Annual bike rodeo will offer bike repairs, safety, helmets

BULLHEAD CITY – In reality, the 27th Annual Carrie Edgmon Bicycle Safety Rodeo (Bike Rodeo) on March 18, 9 a.m. to noon, at Walmart, 2840 Hwy. 95, Bullhead City, started weeks ago when Lori Viles, Public Information Officer of the Bullhead City Fire Division (BCFD), began visiting every second-grade class in Bullhead City to share bike safety, the importance of wearing helmets and “protecting our brain,” she said. “We had a helmet-coloring contest,” and the winners were incorporated into the Bike Rodeo’s annual poster. Viles conducts classes and helmet-safety demonstrations to every second-grader in Bullhead City schools leading up to the event. “We provide as much education when we have the opportunity,” she added. “Our little ones, they’re listening, they’re little sponges.”

While Viles was having fun with “the littles,” Lorrie Duggins, Community Services Officer of the Bullhead City Police Department (Bullhead City PD), was buying bicycle parts with funds donated by the Bullhead City Morning Kiwanis (Morning Kiwanis) that would be used by members of the Citizens Emergency Response Team (CERT). “Tires, tubes, chains, brakes, cables, everything,” she said. “We buy it.”

Remember that CERT team? Drop any bike off for repairs (any bike, even ones to eventually be donated) before heading over to get a new helmet fitted (get it comfortable around the ears, then snug the chin strap). The CERT team is always prepared to help; they’re the ones who test and/or install new, free smoke alarms and assist in ad hoc ways, such as managing the cooling centers during the Labor Day Weekend Weather Event. For the Bike Rodeo, they’ll be the ones fixing flats and linking chains and calibrating gears and replacing spokes and re-stringing brake- and gear-cables; everything purchased with funds from Bullhead City Morning Kiwanis (Morning Kiwanis). “Kiwanis is all about kids and kids’ safety. We all were kids, we all had a bike,” said Morning Kiwanis President Larry Tunforss.

Once CERT members have a bike in working order and a helmet is safely fitted, the Bullhead City PD will have a course set up to learn and practice safety skills. The Bullhead City PD will also register any bike. According to BicycleLaw.com, even though 48% of reported (many are not) stolen bikes are recovered, only five% are returned, often due to lack of documentation and/or lack of registration. Each participant also gets a “free-corn-dog certificate for completing the course,” said Duggins.

So far, that’s three (four if one counts CERT as separate from BCFD, but it’s not really) organizations involved in the Bike Rodeo–and we’re not stopping.

Air Control Home Services donated 10 of the two dozen new bikes that will be given; that drawing will be held sometime between 10-11a. “All the rest are drawn at the end,” said Duggins.

“WARMC (Western Arizona Medical Center) is another partner” that donates funds to purchase helmets, Viles added, as well as providing water for volunteers.

Then there’s the individual $5 donation here and a $300 donation from another business there and in-kind products and volunteers and, when added up, equals community. “It involves a lot of partners,” said Tunforss.

“I was there 27 years ago, for the first one in the parking lot of an elementary school,” Tunforss said. Morning Kiwanis is also hosting its annual Kids Expo on Mar 25.

Reach out to Viles at 928-758-3971; Duggins at 928-763-9200; and/or Tunforss at 928-201-3313.

Juliette Cowall