Volunteer opportunities at Community Cycles for July 26, 2009

[Josh Brown]

Hey Everyone,

Thanks for all the recent emails with all the enthusiasm. It's helpful to know that someone's out there reading these emails, and they're not just going out into the ether. Let me know if you're interested in any of these.

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

Experienced Mechanic Mondays 12-3 PM
Katie will be here working on bikes from noon to 3. We need some help plowing through bikes that are in need of some love. Unfortunately, we don't have the capacity to go over mechanical questions during this time,  so we can only take experienced mechanics. What makes an experienced mechanic? It varies, of course, but we need folks who are comfortable overhauling a complete bike without needing assistance. If you're interested, please show up to the shop at Noon.

You're welcome to earn EAB hours helping us work on bikes on Mondays from 12-3, but you will need to be an advanced mechanic. If you're not sure if  you are, then you're better off coming to an evening at our North Storage Facility. See below.

North Storage Work Parties, Mondays 4-8 PM, Wednesdays 5-9 PM
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 3rd week of August, 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 5 to 9 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, 5 PM on Wednesday,) that would make our world much easier, as we can teach everyone the evening's lesson all at once.

Police and CU bike pickups, Wednesday, July 29 1 PM to 5 PM
Ever wonder what happens to bikes that get abandoned on around town? Most of them find their way to Community Cycles. With some help from volunteers. That's you! We'll be picking up a load of 120+ bikes on Wednesday, from 1 PM to 5 PM. We need help packing bikes, which means removing pedals, turning handlebars (what we call "flattening" the bikes), as well as loading them
into the truck and taking them out once we get to our North Storage Facility.

We can use 15-20 people (including 4-5 experienced mechanics) to help with this bike pickup. Please email jo...@communitycycles.org for more information about where to meet and when to help us out with this.

Earn-a-bike participants are welcome to come out and help pick up these bikes. It's a really easy (if sweaty) way to earn some hours, for sure.

Family Learning Center After School Bike Club, 1 PM to 3 PM, Ongoing Thursdays, 

   Community Cycles in conjunction with the Family Learning Center at San Juan del Centro conducts after school bike classes. Each class meets on Wednesdays for 8 weeks and teaches participants the rules of the road,
map reading and bike maintenance. Each class is a combination of bike riding and maintenance. When finished, students pick bikes to keep as their own.  We need some folks to come out and help chaperone the kids as we go for rides in the neighborhood, and help keep them focused, using hand signals, and riding on the right.
Little to no mechanical experience is necessary to help with this, but we do ask that you be able to commit to 6 Thursdays in a row at the least.
For more information on helping with this class, please email ri...@communitycycles.org.

You can sign up as an Family Learning Center Instructor and earn EAB hours, but you must commit to helping for at least 6 weeks in a row.

Farmer's Market, Saturdays 7:30 to 11 AM, and 11 to 2:30 PM

We've got some mechanics who will be there, but we're still needing some folks who can help get set up, tear down,

and table during the day. The two shifts are from 7:30 AM to 11, and 11 to 2:30. You DO NOT have to be an experienced bicycle mechanic for this. You should be comfortable talking to the public and answering questions about Community Cycles.
You are welcome and encouraged to earn EAB hours at the Farmer's Market,
but you'll need to line this up ahead of time with Josh.

Wash some water bottles
We've got a bunch of water bottles that have been donated. They're in various states of cleanliness. We'd like for someone with a dishwasher to take them home, run them through the washer, and bring them back. Email me if you're interested. It's one or two loads in a normal sized dishwasher.

One lucky (and/or fast emailing) person will be able to earn a couple of hours doing this. The first person to get back to me gets this one.

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 

Flyering for Meadows Rolling Bike Clinic, Tuesday, August 4th 4 PM to ???

We'll meet at the Meadows Mobile Home Park at 19th and Violet, and distribute fliers announcing the Rolling Bike Clinic on Saturday the 8th. Wear comfortable shoes. Spanish speakers definitely needed to help with this.

Rolling Bike Clinics Meadows Mobile Home Park,
11 AM - 4PM Saturday, August 8th

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 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.

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.
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.