Help our friends at Recycle-A-Bike

A few months ago, I went to a 4 week class at Recycle-a-bike, the local community bike center here in Providence. I enjoyed the class, and I loved the feeling of disassembling a bike and seeing how everything works.  When I inherited Project: Cignal from a friend who was fleeing the city, I intended to take it down to recycle-a-bike and see what we could do with it. Unfortunately, I’ve been busy, the open shop times aren’t the most convenient,  I’d rather ride than wrench, yadda yadda, the next thing you know, it’s been a few months since I visited my friends down in the Steelyard. There’s also the problem of getting a secondary bike to a shop a few miles away when you don’t own a car. I decided to do this in stages. Stage 1: ride the bike to my office which is half way to RAB. Stage 2, get the Cignal over to RAB. Stage 3, get home. I completed Stage 1 about 6 weeks ago, and now the Cignal sits in the bike rack at work, taking up space just like those jerks who leave their bikes there all year round. But I may have a way to complete Stage 2 tomorrow. I’m going to a special fundraising event tomorrow in the general vicinity of RAB, so I’ll ride the Cignal there (while praying to a higher power that it doesn’t fall apart), then catch a ride back to my bike with one of my coworkers. Problem: solved.

I’ve been having some severe bike-lust lately, maybe a trip to Recycle-a-bike will help cure me of this disease. I’ve started perusing the Craigslist ads, and I’ve even visited a couple of the Local Bike Shops to do a quick test spin. I still think that I should buy a beater winter bike before I buy a decent road bike, but man, those road bikes are so pretty.

Still, some people don’t even have a crappy department store bike to call their own, and that’s where recycle-a-bike comes in. They teach people how to fix bikes, and sell used (but spruced up) bikes to people at affordable prices. Right now, they’re trying to raise money to build a new shop. They are stuck in a little corner of one of the Steelyard buildings where they can store a few bikes, then pull them out to work on, but then have to put them all away again at the end of the day.

so many volunteers, so little space

It’s a less than ideal situation, but they have a plan for a new space.

They just need to raise $15,000, which is less money than the MSRP of a “dentist bike” like this one. I’m certainly not in the market for a dentist bike, but I think that I can afford to make a pledge to this project. Now I just need to convince my dentist to pledge!