The Right to Wind in Your Hair

Evan Swensen
January 9, 2026

Cedar Valley News – January 9, 2026
The Right to Wind in Your Hair
By: Dan Larson
From the fictional town of Cedar Valley, where characters from Quiet Echo continue to respond to real-world events.

John Seigel-Boettner is seventy years old, and twice a week he pedals a three-wheeled bicycle through the streets of Santa Barbara with a ninety-seven-year-old woman named Elizabeth Wright seated up front, a blanket across her lap, her thin hands knotted with age, waving at everyone they pass.

It’s called Cycling Without Age. A retired middle school teacher on an electric-assist trishaw, taking nursing home residents out into the world they thought they’d left behind. The ocean glints ahead. The breeze lifts Elizabeth’s white hair under her straw hat. A jogger gives her a thumbs-up. A toddler waves. And for a moment, the years collapse. She’s not a diagnosis. Not a burden. Just a woman alive in the world, watching it roll by.

“Thank you,” she says at the end of each ride. “That was the best part of my day.”

And Seigel-Boettner, who has pedaled through downtown Santa Barbara five million times, says riding with Elizabeth makes it completely new.

I’ve been thinking about this story all week. Not because it’s unusual—though it is, in its way—but because of what it reveals about what we’ve forgotten.

The program started in Copenhagen in 2012, when a man named Ole Kassow borrowed a rickshaw and offered an elderly gentleman from a care home a ride. That single act of kindness has now spread to 3,600 chapters in 41 countries, with 50,000 volunteers worldwide. A visually impaired passenger once called it “the right to wind in your hair.”

Think about that phrase. The right to wind in your hair.

We don’t often think of such things as rights. We think of rights as legal protections, constitutional guarantees, things we argue about in courtrooms and legislatures. But there’s another kind of right—the right to dignity. The right to be seen. The right to feel the sun on your face and watch the world go by, even when your body can no longer carry you there on its own.

Elizabeth Wright has been riding with Seigel-Boettner for years. She points out the pub where she once bartended. She remembers her birthday picnic on the beach. The trishaw becomes a time machine—not backward, but outward. She’s reconnecting with her own story, with the city she helped build, with the life she lived before her world shrank to the size of a room.

“Elderly people come into a nursing home,” Kassow says, “and their world gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until they just sit inside within their four walls.”

The trishaw opens those walls.

What strikes me most is what Seigel-Boettner says about why he does it: “We’re put on this Earth to be of service. Not only that, service feels good.”

That’s the gospel, isn’t it? Stripped of all the theology and doctrine, that’s what Jesus was always trying to teach us. Serve one another. Wash one another’s feet. The last shall be first. The greatest among you shall be your servant.

Seigel-Boettner doesn’t call his riders “passengers.” He calls them “riding partners.” The distinction matters. A passenger is cargo. A partner is a companion. And companionship—real presence, real attention—is what loneliness steals and what service restores.

Studies have confirmed what the volunteers already knew: riders experience measurable improvements in mood and well-being. Social isolation decreases. Quality of life improves. One researcher found that self-rated life satisfaction increased more than in the world’s happiest nations—just from a bike ride with a stranger who became a friend.

But you don’t need a study to understand what’s happening. You just need to watch Elizabeth Wright wave at a toddler from the front of that trishaw, her blue eyes bright, her thin hands lifted in greeting.

She’s alive. She’s seen. She matters.

At least once a week, Seigel-Boettner pairs a middle schooler with a senior for a ride together. They talk about life, music, what’s changed. “The bike isn’t the end,” he says. “The bike is the means to see the world from the riding partner’s perspective.”

Across generations, across the gulf that separates the young from the old, the healthy from the frail—a simple bicycle becomes a bridge.

I think about our own community. The seniors in our churches who used to be fixtures at every potluck and now rarely leave their homes. The widowers who haven’t smiled since they buried their wives. The retired teachers and farmers and shopkeepers whose stories are disappearing because no one thinks to ask.

We don’t all have trishaws. But we all have time. We all have attention. We all have the capacity to show up, to listen, to say: You matter. Your story matters. Come outside with me.

“I’ve ridden through downtown five million times,” Seigel-Boettner says, “but with Elizabeth it was completely new.”

That’s what service does. It doesn’t just change the person being served. It changes the one who serves. It opens your eyes. It makes the familiar strange and beautiful again. It reminds you that you’re not the center of the story—and that’s a relief, actually. The burden of being the main character is heavy. Service sets it down.

Elizabeth Wright, ninety-seven years old, her blanket tucked close in the morning breeze, the ocean glinting ahead: “This is where I bartended,” she says with a grin.

And for a moment, decades collapse. The world is wide open. The wind is in her hair.

That’s not a program. That’s not a policy. That’s just one person deciding that another person’s dignity matters enough to get on a bicycle and pedal.

It’s Friday. The weekend is here. Somewhere in your town, someone is sitting inside four walls, waiting for the world to remember they exist.

Maybe you’re the one who can open the door.

This editorial is part of the fictional Cedar Valley News series. While the people and town are fictional, the national events they reflect on are real.

Want to know the full story behind Cedar Valley? Teresa, Caleb, Dan, and the community you’ve come to know in these editorials first came together in Quiet Echo: When Loud Voices Divide, Quiet Ones Bring Together. Discover how a small town found its way from fear to fellowship—one quiet act of courage at a time. Available on Amazon: https://bit.ly/3ME4nSs

It’s free, live, and fresh! Quiet Echo—A Cedar Valley News Podcast is live on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/4nV8XsE, Spotify: https://bit.ly/4hdNHfX, YouTube: https://bit.ly/48Zfu1g , and Podcastle: https://bit.ly/4pYRstE. Every day, you can hear Cedar Valley’s editorials read aloud by the voices you’ve come to know—warm, steady, and rooted in the values we share. Step into the rhythm of our town, one short reflection at a time. Wherever you listen, you’ll feel right at home. Presented by the Publication Consultants: https://publicationconsultants.com/