Falcon Focus: Biking club’s president finds community on extended rides

Courtesy of Han Yeung

Saratoga Bike Club members rode to Shoreline on Nov. 25, 2023.

Early on an occasional Saturday morning, junior Han Yeung can be spotted as he bikes through Saratoga neighborhoods with several riders trailing behind him.

Yeung is the president of the school’s Biking Club, which he founded in October. The club has around 15 members and has gone on rides to Shoreline Lake in Mountain View and Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

He said his father served as the biggest source of inspiration for getting serious about biking. Yeung wasn’t exercising much during the pandemic, and his father suggested the sport. As his love for biking grew, Yeung began thinking about how he could share it with others.

“I noticed there was a lack of community; if you look at track and field and swimming, you’ll notice a lot more participation,” Yeung said. “If you ask anybody, they’ve probably biked casually before.”

 His father often encouraged him to use his mountain bike up and down a hill near their house. What started as 20- to 30-minute bike rides soon turned into hours-long rides. He later started biking to school and with friends.

Eventually Yeung switched from his father’s mountain bike to a road bike, since it was more efficient. That in turn enhanced his ability to do longer and more scenic routes, many as long as six or even 10 hours.

Last summer, Yeung found others who shared a similar passion for long bike trips, including juniors Richard Lee and Renn Blanco and freshman Dylan Zuo. Together they created the school’s new bike club together.

Yeung said getting the club approved by ASB was a difficult journey. Due to issues regarding student safety and school responsibility for accidents, the Biking Club was split into two parts: the ASB-approved Saratoga High Bike Club involves in-person school meetings where students plan out their biking sessions. By contrast, the Saratoga Biking Club — which is not affiliated with the school — is a group of 10 members that goes on bike rides together outside of school. 

“When I started the club this year, I hoped to educate people about bikes and get them into biking,” Yeung said. “We’re starting easy, of course. As the year goes on, we plan to explore longer routes.”

After the club’s first bike ride along the Shoreline Lake in Mountain View this past fall, Yeung was excited to see how members came together as a team rather than as individuals. When biking together, the members typically line up in a vertical line, forcing the members to rely on one another for direction.

“It’s comforting knowing that there’s someone behind you and in front of you while you ride,” Yeung said. “If anybody messes up, then the person behind them might also fall, so we all take it very seriously, and it draws us all closer together.”

With the group doing biking once or twice a month on Saturdays, Yeung notes that the intense passion in the club has a lot to do with the motivated underclassmen, and he hopes they will continue the club after Yeung graduates.

For Yeung, the Biking Club is also an opportunity to get to know students with a shared interest in cycling, and he finds that his shared biking passion allows him to trust others and rely on them, too.

“We found a connection in the Biking Club that we didn’t find in a lot of places outside,” he said.

In the future, Yeung hopes to accomplish at least one big biking project, possibly taking a gap year before college to bike across America. For now, however, he hopes to bike a cumulative 150 miles with the club before summer begins.

“What I like about biking is that you don’t have to put in a lot of effort, compared to running,” Yeung said. “I also like the fact that you get to see the world.”