Family of cyclists uses bikes to make school round trips
By Phyllis Moore
Published in News on September 6, 2011 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/MICHAEL BETTS
Jorge Wagner takes his 7-year-old daughter, Katie, to school at Eastern Wayne Elementary every day on the back of his bicycle. Wagner then heads off to attend to his teaching duties at Eastern Wayne High School, where he also coaches the soccer team.
As a boy growing up in Germany, Jorge Wagner was used to riding his bicycle to school.
And now that he is a teacher and coach at Eastern Wayne High School, he has continued the habit.
He and his wife, Lisa, also a teacher at the high school, ride to work every morning on bikes, stopping only to drop their 7-year-old daughter, Katie, off at Eastern Wayne Elementary School.
The couple actually met on the job, said Mrs. Wagner, who teaches English and French.
"I had been there for several years, and he came and started teaching, coaching soccer and teaching health and P.E.," she said.
They have been married 15 years in November.
But while Wagner has "always ridden" a bike, his wife only joined him in the activity about a year and a half ago.
"He started riding his bike to work and he convinced me to get a cruiser bike. It has a basket so that I can carry stuff," she said. "Jorge rides every day regardless of weather. I'm of course a little wimpier, so if I have a lot of stuff to carry, if it's cold or raining, I don't ride."
"If it's raining and so forth, we're not religiously doing it, but we try to go as much as possible," agreed her husband.
The family lives about a mile from the two schools so it isn't an arduous trek to make each day. But the route does take them down New Hope Road, not the easiest path to navigate in the early morning, between commuters and school traffic.
"The people are very considerate," Mrs. Wagner said. "They are very considerate, very aware. and they pull around us.
"That doesn't stop me from worrying about her, a 7-year-old on a bike."
And even though Katie doesn't yet ride alone, she is already talking about it, her dad said.
"Katie, at her age, it's still cool," he said, recalling when he put her on the back of his bike and transported her to day care and pre-K at St. Mary School. "Right now she really wants to ride her own bike to school. She has to show that she can handle herself in traffic."