About six weeks ago, I wrote a story about a boy and his mother who rode their bikes to the Maple Avenue Middle School -- only to be reprimanded for breaking the school's no-riding-to-school rule.

Locally, bicycle advocates and anyone not given to semi-paranoid beliefs that there is a pedophile hiding behind every tree spoke out against the policy, and the school board duly agreed to re-consider the policy during their summer recess -- we followed the story through several meetings, and articles on the topic can be found here.

I had just about forgotten about the story, as school was over for the year, and peace was seemingly restored to the school-aged set, but I received an email earlier today from the Saratoga Healthy Transportation Network's Doug Haller, alerting me that the story had garnered some attention in a few other outlets.

The story was mentioned in posts Tuesday on both Switchboard, a blog hosted by the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Big Blog, hosted by the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Clearly, both of these blogs are putting forth an agenda -- and that agenda includes promoting bicycling as a viable method of getting around, and as a legitimate alternative to buses. And, that's an agenda that I'm OK with.

Thanks to both blogs of seeking out my story, and for putting it for more readers to see and digest.

As a kid growing up in Brooklyn, I regularly rode my bike to school with friends. It was faster than walking, and -- I think -- more fun. Having been properly trained to ride in and around traffic by our parents, we were always safe as we rode, and we were never threatened by child molesters either.

In addition to doing something good for the environment, riding to school gave my friends and I a feeling of Independence -- a feeling that I would hope Spa City parents and schools would want for their students.