Wobbling wheels and winning communities: How pressure keeps us moving forward

All of my kids ride bicycles, some more than others, which means different skill levels.

Most of my kids have ridden every mile across Iowa, among thousands of other bikers, so are very agile and experienced on a bike.

A few of my kids have not spent much time on a bike so when they do, issues sometimes arise.

In particular, my youngest daughter, Emma, was on a ride with me from McCook to the Kansas border. For those who don’t know the terrain, there is a significant hill south of McCook as you leave the Republican River Valley, otherwise known as “M” Hill.

As we made our way back toward McCook, we descended the hill, quickly picking up speed. Unfortunately, Emma put most of her weight on the seat of the bike, relieving pressure from her hands on the handlebars. This may not sound important, but without that focus and forward pressure, the front wheel started to wobble. She tried to regain control but by then, it was too late. Luckily, she was near the bottom of the hill and her speed was slowing, but she still veered off the shoulder and wrecked into the ditch. Fortunately, she was not seriously hurt and the bike was still rideable so we rode the last mile back to our house to clean her up.

It was a valuable lesson for my daughter, who still rides bikes occasionally.

But that lesson of applying pressure also relates to our communities. It is OK to coast sometimes, but there are times that you have to keep the pressure on whatever you are doing to keep moving forward.

If you let up, things can veer out of control. If you don’t have a plan, you are being reactionary rather than intentional. If you don’t have a say in what is happening. Instead, things are just happening to you.

And right now, McCook is in control of what is happening and is making things happen versus just letting things coast along - and to say there are things happening is an understatement.

Community members are putting in a lot of work to make it a reality. Essentially, they are applying pressure to make McCook on the move.

There was pressure from the community and the voters to build a new city pool. And this summer, the new McCook Aquatic Park was at maximum capacity for several days.

Private and public donors have shown their support for the McCook YMCA as it nears the fund-raising goal, which means it can move forward with the renovations and expansions at the 40-year-old facility.

They aren’t there yet, so please show your support by considering a donation to the project. Be part of the pressure to make this project happen.

And the McCook Public Schools bond issue to build and expand the McCook Senior and Junior High buildings will be on the November ballot, essential to the education of our kids. As one grandmother told me recently, this project should have been done 20 years ago.

A lot of these projects should have been done 20 years ago, but they didn’t. Instead, our community coasted along, not applying pressure to make things happen, to stay in control of our future.

We always have options about what our community looks like.

One option is to do nothing. We can sit back and coast along, to just let things stay as they are or more likely, to deteriorate. But eventually, we won’t have a community, we won’t have young people, we won’t have workers, we won’t have families who want to live here.

Another option - a better option - is to continue to put pressure on our elected officials to get things done, for our leaders to be proactive rather than reactive to moving our communityforward, for community members to get involved and have a say in what we want our community to look like.

By leaning into the issues, projects and programs happening in our community, we will continue to move forward and will continue to stay in control and will continue to make McCook and Southwest Nebraska an even better place to call home.