Pedalshaale 2 Vijaynagar 17 January 2026

[Ali Poonawala]

Pedalshaale 2 

Vijayanagar sessions 

17th January 2026.

10.45 AM -12.45 PM

Straight sunny day. No cloud cover and despite the winter chill made the sun difficult to bear especially  for teachers.  No function in skating hall but lot of workers removing old grass kept criss crossing.

HM sir's coordination team has expanded to four now !  Chand Pasha and Rahul were accompanied by Ruban and Yogesh 

BBS Trainers: 2

Teachers: 8

DULT : Tejatha ma'am 

Students : 15 +10

The landing area in front of school entrance was free so we decided to use that for  students who are having good control to do circles. 

Ali and Sreedevi ma'am supervised the circles training 

Steps for Circle : 

1. Handle bar control : Keep angle between handle bar and cycle frame constant. 

2. Recognise the space width available

3. Be aware of the slopes ..If one side is up, against the gravity, other will be down, the gravity making cycle go faster. Pedal harder for upslope and stop pedalling for down.. calibrated braking may be needed during downward slope, to keep speed under control.

Common mistakes: 

1. Handle bar wobble, due to body lurch, changes direction of travel further inside or outside of planned trajectory , may hit something or someone.

2. Continued pedalling during downslope leads to sudden acceleration and panic leads to loss of control and there is risk of injury 

3.The radius of turning becomes too tight  , reduces forward thurst and loss of balance occurs.

Sachin's report :

Session 1

Student 1: Haajira 

She was able to balance today and ride on her own. The initial start is something which she needs to get a hang off. The body keeps twitching but she's able to manage. Need some more practice then she could move into turns and signalling.

Student 2: Riya

She's learning to balance, she is practicing scooting with half pedal. Once she gets the hang of balance she can try pedalling. As of now height is a factor where she's not able to sit and balance. 

Session 2: Arjun - new entrant

Had to educate on the basics, balancing was not an issue, was able to stop properly too. He was able to manage turns too towards the end of the session.

Ali's report: 

Batch 1

Chaitanya V and Zainab had good control,  managing circles in both, clockwise and anticlockwise directions. Next was upslope and return loop ride. Chaitanya's  downslope segment waa ending as hard  stop... instead of controlled braking to continue to turn with the momentum.

Zainab did mashing ( pedalling in standing position) in the up-slope on her own👍.Brilliant kids !

Raja and Yashas did well, Subhiksha struggled and needs better handle bar control

Batch 2

Lot of absentees: Sanjana and Kritika who need to learn balancing , were missing. Arjun was new joinee. All ride have got reasonable control, and Raju and Khushi started circle and were very competent. Dharmi Amrutha and Annapoorna followed and had variable success.

Remaining students need to work on this aspect of circle and slopes.

 HM Srinivas sir again provided bananas to all, in fact twice ! Thank you sir.

Perhaps time has come to see if these children can ride on the side roads at least for the time being, however This whole area has extremely busy traffic, roads are very narrow and gradients are very unfriendly for beginners...May be in batches of two students with one volunteer each, hope we have enough volunteers !

Ali and Sachin spoke to Mr. Vinod of Shubh cycles ( about 1 Km from the school) regarding maintenance of the cycles. He does not have manpower or mobile servicing unit to  do on site servicing. This must be resolved soon. 3 cycles are unusable now.

Ali Poonawala