Geoff Bennett: Ole Kassow is a Danish entrepreneur who started Cycling Without Age. That’s a nonprofit that encourages volunteers to cycle with senior citizens in bike taxis as a way to help them get outdoors.

Tonight, Kassow shares his Brief But Spectacular take.

Ole Kassow, Founder, Cycling Without Age: All the wealth of knowledge that sits in our elderly citizens is lost, because nobody is really taking an interest.

But if you go for a bike ride with a person who has experience and lived life in a local community, they completely liven up. Two people in the front seat, one person riding, is like a magic bubble. And within that magic bubble, everything can happen, and age does not matter.

I do remember learning to ride a bike. It was something my dad did, and I think it was a bicycle that I got for my third birthday. When I was probably about 3 or 4 years old, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And so, within a couple of years, he was in a wheelchair.

I guess I was a little young to understand exactly how that impacted my dad. He would have some mood changes, and I think part of that was because he was lonely. And I could see how much he missed the mobility. Particularly elderly people or people with handicaps very often have a hard time getting out of that circumstance themselves.

And I definitely saw that with my dad. He needed other people around him to lift him out of that situation. Cycling Without Age is a way to take elderly people out of their loneliness, and giving them back their mobility, so they can once again become part of life.

One of the first rides I took was with a woman named Gertrude in Copenhagen. She took me down her memory lane. And it completely took me by surprise, because I had heard that Gertrude was not really talking anymore. And yet, to me, she was talking nonstop for one hour.

I became her witness. And it gave her an immense satisfaction that she was able to pass on those stories and they wouldn’t be forgotten. Cycling Without Age really just started in one location with just one bike and myself. But it has since inspired people around the world.

We’re now in over 50 countries, and I think we have chapters in nearly 3,000 cities. We’re all young at some point and we’re all old at some point. Young people, they can learn a lot from elderly people. And I think old people, they love to basically see the old mirror image of themselves in the young people. And a lot of wisdom is shared between the generations.

We all grow old, and we all have people in our lives of age. Being able to put a smile on the face and listen to the story of an elderly person is something that is going to bring so much meaning to our own lives.

My name is Ole Kassow, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on the right to relate.

Geoff Bennett: And you can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.