Earlier in the day, Dee Atkins was watching her 7-year-old son, Noah, ride slowly beside Burrel, who was sweating buckets, jogging alongside the small bike, softly encouraging, making loop after loop in an empty bank parking lot on a warm Sunday.

“I reached out to Mr. Louie — my son calls him Mr. Louie — over the winter to get ready for spring, because Louie is a hot commodity. I wanted a jump on everyone before he booked up. This is Noah’s third lesson. My husband and I tried. We took a weekend. We figured we could do it in a weekend! But between the two of us, we struggled to give Noah the confidence to do it himself. I think, as parents, we might have been too close, you know? I had heard the Bike Whisperer was kind in spirit, and he taught kids to ride very quickly. He had the touch. Right now, Noah is working on controlling the bike and brakes, but the confidence Mr. Louie has boosted in him! My husband is a firefighter. He’s all about getting down and just doing the job, because that was his childhood experience. Baptism by fire. Funny thing, because he’s our child, we didn’t want that for him. We bought him shin guards, all kinds of guards, and we could not make this happen. So, Noah was flustered, we were flustered. But at the previous session, when Noah’s bike started to fall, Louie caught him and rolled onto his back. And that simple show of kindness …”

Noah stopped at her feet.

“Doing great, bud!” Dee smiled.

Burrel tugged a hand towel out of his pocket and swiped at his neck and sides of his face, but still sweat came. He took a swig of water. “OK, Noah,” he panted, “one more around?” They take off with Burrel’s right hand pressing against Noah’s right shoulder. The purple rims of Noah’s bike spun faster, faster. “Strong,” Burrel said quietly, “strong.”

A light breeze flapped the red and yellow awning of Joey’s Red Hots at the other end of the parking lot, but the sky was harsh and cloudless. Burrel acclimates well to the heat, he insisted. He keeps microfiber T-shirts in his car. He teaches a few times a week after school lets out for summer, then when school returns and he goes back to his day job, he does it on weekends. The demand has been so strong he’s been training a second Bike Whisperer, a younger one.

Burrel grew up around Morgan Park, and is in his mid-40s now, but looks a decade younger. He moves well for a guy who was briefly hospitalized in February because of tearing of abdominal muscles. He said with a laugh: “You reach a certain age and there are precautions you do need to take — for instance, stretching.”

When Noah’s lesson ended — he would need a fourth lesson to improve his braking.

Seven-year-old Yusuf Zvizdic of Oak Lawn, a student from earlier, still practicing loops around the parking lot, wearing a helmet topped with a faux Mohawk, zoomed past Burrel. His mom, Samra, said that she wants one more lesson for Yusuf. “He’s almost perfect but I want him perfect,” she said. “Yusuf doesn’t think he needs it, my husband doesn’t think he needs it, but I kind of just want him to be in that safe zone, you know?”

Burrel agreed and then walks across the lot to meet his next student, a 7-year-old from Bucktown diagnosed with ADHD who has issues with developmental coordination. He’s on his fifth lesson, but his mother, like the others, said he does better “with a third party.”

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