Community Cycles Volunteer and Earn-a-Bike Opportunities for August 7, 2009

[Josh Brown]

Hey Gang,

As busy as we are, we don't have that many new items this week, so the email will look the same as last week. That doesn't mean we don't still need help with this stuff. We need help like never before. Please take a moment and check out what's going on, and let me know if any of it sounds like it's something you'd like to do. If you're not sure, email me and I'll give you all the details you need.

Also, a lot of you may not be aware that in addition to these emails, we have a monthly E-Newsletter which heralds all the events we have coming up, and our accomplishments for the month. It's a great way to find out what we've been up to that doesn't make it into these emails. If you're interested in getting one of those emails per month, please let me know and I'll subscribe you.

Those of you looking to get hours for your Earn-a-Bike (EAB) will want to keep an eye out for the italicized text below.
 As we get better at keeping the shop organized, and move forward as an organization, dropping by the shop to is becoming less and less of a realistic option for getting hours. We're looking into an option for folks to be able to schedule their hours in advance. I'd be interested in hearing back from anyone with feedback on such an idea. For now, check out what's coming up, and let me know at which events you'd like to help out.

As always, if you know of someone else who would like to be involved in Community Cycles, please feel free to forward this email, or my contact info to them.

Thanks again, everyone.

Josh  Brown
Development Director
Community Cycles
720-565-6019
jo...@communitycycles.org

Rolling Bike Clinics

What's a Rolling Bike Clinic, you ask? This is one of my favorite things that we do, and if we didn't do anything else, this might be the thing I vote for us to keep doing. We'll load up the bike trailers with tools and parts and head over to the Mapleton neighborhood and fix bikes for a day.  I highly encourage any of you who want to work on bikes or just get out there and make some change in a real way on a local level come out and help with this.

We have three broad goals with the Rolling Bike Clinics:

   1. Fix bikes
   2. Teach Bike safety
   3. Introduce residents to the Boulder path system

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 Meadows Rolling Bike Clinic, meet us at the shop around 10:30AM and ride out around 10:40AM.  Or you can also meet us at the Meadows clubhouse located at 19th and Violet.  Help for an hour or the whole event.

Rolling Bike Clinics Meadows Mobile Home Park,
11 AM - 4PM Saturday, August 8th
We need lots and lots of help with this one.

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 Meadows Rolling Bike Clinic, meet us at the North Storage Facility (see below for address and directions) around 10:30AM and ride out around 10:40AM.  Or you can also meet us at the Meadows clubhouse located at 19th and Violet.
You can also come by our main shop and get directions from there.
Help for an hour or the whole event.

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.

North Storage Work Parties, Mondays 4-8 PM, Wednesdays 4-8 PM Through Aug 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. We're there every week, on Mondays from 4 to 8 PM, and Wednesdays from 4 to 8 PM. 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, 4 PM on Wednesday,) 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.

Volunteer Orientation, Thursday, August 13th, 6 PM to 7 PM, at Community Cycles

Come and get a tour of our space and find out where we could most use you!  If you haven't been to a Volunteer Orientation, it's a great way to learn more about who we are and what we do. More importantly, it's a great way to find out how we can

Earn-a-Bike Participants are welcome and invited to join us at Volunteer Orientations and participate. Participation in the meeting will not count towards Earn-a-Bike hours, but it is a great way to learn about everything we have going on here, and how you can get involved, specifically outside of normal shop hours.

Rocky Mountain Bike Show
Saturday, and Sunday, August 22nd through 23rd
Join us August 22nd & 23rd at the National Western Complex in Denver for the nation's most exciting bicycle show.
Come see the finest custom frame-builders, production bike manufacturers, sports nutrition, components & accessory companies and much more.
See www.rmbshow.com for more info.
Community Cycles will have a booth with information about Community Cycles for the show visitors.
I need some help getting the word out about who we are and what we do. No mechanical experience, but bike geeks are encouraged not to miss out on this one. There will be local microbrewers on hand, with free samples. Is anyone still reading this? Free beer! All you have to do is sit there with me and talk to folks about Community Cycles! And you can earn hours!
This is sure to be a really fun event, and I'm sure lots of folks will be interested, but we can only get one or two folks in per day. Please get back to me ASAP if you want to join us at our booth.

You can earn EAB hours staffing our booth, but  you'll need to get in touch with me quickly, as this will be a high demand event.

Student Sale, August 26, 8 AM to 6 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.
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've got a little over a month to go to make this happen. 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 6. 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.

Greeter trainings have moved to Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays,
from 10:45 AM to 2:15 PM, and 2:15 to 6:15 PM.

We need folks to come in and help out in the office. Answer phones, greet Earn-a-Bikers, explain who we are and what we do to shop visitors. There is some data entry involved, and people persons are encouraged to help out with this. No mechanical experience is needed to help in the office. Helping out as a greeter does mean there's about an hour of training involved, so interested parties should be willing to commit to several shifts as a greeter once they've been trained. The greeter is the first person most people encounter when they come into Community Cycles, and as such is super important to the shop being able to run smoothly.

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.
Water Cooler Stand/Base, for 5 gallon office water cooler style, preferably the type with the internal electric cooler, not the ceramic base.

And one last note.

This is not for a Community Cycles event, nor will you be able to earn hours doing this. It's a fun event, and they need some help, so we're sending the call for volunteers out to try and help out a fellow bike group.

 We were contacted by Jessie Anne, one of the organizers for The Peace Ride, and one of their support mechanics had to drop out at the last minute. Her note is below.  If you're interested in helping--there is a specific commitment needed, see below--please contact me, and I'll put you in touch with Jessie Anne.

Here's the note from Jessie Anne:

Thanks for helping me to spread the word.  Here' a link to the ride: www.thepeaceride.com.

 

In a nutshell, the Colorado Peace Ride is a 4-day (August 9-12) fully supported 238 mile ride along the San Juan skyway that benefits non-profits.  The ride starts and ends in Durango:  Durango > Ouray > Telluride > Dolores > Durango.  It's one of the most scenic roads in the US.

 

What we're looking for is a mechanic to wrench for 1 shift each day.  Use of the campground would be free and all meals and gas (if carpooling with me) would be covered as well.  I'll also see about getting the mechanic a free cycling jersey, which will say "Inaugural Colorado Peace Ride" (It's the 1st year we're organizing the ride). There's also an extra rack on my car if the mechanic wants to bring a bicycle to tool around town or bike up a pass or 2 during his/her free time. It's a great opportunity for someone to get a chance to explore the 4-corners area and to be surrounded by people with a lot of positive energy. 

 

We would appreciate this help tremendously.

 

Jessie Anne