Well, Freiker does promise that. I'm in the process of working with local merchants on what the prize donations will be. Here is what I have so far....

1. Palo Alto Bike and The Bicycle Outfitter donated $4,000 for the Freikometer and the first year of operation. Way to go guys!
2. MVV (Monta Vista Velo) Cycling Club donated $1,000 to get the program up and running at Almond. This covers collateral and some of the prizes. You guys rock!
   
3. Specialized Bicycles donated 250 Freiker logo water bottles. Water is an important thing to have on a bike ride!
4. Baskin-Robbins will be giving the kids a free child's ice cream cone for every 5 rides they complete. Kids will do anything for ice cream!
5. Spot Pizza is donating a large pizza to every Freiker that completes at least 30 rides! You need to be well fed after riding that many miles!
6. Jamba Juice donated $50. I thought it would be more like $250 but somehow we had communications problem... I sent people down there but didn't realize that they had to identify themselves as Freikers... Live and learn...

There are a few more in the works but this is what I have so far....

So, What Are The Results So Far?...

It is hard to measure the impact in terms of the smiles and fun that the kids are having with Freiker but if you hang around the Freikometer some morning you begin to realize that it is real. There is nothing like the buzz of a Freikometer to get your day going. Some of the kids need to do it over and over again. Parents love it to. Many of them are dusting off the bikes that have been sitting in their garage since last summer and riding to school with their kids! There are a few of these types of success stories - I'm glad to be a part of this kind of movement :-)

What is much easier to measure is what the Freikometer does best - it counts the number of times each student has ridden their bike or walked to school and posts the results on a secure webpage for the child and the parents to see. Here you go....

1. About 260 students are registered Freikers! That's 1/2 the student population of Almond School. Not sure why this isn't 100% but I suspect it has more to do with parents than kids.
2. The number of bicycles in the bike cages has increased about 50% since a week long sample was taken the week before the program started.
3. Every day about 100 kids commute to school by walking, scooter or bike. In just 3 weeks, the student body of Almond School has logged over 1,500 Freiker round trips to school.
4. If you estimate that each student travels about 3/4 mile, 1 way, to school, the total number of Freiker trips covers about 2,250 miles! To put it another way, if those kids started in the Almond parking lot and rode their bike 2,250 miles across the US, they'd be in Chicago, Il after the first 3 weeks. They did this without burning a single drop of gasoline! That is no small 'feet' for these kids!

I'll keep everyone posted on new developments as the kids get into Freiker. It might be interested to track their progress, in miles, as they accumulate rides. This could turn into a virtual journey around the US. I was also thinking of some fun competition between Freiker schools - it might be interesting to see which student body can pedal the furthest in a month so something like that. If any of you have any fun suggestions, let me know.

If you are interested in learning more about Freiker, you can contact me via a comment left on this blogsite or by sending email to freiker@almondschool.org.

Every Ride Counts!