I’ve observed this bike sharing play many times over the last 18 months with the same group of 6 to 9-year-old kids.

Up the street from my house, on a stretch of wide and flat sidewalk, the 5 kids take turns zipping back and forth on two bikes. Sometimes they simply ride. Sometimes there’s a plywood-and-cement-block ramp to ride. Other times, they play made-up games–like Bike Tag. In Bike Tag, the bikers try to stay away from the kids on foot. The kids who are on foot try to tag the bike riders. You get to use the bike if you tag a biker three times. Sometimes there are disagreements and bickering. Mostly there’s happy chatter and laughter.

The bikes belong to a brother and sister. They live in a big house with a big yard–lots of space to store bikes.

The other three live across the street in a five-story apartment building–no extra space for bikes, and if there were, it’d be awkward to haul them up and down.

Bike Sharing Wrap up

Bike sharing play immediately pulls me back to 1978 when the same thing happened on the street where I grew up. We’d share bikes, skateboards, baseball bats, and nearly everything else. Maybe not if it was new. It was ok to hold off on sharing the New Thing you got as a birthday present for a couple of weeks, but after that, sharing was expected. And happened almost all the time.

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