Recycling Bikes and Building Pride

My friend took me to the awesomest place to buy a bike today. I’d been hoping to get the kid a new bike. The old one was her first bike, far beneath her now especially in its purple and pink. So since last year’s adventures with my bike informed me that I didn’t know half as much about bikes as I thought I did, I enlisted my friend Rochelle. She has two bikes that live in her dining room and see far more use than her dining room table does.

Our first stop was a traditional bike shop. I’d set a budget of $200, knowing that was going to limit the selection but hoping we could find something decent. Rochelle drove us to the nearest shop, though she didn’t think we’d find what we needed there, and she was right. Cheapest bike on the floor was $279.

Rochelle carefully sounded me out on the idea of a used bike instead. I’m a firm believer in recycling (and in not paying full price) so I was amenable so long as we could find a good one.

We’re an education center, not a traditional bike shop.

She took me to bicas. Bicycle Inter-Community Action and Salvage. It is the most brilliant place I’ve been in some time. Here’s the entrance‡:

Yes, under that awning and down the ramp. It’s in a basement. You may not find that exciting, but we live in Tucson. Very few buildings have basements. The child said she’d never been in a basement before, and she might be right. What made it even more awesome is it’s a basement under a warehouse that would almost certainly be standing empty, ugly, and decrepit without this awesome charity under it. It’s right in what was the industrial part of downtown. Trains went by some six times while we were there, rumbling the cement under our feet.

Walking down the ramp is walking into a different reality. bicas operates an open shop, which means that at certain times, you can go and pay them $4 an hour (never more than $12 a day) for the use of their shop and their tools. I knew none of this when I walked in–we were just looking for a used bike. Even Rochelle, who had been there a few times, didn’t know how truly awesome the place is.

Bike parts are everywhere, most neatly sorted and labeled. Crates of pedals, racks of frames and tires and forks, hanging art of bicycle chains…like this.

That’s a rack of front forks there, next to a column hung about with chains. The columns are too big for me to reach around, and painted with numbers so it’s easy for an experienced worker to tell a newbie where to find something. The shopping cart is full of seats. Off to the right where you can’t see are crates on crates of other pieces. Reggae was playing (loudly) and people were working and talking. Not what you expect when you walk into a bike store.

What I really loved, though, was at least half the bike-mechanics were women. There was a pretty bohemian-dressed girl, hands black with grease, working on a bike with a big smile. A woman with dreadlocks, barefoot and pregnant, sorted parts–and believe me, you would not want to make a joke about her state to her. She wasn’t particularly large, but I had the instant impression she could so kick my ass if I tried to condescend. (Not that I would! I can put a bike together when it comes in a box. I cannot build a bike.) A neatly-dressed woman showed up at some point, her equally-nicely dressed daughter in tow, to work on a bike.

We found a bike. Of a line of twenty-some refurbished and “As Is” bicycles (meaning their mechanics hadn’t looked at them closely, but they seemed okay to sell) one stood out immediately, a nicely-framed mountain-bike, scuffed but not abused, with the awesome price of $99.

They let the child take it out for a ride. They even loaned her a helmet.

She was in love by the time she got back. Rochelle pointed out we weren’t quite ready to buy–the pedals were not in great shape, and the bike had no reflectors. How much more would that cost? How long would it take to get someone to help us with that?

Here’s where it gets awesome. The gentleman helping us–meaning he’d wander by every few minutes to see if we needed anything we couldn’t find–pointed to the proper crates and told the child to go find what she needed. We dug through a crate of pedals and found two that seemed good, but when she took them to the bike, the man showed her they were too small for the axle. (Sprocket? I forget the terms.) We found two more, but we weren’t paying enough attention and got two right-side pedals. Child came back and kicked both me and Rochelle out of the crate to find what she needed herself.

And she did. She found the pedals and Rochelle approved them, so the child took her pedals to her bike-to-be, and the man showed her how to attach them.

I tell you, the girl was hooked. I found her an apron so she’d stop wiping her hands on her pants. Rochelle found her four reflectors, but two weren’t good enough. Back into the parts she went, and again we were not allowed to help. She found two reflectors she wanted, but neither had the bolts still attached.

The child dove into the coffee can full of small parts to find what she needed.

All in all, we spent over two hours in that basement, Rochelle and I wandering around and looking at things while the child searched and worked.

↑ This is the fix-a-flat station, with instructions.

This is an awesome bike they use in parades, I’m told. ↓

Here’s a picture from outside, showing bicas’ blank warehouse past.

Here’s a cool shack made of bicycle art.

So, yeah. For two hours, my ADD Adventure Girl had laser focus to get her bike the way she wanted it. Miss “I don’t know how do it for me” did it all herself. Miss Know-it-All† took advice and help from everyone in the shop (except me. Of course.) When we left, paying only the original $99 despite the extra parts and tons of advice, the child was the one who put it in the car. She got it out too, and ran for her helmet to get a ride in before it got dark.

She’s so proud of herself for the work she did. She really enjoyed the atmosphere of the shop, and the attitudes of those around her. She wants to donate her old bike to them, and can’t wait till I sign her up for the Basic Maintenance course. She wants to take the Build A Bike workshop too.

Pride and enthusiasm are nothing rare for her. It’s the focus of two hours of dirty, unfamiliar work spent getting her bike exactly the way she wanted it that gives me hope. Maybe at last we’ve found something that can hold her, that can ground her and give her a place to start in learning the concentration and persistence she so desperately needs.

We’ll see. In the meantime she has a bike that she loves and takes great pride in, and we have a new place to gush about.

[should be a pic here]

So where’s the picture of the new bike? I couldn’t get one. I wasn’t allowed near her as she worked, and when we got it home, she was gone till dark fell.

I’m not complaining.

†Yes, I realize these descriptors are contradictory. So is she.
‡All pictures taken with my cellphone. Don’t judge that new camera I like to rave about.