Secrets of Chicago's Bike Whisperer

CHICAGO -- The Legend of the Bike Whisperer of Beverly began four years ago, during quarantine.

A mother was trying to teach her child to ride a bike, but the lessons were not sticking. Frustrated, she posted a note to a Facebook group for moms of the South Side of Chicago: Did anyone have advice on how to teach her kid to ride a bike? Or know anybody who could?

Heidi Burrel saw the message and wrote back immediately: Louie, her husband, could do it. He taught 12th grade physical education at a Gage Park high school, he coached girls’ volleyball and boys’ basketball, and he had earned a reputation for possessing remarkable amounts of patience with young people attempting new skills.

That patience had been a surprise to even Louie Burrel.

When he taught his son, Brayden, to ride a bike, he let him crash a few times. He was more of a “boy dad” back then, he explained. He wanted his son to fall and pick himself up and all that.

“I wanted him to learn the hard way, which is not always the best way,” Burrel said. When bicycling became one of the few outlets for his kids in the early months of the pandemic, his younger daughter, Nia, was still using training wheels. Family rides were torturous. So Burrel took Nia to an empty lot, but this time, Burrel was gentle; in fact, he had promised Nia that no matter what, rule No. 1, Daddy would never let her fall. And 15 minutes later, Nia was riding a bike. She never crashed once.

Burrel told his wife, and his wife told thousands of moms online.

Within a week, Burrel had students for informal lessons, then more students. One mom posted a video showing how much Burrel could do with only a clear day and 30 minutes. He was fast becoming the Bike Whisperer, probably the only parent in Chicago who could teach a kid to pedal a bike without having a stroke or swearing like a sailor.

Four years later, he’s taught more than 400 Chicago children how to ride a bike.

Earlier this month, one of them was Alex White, a 6-year-old from Chicago's Beverly neighborhood. She waited shyly behind the wheel of her Frozen bike, silver streamers dangling off the handlebars. Her father, Kevin, wearing dark sunglasses, admitted to me, deadpan: “Look, we tried to do this ourselves. My wife and I. We tried. I feel like I am testing my manhood not teaching her myself! But everyone in her grade rides, and so I am going to try anything.”

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