WATCH: Vernon geared up to wheel out unique biking application

Lauren Lypchuk knows she’s onto something. The Vernon health practitioner, alongside her husband, entomologist Ward Strong, is starting a program referred to as Cycling Without Age, where volunteer pilots will use manual and specially made bicycles, complete with -private carriage in front, across the city for seniors and less-abled bodies to experience a free bike trip. Lypchuk got the concept by looking at a video clip called Amazing Humans, where the BBC did a 3-minute function on a 20-12 months-vintage medical scholar named Fraser, who began the Cycling Without Age software in Scotland. “I saw what it becomes doing for the community and seniors inside the community, and I knew this sort of application could be excellent for Vernon and Coldstream, and it resonated with my philosophy in lifestyles,” stated Lypchuk, who hopes to launch the program in the North Okanagan in June. So she set out to develop partnerships and relationships in her hometown with this system, walking in 42 countries with approximately 1,500 international chapters and about 20-to-25 in Canada.

Lypchuk located exceptional help from Vernon’s Schubert Centre and supervisor Jack Gareb, who agreed to sponsor her underneath the center’s non-profit packages and store the couple’s specially made electric help bike or a trishaw it’s called. The bikes are $15,2 hundred and made simplest in Copenhagen, Denmark, home using Cycling Without Age founder Ole Kassow. Lypchuk was given a grant from the Community Foundation of North Okanagan and personal donations to shop for her first motorcycle. She’s fundraising to get a 2d one. She pitched the program to seven residential care centers or seniors’ houses. All of them, she said, are on board. “The reaction has been astounding,” stated Lypchuk. “They’re very excited and supportive of this system. One senior’s house is so excited they want to start right now, and they want their motorcycle.”

Rides will be 30-to-90 minutes long, and Lypchuk points out that this system is “no longer to speed people across the community, take them to appointments or to go grocery buying.” It’s strictly for the pure joy of being outdoors on a motorcycle. The passengers sit down in a carriage upfront (holds two people), entirely with seatbelts. If the weather turns terrible, the motorbike is equipped with a stunning, water-resistant, quilted blanket, entire with sewn-in hand muffs, and there’s a fold-up canopy to cowl heads if precipitation begins. “The entire concept is to take people out and move slowly,” said Lypchuk. “Enjoy the surroundings. We’ll prevent and communicate with humans we’d meet along the way. It’s about storytelling between the pilot and passengers, growing relationships, generational and inter-generational. “It’s with the outage; that’s the entire concept at the back of the call. Just because we turn out to be older doesn’t suggest we don’t have hopes and goals and enjoy the outdoors. Regardless of Age and abilities, the concept is to revel in life.

The motto at the back of CWA is ‘the right to wind in your hair.'” Lypchuk and Strong are currently growing ability biking routes for this system. They’ll use biking paths, go through downtown Vernon and Polson Park, and the Schubert Centre has granted the couple the use of its cargo trailer to transport the motorcycle to the Okanagan Rail Trail and start a journey from there. The pair have 21 human beings volunteering to be pilots (and going via education) or to help in a few ways with the program. Rides could be free of charge. The whole program, said Lypchuk, is and constantly may be the volunteer. Proof that Lypchuk hit on an excellent idea came from a circle of relatives and friends. “We took her out for a check experience. She became so excited,” stated Lypchuk. “The happiness and smile on her face become infectious.

I’ve never seen her happier in the previous couple of years. And that’s the reaction we get. When we take someone for an experience, it’s simply pure pleasure. Maybe it’s the journey they revel in, that they used to cycle and can’t do it anymore, or perhaps they’ve never been on a motorbike. “They’re experiencing being out in nature, out in the network, in a way that’s new and refreshing, and far away from the four walls human beings tend to live in as they grow old.” Cycling Without Age hopes to run seven days a week and year-round. Program and hobby administrators at some seniors’ houses will help signal passengers up for a trip. You can also join up for a ride or sign on to volunteer at the Schubert Centre or email cyclingwithoutage.Vernon.Bc@gmail.Com. Volunteers will undergo a criminal file test. “What I see for Cycling Without Age is we all have hopes and dreams, and that doesn’t stop due to the fact we flip seventy-five,” said Lypchuk. “We want to enjoy life and be engaged within the community. This application is a possibility to do that. It will unite human beings and allow people to be lively in a way they have never dreamed of.”