Meet Your Neighbor: Mansfield's Nelson Shogren enjoys life on two wheels

Summertime is a great time to ride your bike but also a good reminder for kids to be safe.

Meet your neighbor Nelson Shogren, a bike safety and education volunteer at various Mansfield City Schools since 2015.

About five years ago, Malabar Intermediate School received a number of donated mountain bikes. They didn’t have a program in which they could be used, so Shogren volunteered to teach kids mountain biking and biking safety.

He works on Friday mornings with students who have special needs, which usually involves three outdoor classes with eight to 12 students per class.

“I see a lot of progression in their skills and confidence in what they can do,” Shogren said.

His students have struggled in traditional classrooms over the years. Some have not been proficient readers at their grade level, while others struggle with math. Various diagnoses have posed a barrier to learning at times, such as behavioral issues stemming from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Students with ADHD at John Sherman Elementary, for example, lacked concentration skills on the Richland B&O Trail. They were instructed to focus “straight ahead, look in the direct line that they want the bike to go,” and usually by the end of the 7-mile ride, Shogren said, the kids were cycling just as well as the kids without disabilities.

A crash course in bike safety

In 2016, Shogren went through an intensive, three-day bike safety course in Columbus led by Yay Bikes!, the Ohio Department of Transportation and the Ohio Department of Health. He said students were trained to teach people how to ride safely in the street.

Each student was to lead their fellow students through Columbus during the morning and evening rush hours. Panicked, Shogren thought, “Oh my gosh, I am going to die,” because he was familiar with Columbus traffic as a motorist.

Through both classroom and on-the-street instructions, he said he became adept at how to use bicycle infrastructure within the city to get out of a danger zone. Shogren said learning to make himself more visible to automobile traffic was actually a lot of fun.

The Columbus course isn’t his only training.

“I’ve attended a couple of seminars on bicycle infrastructure, what makes safe bike routes, what does not,” Shogren added.

If you’re riding a bike, walking or driving on Mansfield roadways, the Mansfield Police Department urges caution, especially during the school year.

A volunteer much of his life, Shogren, along with the Rev. Daniel Orr of Grace Episcopal Church in Mansfield, have been involved with the annual Bike-A-Palooze event in North Lake Park.

“We’ve probably donated over 125 bikes to people needing reliable transportation,” he said. “Biking is free and faster than walking.”

Shogren noted bikes are refurbished by volunteers, many retired and all of whom are bike riders.

Cycling offers many benefits

Shogren views cycling “as a means of freedom and independence” with advantages over other modes of transportation.

“Self-reliance and self-sustainability, so I try to push that avenue as much as I can to all kinds of people," he added.

Shogren also pointed out a bike is an affordable transportation option. Some folks may never be able to afford a car and insurance and their primary means of transportation are taxis, buses or walking.

Cycling also offers other environmental and health benefits.

“Bicycles are green machines; they don’t pollute,” Shogren noted. “You are the engine. You arrive at your destination a lot healthier than before you left.”

He also believes it elevates your mood. “You never see a cyclist that is not smiling,” he added.

Prior to retirement, prioritizing his workday during his morning bike ride was Shogren's preference, saying it made him “smarter and wiser.”

“When I used to cycle to work, by the time I got to work my day was already organized,” he stated. “I didn't need any coffee until about 2 p.m. because I was already charged up.

Cycling on the way home allowed him to “de-stress” and helped him remember things he may have forgotten to do during the day.

“There’s a study that I read about in Boston City Schools. They studied the kids who either walked or rode their bike to school vs. the ones that were either dropped off or rode the school bus,” Shogren shared. “The ones that biked and walked to school performed far better academically than the ones that were driven or dropped off.”

Shogren said that was enough incentive for him to teach school kids how to ride a bike safely.

Correspondent Joe Di Lullo can be reached at muckrack.com/dilulloj or jp.dilullo0926@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Mansfield OH biking fanatic teaches others to be safe