A Bike Safety Rally will be held from 9-11 a.m. Saturday, May 9, at the Waupaca Learning Center and Waupaca Middle School parking lot.
The free event will move inside WLC if it rains.
May is Bike Safety Month, and the rally is open to people of all ages from throughout the community. Helmets will be required.
Participants will begin by registering for the rally, where they will receive a card to be checked at each of the event’s stations. The card will also serve as a raffle ticket.
Those who complete all the stations will be entered into a raffle. The winners will be contacted the following week.
The stations for the Bike Safety Rally will include a bike check, bike helmet fit, bike registration, slow race, figure 8, hand signal and obstacle course.
Tim Lencki, of Adventure Outfitters, will help at the bike check.
A local cubmaster will tell participants if their helmets fit properly, with Cub Scouts also helping at that station.
The Waupaca Police Department will register bikes and will waive the registration fee, during the rally.
Police Chief Tim Goke says people who live outside of city are welcome to register their bikes that day.
“We literally bring in 50 plus bikes throughout the year,” he said.
If a bike is not registered, the police department has no way to identify an owner, he said.
Volunteers at the rally will include Lisa Ash, Mary Feldt and Tom Reif, who teach physical education at WLC, as well as people from the Waupaca Senior Center and students from WLC and Waupaca High School.
Other Bike Safety Month activities at WLC will include skits and videos, a poster and photo contest and also participation in the May 6 National Bike to School Day.
WLC works with the East Central Wisconsin Safe Routes to School organization, which provides the school with prizes, such as water bottles, T-shirts and helmets.
The events will also be made possible by a $1,000 grant from the National Center for Safe Routes to School and Schwinn’s Helmets on Heads Mini-Grants Program.
Since WLC has participated in the National Bike to School Day the last couple of years, Feldt is on that organization’s mailing list. She learned about the grant opportunity last fall and applied.
There were 170 applicants, and Feldt’s was among the 20 chosen to receive $1,000 grants.