In this newsletter...

1. North Lawndale Events
   ​Street Love Ride August 15
   Back to School Lit Fest & Route 66 100th Anniversary 8/23
2. ​Landscaping Blitz!​
3. ​Cycle of Power Updates​
4. ​Basement Reorganization ​
5. ​August General Meeting Minutes​

Happy August, Volunteers! It has been hot and humid but our crew is still working hard, wrenching on Cycle of Power Bikes, packing containers for Jamaica and Ghana and even getting some gardening in! Thank you to everyone who was able to join us at our General Meeting last week, we got to hear from some of our community members including Jocelyn for the American Heart Association and Bikes for Lesotho founder and our Board President Dave Gorman! We have been working with Jocelyn to get a blood pressure monitor in the building, and get staff CPR training, a Cardiac Emergency Response Plan, and an Automatic External Defibrillator. We appreciate all the work being done by staff and volunteers Eric and Marty to make Working Bikes a safe place for everyone.

Dave Gorman discussed the impact of the 7,000+ bikes sent thus far that are supporting three bike shops, the Lesotho Olympic Committee, and Lesotho’s Federation of Cycling. He is very proud to say that cycling has become a major sport there and shops are doing well to grow the cycling culture. If you would like to see his whole talk you can find it on our YouTube channel here. ​

In more bittersweet news, we will be looking for a new Bicycle Acquisitions Specialist as Charlie will be moving on to work on his own non-profit Ollie’s House which focuses on building community and supporting trans folks on 4, not 2, human powered wheels! We have been so grateful to have him representing WB all around Chicagoland, picking up hundreds of donated bikes and bringing them back to our warehouse. We’ll look forward to seeing him around the shop when he wants a break from skateboards and are delighted that he’s leaving plenty of time to pass on his wisdom and train up our next Bicycle Acquisition Specialist.

We are excited to be a part of two great annual events in North Lawndale later this month, and would love to show up to both as deep in WB Volunteers as we can! The Street Love Ride, the annual show of love for the neighborhood and support of peace in the community put together by our dear friends at Boxing Out Negativity (BON) is all set for this Saturday, August 15, at 3147 W. Douglas Blvd, gathering first on the median right out front of St. Agatha for a pre-ride Community Expo from 6–8 PM, then on the street for a ride kickoff at 8 PM.

Before the ride, Working Bikes is looking for volunteers to staff a bike safety check station at the community expo. We'll want to give our neighbors' bikes a quick once over, a little air and lube if needed, and offer any quick, on-the-spot repairs we can to make sure their ride is smooth that evening. Let us know if you're up for a little wrenching there. And on the ride itself, there are plenty of spots on Squad available - we're looking for corkers to block cross traffic; sweepers to keep the ride tight, connected and safe; and SAG (support and gear) to bring up the rear and help with any mechanicals or other issues. It's always great to ride, and if you need any more incentive to sign up to help, Squad always gets its own color scheme on the iconic BON shirts.

We will also be at the Open Books’ annual Back to School Lit Fest! This year will look a little different, as the usual Douglas-Boulevard-closing-event will move a few blocks south to take over Ogden, from Central Park West to Pulaski, as part of the Route 66 Centennial Celebration. You all have been wrenching hard, so we're still planning to give out 50 bikes to youth in North Lawndale, with priority pickings for those who have completed Open Books Summer Reading Challenge. Donations get started at 1 PM (we think, it's a little fluid...) Let us know if you can help size bikes and fit helmets (thanks for the donations, Disparti Law) at what is always a blast of a community event. And to try to weight the scales a little more towards non-motorized transportation, we're hoping we can find a few volunteers to offer safety checks and bike love to attendees. No shade will be thrown on anyone who checks out the massive classic car show on the western end of the fest!

Landscaping Blitz

If you have been around the shop and noticed something was looking extra organized, you have probably seen the work of board member Ed Hanlon! He has been working hard rearranging our first floor to prepare for our new ramp entrance. In the process of building the ramp we had to take out some plants and trees that lined the sidewalk, and we are glad to have found new homes for some of the trees. Ed has been working this week with a group of fantastic volunteers to make the empty dirt lot ready for some beautification! Once we are ready we will be able to fill the area with native plants and grass courtesy of Midwest Goundcovers and Gethsemane Garden Center​

Our Cycle of Power program is in its busy season but we are so proud of our volunteers and staff for all their hard work. We have had a lot of bulk donations so far, including 50 bikes to Chicago Help Initiative, 10 bikes for the Perro ride and 52 adult bikes and 32 kids bikes for Roll n Peace. Our current wait for a bicycle is 4-5 weeks, which is the shortest turnaround we have had during our peak busy season since Covid! If you are interested in learning more about refurbishing the Cycle of Power bikes we have an ongoing class on Tuesday evenings, you can sign up on POINT. ​

We have been thrilled to see more bikes head out of our warehouse basement than we have packed into it this year. With two live-load 53' containers off to Mexico earlier this year and our first ever shipment to Jamaica just a few weeks ago, we can see parts of the walls and floor down there that have been hidden for years. Finding a home and a new life for bikes that we 1) can't have professional mechanics fix without losing money, 2) can't fix fast enough in Brandon's Bike Shop to outpace the donation rate, and 3) know can serve someone as reliable transportation has been the dream for our basement stash, and now that we have a few containers loaded and room to work, we can re-organize and prepare to get ALL those bikes to new homes.

To make the most of the basement space and be ready for our next basement-heavy load, we are looking for volunteers and volunteer groups to help us organize! When loading for Jamaica, we needed 27 x 1 1/4" road bikes and cruisers, and 26 x 1 3/8" (590) cruisers. Pulling from a double stacked row of 590s was a dream, compared to sorting as we went to separate Schwinn's proprietary 26 x 1 3/8" (597) wheel size. Sorting bikes by wheel size and prepping them makes it a lot easier to load them into a container when the time comes. We'll work on this project over time, but if anyone has an interest in organizing and spending time in the basement, please let us know at volunteer@workingbikes.org! We're looking for some volunteer champions to help take the reigns on the overhaul.

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