Diane Serafini’s been a member of the SF Bicycle Coalition for the better part of 20 years. “I wanted to support bike advocacy,” she told us when asked why she joined.
For about half of that time, she has also been an instructor for the SF Bicycle Coalition’s safety and biking education classes (which are free and available near you!)
“When I joined the SF Bicycle Coalition, I was coming up with ways that I could do something about climate change,” Diane said. “I’d come up with different ideas for how I could reduce my carbon footprint and help others do the same, and settled on teaching people how to bike safely.”
Diane now has over eight years of experience teaching people how to ride confidently and safely on San Francisco’s busy streets. “When people don’t feel safe, they don’t ride their bikes,” Diane said. That’s why, in addition to advocating for safety improvements across our city, your SF Bicycle Coalition offers free classes with instructors like Diane in order to get more people feeling comfortable on a bike. That means one more car left at home or one more seat open on public transportation.
“When I started teaching the SF Bicycle Coalition’s safety education classes, none of the other instructors wanted to teach the beginners,” Diane recalled. “So I decided that I’d take one for the team.
“I learned that I love it – watching them learn to ride, then ride in traffic and be safe. Their fun is contagious and it’s a great experience,” Diane told us.
Beyond sharing the joys of bicycling with students and reducing everyone’s carbon footprint, Diane enjoys meeting the folks she teaches. “The people are so wonderful! They work so hard to learn.”
One student’s experience really stood out to Diane: “There was one person who came to my class whose husband didn’t support her learning to bike. They lived in Daly City, and he refused to pick her up from San Francisco after the class. She signed up anyway and took her bike onto BART to get to the class. Afterwards, she rode all the way home to Daly City on her own, personifying the independence that biking offers.”
