Riverside Kids Use Their Own Resources To Get On Track

By Jeff White

Sometimes, you just have to make due with what you have.

Below the ceaseless din of traffic on Interstate 84 last Sunday, along Underhill Road in Riverside, J.D. McGrath, Justin McGrath, Stefan Poulin, and Tom Paloian practiced gaudy aerial stunts on their bikes. While a few of their friends travel as far as Bethel to the bike track there, the Riverside crew have opted to create a little stunt park of their own.

It is not much to look at, a few jumps formed by packing down loamy, damp mud and mulch. There is just enough room to come down a cleared path, through the trees, and over one or both of the launches. With enough speed, the jumps are large enough for a rider to pull off a trick or two in mid air, to the rousing response of onlookers.

But their handmade track reveals more about their inventiveness than aerial trickery. Without a legitimate place in town to take their biking enthusiasm, J.D. McGrath and his friends have had to resort to their own resourcefulness. They have had to make their own fun.

“Sometimes we have to drive to Bethel to jump our bikes at the Bethel track,” explained seventh grader Billy Beatty, a Riverside biker. “I wish there was something closer. So, we just built our own.”

Work on the Underhill Road bike track, as the neighborhood kids have come to think of it, began last summer. The kids had to do some clearing, though they emphasize not much. The mounds of dirt that would eventually form jumps started to take shape, with much of last summer spent refining their placement and grade.

Although they had to do some maintenance at the beginning of this summer, the Riverside crew explained that most of the work was completed. They are currently looking for a different location to build a track.

Down on Underhill Road, around mid-morning, the neighborhood kids spill out onto the streets, and most of them take up bikes and rendezvous at the track. Those without wheels come on foot, meeting and talking, while the daredevils excuse themselves occasionally for a jump. New bikes are shown off, new tricks are exhibited, life seems pretty insular and secure.

It is their little world down there.

J.D. McGrath has a lament, however. When asked if he felt that enough public places were made available in Newtown for biking addicts like himself, he answered gravely, “No.”

“We have no land to put anything like [Bethel] in Newtown,” he said. “I would like it if we had more land around here so we can build more jumps.”

“Have you ever looked around town?” he asked. “Do you know how many people ride bikes? A track would get a lot of use.”

For now, he concluded, both he and his friends would have to be content maintaining their own track, while making the occasional trip over the border to the Bethel Bike Track.

Many of these kids have also constructed similar tracks in their own backyards. R.J. Marius, an eighth grader, said that he had a full stunt track in his yard, complete with a full jump, a tabletop, hoops, and a bowl, a feature akin to a half pipe on a ski hill.

Likewise, Billy Beatty has built his own track across the street from his Laurel Trail home. Although it used to be for his motorized quad, he has made a few changes that make the track ideal for his bike.

“You have to use whatever you have,” explained R.J.

And so for the Riverside crew that ply Underhill Road and the surrounding streets on their bikes with fat tires, the tracks they have built represent what is best about neighborhood friendships: working on a project together, and enjoying it together.

In much the same way as friends who get together to build impossible sledding routes through trees the morning after a big snowfall.

In much the same way as those tree houses erected between sturdy bows, or those impenetrable forts nestled just over that stone wall.

In much the same way as painting baseball diamonds in cul-de-sacs and holding games late into the evening.

Although the looming school year threatens to end those mid-morning meetings down by the bike track on Underhill Road, the kids don’t mind. It will be there after school.

“After school, you do your homework… then come right down here,” Billy Beatty mused.