Wheels & Heels: Let's Move Them Dogs and Other Decatur Fitness Events

Saturday's "Let's Move Them Dogs" event at the DHS stadium promotes exercise and healthy eating for middle and high school students.

Decatur teenagers will be throwing toilet paper, shaving cream pies and climbing the walls Saturday at the Decatur High School stadium. But it's all designed to keep them fit. Saturday debuts the first ever “Let’s Move Them Dogs” Decatur Fitness Festival from 2-5 p.m. designed to show kids in grades 6-12 how to stay active and fit.  Volunteers (like me) will be running carnival-like activities such as a rock climbing wall, bungee run, pedestal joust, big foot races and more, as well as games like a toilet bowl toss, suction ball toss, an egg run and face painting. And it's all free, unless you want to throw a pie at someone. On the field, professional Yoga, Zumba, Nia and boot camp instructors will have free demonstrations on the stage. …

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Wheels and Heels

Wheels & Heels: Avoiding Bloodshed on the Roads

Whether we push a bike pedal or a gas pedal, we've all got to practice safety measures to avoid injuring others on the road.

Memo to all bicyclists everywhere: Let's be careful out there! The perils of two-wheeled transportation have been all too evident this week. Decatur's biking attorney Ken Rosskopf broke nine ribs after riding over a nasty Avondale Estates pothole, just weeks after noting how dangerous white road turtles are to a bike tire.  Decatur Metro reported that a teenager on a bike was hit by a car near Decatur High School last Friday and treated for minor injuries.  I pedaled out to Avondale Estates to try to locate the pothole and was hyper-aware of road hazards. I even pedaled over the offending pothole -- deep enough to rattle my teeth, but not deep enough to cause more than a minor nuisance to a car or truck. More alarming, as I pedaled home, I…

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Wheels and Heels

Safe Routes to School Encourage Activity, Quality Time Together

Decatur's active Safe Routes to School program is gearing up to insure that students who walk or bike to school can get there safely.

Decatur’s Safe Routes to School program has a message for parents: Want to prevent your child from getting fat and get them to talk to you every day? Walk or bike to school with them daily. “I love the morning ritual,” said Lesley Stuart, who will be walking to Fifth Avenue Academy Tuesday morning for her son Lachlan’s first day of fifth grade. Stuart has walked her son to school for most of the days he’s attended school. Besides the obvious health benefits to having kids burn cornflakes instead of fossil fuel getting to school, walking to school offers priceless parenting benefits, said Stuart, who was the program’s coordinator at Glenwood. “It gives my kids time to talk to me when they wouldn’t normally otherwise talk to me,” said Stuart…

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Wheels and Heels

Wheels & Heels: Making Tracks to Fifth Avenue Academy

Decatur officials have prepared a plan to make it safe for students to walk and bike to Fifth Avenue, which opens this summer.

In fairy tales, they use trails of breadcrumbs, cookies or candy to lure children to follow a path. In Decatur, they’re going to use round five-inch medallions. To encourage students to walk to Fifth Avenue Academy in August, Decatur will mark a trail to the new school. Round medallions will be placed every 660 feet – that’s an eighth of a mile – along the route that city officials think is the safest for students walking to school. As an added bonus, anyone walking near the school will be able to use the markers to tell how far they’ve walked. The markers are part of the transportation plan for Fifth Avenue Academy, which opens  to fourth and fifth graders in the City Schools of Decatur school system on Aug. 2. Bruce Roaden, the former …

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Wheels and Heels

Wheels & Heels: Decatur Is Biking to the Capitol

Several hundred Decatur bicyclists will join Mayor Bill Floyd, the lieutenant governor and other elected officials to pedal to the capitol; The annual event is meant to raise awareness of cyclist's needs

You don’t need to wear lycra shorts, but you will need a bicycle and a helmet to ride with Decatur Mayor Bill Floyd and Georgia Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and show your support next Tuesday as part of the sixth annual Georgia Rides To The Capitol. Decatur cyclists are a huge catalyst for the annual event, which will start at 10:45 a.m. on March 22 from the north parking lot of the East Lake MARTA station. Decatur City Commissioner Fred Boykin, the owner of Bicycle South, is coordinating the event, which will include more than 35 mayors and other elected officials, students from Glennwood Academy and hundreds of Atlanta-area cyclists. Governor Nathan Deal will address the crowd from the Capitol steps, Boykin said. “We ride to raise awareness of …

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Diane Loupe

3:47 pm on Saturday, March 19, 2011

It would be illegal to transport a child under one on a bicycle, even in a trailer, under a law now being considered by Georgia legislators. What do you think of this law?   more ›

Wheels and Heels

Wheels and Heels: Walking and Biking to School

Clairemont Elementary will be the focus for Georgia's Walk to School Day next Wednesday, highlighting the neighborhood school's Safe Routes to School program

Two dads at Clairemont Elementary are known as the “Bike Dude” and the “Shoe Dude.” With their daughters, Neil Norton bicycles and Greg Coleson walks to school daily, along the way encouraging other parents to do the same. On a special "Walk and Roll" to School day last October, Norton and Coleson were among about 75 percent of the school’s 350 students and parents who burned calories instead of fossil fuels getting to Clairemont. To recognize the school’s  six year commitment to the Safe Routes to School program, the Georgia Department of Transportation plans to feature Clairemont for the annual Georgia Walk to School Day next Wednesday. Clairemont was one of the state’s first to enroll in the Georgia Safe Routes to School program, a …

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