Volunteer and Earn-a-Bike Opportunities at Community Cycles for August 21st

[Josh Brown]

Greetings, everyone!

Before I get into what we have going on, I'd like to take a moment and urge you to go down to Left Hand Books and buy something or check out their volunteer setup. They're a collectively run progressive bookstore with lots of hard to find and really awesome books and periodicals. Most of which you won't find at the big box or even independent commercial bookstores. They could really use your support right now. If you've ever considered buying a copy of "A People's History of the United States" or a new slingshot planner, now's a great time to do it. They're a great resource that's been around a long time, and I'd hate to see them have to go away.

Also, please note that the shop will be closed from Friday, August 28th through Sunday, August 30th, while staff re out of town. Our regular hours will resume on Tuesday, September 1.

As for our needs, there are a bunch.  As usual, those of you looking to earn hours towards a bike or a class, keep an eye out for the italicized text. It's directed at you. And if  you know of anyone who's interested in helping out with bike skills or not, please send this email their way.

Thanks again for all of your help in and out of the shop. It really feels like we're taking this thing to the next level with everyone I've seen lately. Thanks so much.

Josh Brown
Development Director
Community Cycles
720-565-6019

Volkswagen mechanic needed.
We're good at bike mechanics. Our van is feeling neglected as a result. If anyone knows how these things work, ours could use some love. This one's for experienced mechanics only, but you can earn hours doing it, if you can give it the care it needs.
If you're interested, please email ri...@communitycycles.org

Experienced wrench day at North Storage, Sunday, August 23, Noon to 5 PM
All those bikes that we've been working on for the Student Sale are almost close to being done. We just need experienced mechanics to come help us tweak them to get them perfect. We'll be there from noon to 5 PM on this Sunday.
For info, please contact ri...@communitycycles.org.

Final North Storage Monday Night Work Parties, 4-8 PM, Monday, August 24
This is the easiest way to both learn some bike mechanics, and earn hours towards your Earn-a-Bike.
We have much more capacity for help and workers up at this location. We can handle about 20-30 volunteers. We've got about 400 bikes in our North Storage Facility. We'd like to have 200 or more tuned up and ready to sell by the Student Sale (see below for info on that), when students get back. We cannot get nearly this many done on our own. We need your help for this, in a big way. Our final scheduled worknight is going to be on Monday from 4 to 8 PM.
We will definitely be continuing to work on bikes up there,
but we don't right now  have anything scheduled.
We work out of a donated Boulder County space, so we don't publish the address on our website, but here is a google map and the address of the building.

Earn-a-Bikers, if you can at all make it when we start the evening, (4 PM on Monday,) that would make our world much easier, as we can teach everyone the evening's lesson all at once.

After the Student Sale, we won't be working in North Boulder twice a week, but we may still be up there once a week. We'll have details about which day and how often once we get it figured out. If there's a night that works better for you than another, please email me and let me know and we'll keep that in mind when we schedule
our regular North Storage Worknights.

Envelope Stuffers Needed.
 Clean hands and nice penmanship are a must. We've got about 1500 letters that need to go out to members, and we need some help folding the letters, stuffing them into envelopes, and addressing those envelopes.
If you've got nice handwriting, and clean hands, please get in touch.

You can earn hours doing this. Please email jo...@communitycycles.org for more info.

Rolling Bike Clinic at Boulder Steelyards,

12 - 4PM Saturday, August 22nd

We need all levels of mechanical ability, from novices who've never touched a bike or a wrench to those of you who know how to build wheels. Experience working with kids is definitely helpful, but not at all required. If you'd like to help with the Steelyards Rolling Bike Clinic, meet us at the shop around 11:30AM and ride out around 11:40AM.  Or you can also meet us at the Steelyards park, located at 19th and Violet.  Help for an hour or the whole event.

You can earn EAB hours working at the Rolling Bike Clinics. Please check in ahead of time if you're going to earn hours helping with the Rolling Bike Clinic.

Student Sale, Presale Prep 3-9 PM Tuesday, August 25,
Sale Day: August 26, 8 AM to 7 PM, On Campus
We've got something big planned for this one. Those of you who helped out with the Cruiser Sale know what I'm talking about.
We need help with loadingup the truck the night before the sale.
We'll need help unloading and setting up the bikes the morning of the sale.
We'll also need (hopefully not as much) help loading unsold bikes back onto the truck and into our space.

CU wants to welcome students back with bikes.
We're hoping to have 200 bikes tuned up and ready to sell to incoming and returning CU students.
 We're definitely going to need help in prepping bikes and on the day of. If you're interested in being involved, please let me know.

You can definitely earn EAB hours working on the Student Sale. Let me know if you're interested and I'll let you know the details.

Valet Bike Parking at Venus De Miles Sunday, August 30th, 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM

Venus de Miles, an all-woman charity ride, has asked Community Cycles to help them with some Valet Bike Parking at their event in Longmont on August 30th.
We cannot do this without at least 20 committed volunteers. At the moment, we have 12.
We very much need your help to pull this off.
If you're reading this, please please please consider helping us out with  this event.
 This is also a great chance to help us raise money, work for an awesome event, and meet lots of ladies and families who don't know about Community Cycles. What will it mean for you? Our workday will start around 8 AM, and go until 2:30. We'll need folks to help accept, tag and retrieve bikes for customers, as well as setup and take down the bike parking racks. We'll especially need help at the beginning and end of the day. During the middle of the day, you're free to visit the other booths at the fest, which will include all kinds of green and natural living companies.

This is a really fun and easy way to contribute in a bigger way than just helping in the shop. We need a ton of people for this, and we'd love to have as many EAB participants helping as possible. There's quite a bit of setup and planning involved in this,
so we'll need to get starting working together as soon as possible
if we're going to make this happen.

You can earn EAB hours helping with this event. It's a super easy and fun way to rack them up quickly. If you know of someone who's interested in the EAB program, and wants to get some quick hours, this is the event for them. There will be at least one pre-event meeting, to go over the plan and the day's schedule, which will count towards EAB hours.

Community Cycles Facilitators Wanted!
Already earned your bike? Want to give something back to Community Cycles and help new Earn-a-Bikers? Or just get your mugshot posted in the hallway? We've developed a facilitator training process that will get you up to speed on the ins and outs of every day activities in and out of the shop.  The process consists of four training sessions that last 3 -4 hour each.
If you'd like to start training as a shop facilitator contact ri...@communitycycles.org

Wish List Items

If any of you have any of the following items you could do without, we can use them. Bring them in any time, if you can.

T-Shirts to use as rags
Toothbrushes, old, new, electric, whatever.
AA batteries--these should be new, as we can't use old ones.
Wooden stools, short or tall.
Electric Water Cooler Stand/Base, for 5 or 3 gallon water bottles, preferably the type with the internal electric cooler, not a ceramic base.
3 or 5 Gallon reusable screw cap type water bottles, to go with the base.