I have always enjoyed the feeling of riding a bike, so when hitching rides to school started becoming a challenge, I decided I would bike the twelve miles round trip to school every day.

Every morning I got up at about 6:30 a.m, took care of my farm chores, ate breakfast, and packed my backpack. By 7:20 I was on the road, pedaling to my middle school, on the island of Eleuthera. I really enjoyed biking past the mangroves, while breathing the salty air, and it also gave me time to think about things like where I would set up my slack-line next for a new challenge, where I would go to catch land crabs in the night, with my friend Claude, and what I would plant in my bush plot farm after school.

When I finally arrived in Deep Creek, the small settlement where my middle school is located, the local dogs would chase me until I got onto the school campus. 

“My friends always asked me if I wished I got driven to school, but the truth is biking gave me valuable time to think about my day, and with time I noticed my self getting faster and more efficient on the bike.”

After a day at school I would bike back home. On the way my favorite thing to do was stop at my Haitian friend Joseph’s bush farm. He grew cucumber, tomatoes, corn sweet-potato, pumpkin, peppers, and much more. I would help him weed or plant and then choose a juicy tomato, an ear of corn, or a stalk of sugar cane to eat as a snack.