My heart thumped against my chest, as I put on my high vis vest on. After two days of practising bike skills and intersections, we were finally going on the road.
When it was my group’s turn to go on the road, I hopped on my bike, checked for cars in the power position and when there were no cars coming, we yelled “clear!” Then we were off.
We peddled down College Street, then indicated left and turned onto Marne street. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, there were barely any cars. But when I was just about to go around a parked car, I heard an engine.
I slowed down immediately, and waited for the car to pass me. Still frightened, I sped up a bit until I saw the two groups in front of me stop. I put my right hand up to show the cars I was stopping and went up onto the grass to wait for the other groups to arrive.
When all of the groups were off the road, Phil and Matt talked to us about what we had just done and what we were going to do next. When they had finished explaining, Phil did a demonstration, then it was our turn.
We biked down the street, stopped at the stop sign and indicated to turn left. When it was clear we turned left onto Park Road until we caught up to Phil. We then walked our bikes over the road on to Ake Ake Ave and practised a right turn at an intersection. Then went back to the Ake Ake Ave intersection again.
On the way back to school we stopped at the roundabout on Victoria Ave and watched the cars go round and round and round. Most cars indicated correctly but lots of them didn't indicate at all. That made the roundabout too dangerous for us to go on, but at least we got to practice with a cone roundabout in the quad.
When we got back to school we handed in our high vis vests and put our bikes on the turf. Cycling was super fun I wish I could do it all over again. Thank you Matt and Phil for coming in to teach us about cycle safety. I will be much more confident biking on the road now!
Written by Genevieve Bendall
