You power on
when you get outside.

I am not a loud kid. Indoors I am quiet. I can sit on the couch with a screen and kind of disappear into it, half awake, running on standby. A lot of kids are like that. Maybe you have one. Maybe you were one.

But something happens to me the second I get outside. On a trail, on my bike, in the wind, I power on. I light up. I turn into the version of myself I actually like best. The outside does that. Not because someone told me to cheer up. Because that is simply where I come alive.

I learned how much I needed it when I could not have it. Earlier this year I broke my wrist and spent five weeks stuck inside in a cast. Five weeks off the bike, off the trail, on the couch. That is where I found out the hard way that the couch is not where I am okay. Outside is.

So here is what we believe at Pedal On. Kids need to get outside. Not as a punishment, not as a chore to check off, but because outside is where they were built to be. It is where the nervous kid gets brave. Where the grumpy kid forgets to be grumpy. Where the quiet kid comes alive. You do not even have to want to go. You just have to go. The wanting shows up once you are out there.

And this is not really about screens. Screens are fine. The thing we are up against is smaller and sneakier than any screen. It is that first heavy feeling of I do not want to. That feeling is a liar. Almost every time, you go anyway, and you are so glad you did.

A book for the youngest riders

I made a picture book for little kids. It is about a quiet, freckle-faced kid named Patrick and his little dog Gigi, who would both rather stay curled up inside, and who go out the door anyway, and come home changed.

Gigi is real. She is my dog. Patrick is a lot like me. The story walks a simple path: do not want to go, go anyway, come alive out there. And it ends on the two words this whole thing is built on.

You can read the whole book here. Read Patrick, Gigi, and the Brave Bike Ride →

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