Hi, my name is Hibiki and I’m doing an internship at Evergreen Outdoor Center in Hakuba. Today I’m going to tell you a little bit about my day at Evergreen on June 3rd.
On June 3rd, I went to the Mountain Bike (MTB) Park in Alps Azumino National Government Park to help the MTB fun ride tour in the morning and the MTB kids program in the afternoon. The guide for the fun ride tour was Yachiyo, and we had one participant for the tour. First of all, Yachiyo told him about what MTB is and what the basic skills are. MTB’s brakes are much stronger than regular breaks because they are disk brakes. When you stop MTB, you have to pull both brake levers gently. The basics skills that Yachiyo told were “neutral position”, “ready position”, “side to side”, and so on, and these are the most important skills to ride a MTB.
You may not have heard about these, and if you want to know about these skills more, please participate in the MTB fun ride tour! The customer really improved his MTB skills in 2 hours, and he made it through the steep slope smoothly like the picture below.
If you are a beginner rider, no worries! On the Evergreen MTB fun ride tour, you will learn the basic MTB riding skills at the first, and then, you will ride a MTB on a trail! If you are interested in the MTB tours, please check the link below!!!
http://www.evergreen-hakuba.com/mountain-biking/
In the afternoon, I helped the MTB kids school program. In this program, kids will learn how to ride MTB safely and practice MTB riding skills every Saturday until July 8th. The guides for this program are Dave and Yachiyo. The June 3rd was the first day of this program.
Yachiyo started with teaching the basic MTB skills like she taught the participant in the morning. However, she changed the term for the skill little bit. When she taught the ready position she used the term “frog pose” instead of “ready position” so that they could quickly understand what they needed to do.
Yachiyo, a skilled MTB tour guide, takes account of participants’ experiences and skills and changes her teaching style a little bit when she guides customers. I learned from her teaching and guiding kids that I need to focus on customers’ skills and experiences before I guide them. When the 2-hour program finished, the kids were able to ride their MTB more steadily. Also, I realized from this program that the kids just purely enjoy riding bikes. “Pure enjoyment” is what I felt when I went canyoning for my first time. I want participants to feel “pure enjoyment” when they participate in the Evergreen tours, so I need to remember this feeling of pure enjoyment and improve my guide skills through training.
Thank you for all the kids who participated today, and don’t forget to work on your assignment given by Yachiyo!! See you next week!!
If you are interested in the Evergreen tours and activities in the spring and the summer, please check the link below!!
http://www.evergreen-hakuba.com/green-season/
See you in Hakuba!!
Hibiki