Teach Bike Riding In 2 To 10 Minutes

May 11, 2000 (“Man's bike-training video on well-deserved roll”):

... Last fall, I wrote about Reginald Joules and his promising system for teaching kids to ride bikes without the familial frustration that has parents yelling and children crying -- and vice versa -- for decades. But at the time his "Pedal Magic" method was merely an abstract concept endorsed by others...

After watching the Pedal Magic video and mastering Joules' patented system for learning balance, this week she became the terror of central Denver parking lots in a matter of minutes, and without the customary tears or helmet tossings.

Our experience matched that of many Pedal Magic buyers who have tried the method and written in to rave about it after reading about Joules in The Post last year...

Last year, Joules was still having trouble finding mass-market outlets for his video. Bicycle manufacturing executives said his ideas worked well but that the $20 video threatened their millions of dollars in sales of training wheels...

Self-Propulsion owner Portia Masterson said Joules' retail and Internet sales are growing each year through terrific word of mouth. "I've seen the openness to using the video increase," she said... The latest success at Masterson's store was an 8-year-old girl who was very athletic but afraid of riding a bike. Using the video, Masterson said, the girl learned in one morning and rode 12 miles with her father the same day...

Two reports by The Denver Post’s consumer reporter Michael Booth (September 28, 1999 and May 11, 2000). The second one is from his perspective as a father who had just taught his daughter to ride.

Complete text of both reports are available at http://www.denverpost.com/archives (search for Pedal Magic in the 01/01/1999 - 12/31/2000 date range). Excerpts from both are included below...

September 28, 1999 (click here for a full image of the report):

... Convinced that America's children have suffered enough from scraped knees and bad teachers, Joules invented a teaching method that parents swear by. But in a corporate twist that will send the conspiracy theorists into a frenzy, major bike manufacturers have so far rejected Joules' attempts to distribute his patented instructional video, "Pedal Magic."

The reason? Deathly fear of a worldwide drop in training wheel sales.

"Reginald's video is quite impressive, and it's very effective," said a merchandising executive with Bell Sports, which sells millions of helmets and bike accessories each year. The executive loved "Pedal Magic," and fellow employees at the company used it to teach their children how to ride in a matter of minutes. Then the executive, who asked not to be named, showed it to the wrong division of the company.

"We sell sets of training wheels into the seven figures," he said. "Everything in that video would be contradictory to selling training wheels. The people in that division told me I should burn the tape."

... Showing around his video was something like showing the oil industry a car that never needs fuel, or showing Microsoft a computer that runs without software ... Skeptics should know the system is not some ethereal New Age confidence-builder -- winning a U.S. patent involved proving Joules was relying on scientific principles of operant conditioning, centripetal force, probability theory...

Reports In The Denver Post