When Michael McCormack watched his two children and their friends pedal the paved path to Eagle’s Brush Creek Elementary, he noticed the young riders’ penchant for darting off the official track to follow playful dirt detours through the rolling grasses and sagebrush. “They ripped those little offshoots,” says McCormack, a bike race promoter and PR professional. So he spearheaded a proposal to turn those unofficial detours into sanctioned single-track routes. Unanimously approved by Eagle’s city council last November, the Singletrack Sidewalks project will, over the next five years, supplement existing paths with a single-track network to connect Eagle’s seven neighborhoods to its school, library, and other trailheads. But the project doesn’t just boost the fun factor for local tykes. Kids helped flag the initial three-block pilot area, and they’ll work alongside local parents and professional trail builders this April when construction begins. “We want kids to come away with a sense of ownership and accountability,” says McCormack, who expects a mile of single-track “sidewalks” to be completed this year. “It gets kids on bikes and gives them five minutes of Zen between home and school each day.” That’s commuting Colorado-style.