Holbrook Indian School
A Seventh-day Adventist Boarding Academy Serving Native American Youth Since 1946
Bike Program:
Learning a Healthy Lifetime Activity By Pedro Ojeda
M
y first campout with Holbrook Indian School (HIS) students took place in the fall of 2012. It was to be a boys’ dorm outing to a campground in nearby Show Low, Arizona. At the time the school owned a box truck that the deans filled with all the camping gear, food, and bicycles. As an avid mountain biker, I was excited to learn that the school had bicycles for the students. My excitement mounted as we prepared to go on a bike ride with the 10 or so students and Sam Hubbard, our bike guru at that time. That is, until I saw the bikes.
Several bikes had flat tires that had to be pumped up or repaired. The brakes on most of the bikes barely worked, and the shifters were in the same poor condition. These circumstances did nothing to deter the smiles on our students’ faces as we took off on the trail to the ice cave. It
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turned out to be a great ride, despite the number of large rocks in the trail and the need for several students to walk their bikes up the hills because of fatigue and the lack of shifting. Over the next two years I went on several bike rides with students, using these bikes that had been donated
to the school. The wheels in my mind started turning in rhythm with the wheels of our bikes. I was thinking about what we could do to improve the quality of this experience for our students. The person who had suggested that I apply for the job as principal at HIS had told me that