SU BIKE SHED, THE EPIC.

I am a bad person but I did actually work on this project, and really enjoyed getting a modicum of work done on it I feel mildly accomplished. Only somewhat though. Here goes:

Week 1 and then some

I suppose I should follow up with some back-story. I had heard about the bike shed as a freshman and had wondered what had come of it. All I heard were tall tales and rumors about a girl who had made it for her capstone, and then abandoned it and lost the key. I had brought it up in SEAK as a potential project, however it was tabled due to lack of interest. I didn’t give it a second thought until may of 2009. A group of folks from SEAK signed up to attend Power Shift, a youth environmental activism conference in DC. A lot was gained from the experience, but one panel in particular stuck in my mind. “Starting a Bike Co-Op." It was basically a round table discussion on the promotion and practical realization of how to start and manage a Bike Cooperative. A lot of good knowledge was bandied about, but thanks to our already awesome Pirate Bike program it seemed to be silly to try and rent bikes out to people. Especially with how bike-unfriendly parts of Georgetown can be. So I took notes, joined the google group and again let it sit on the backburner. Summer came on strong and I found myself living in Austin without a car, and then I did something that has since become an obsession. I bought a bike. For $100 I bought a ‘97 Specialized Santa Cruz. It was a hybrid frame meant for upright riding with tires on the skinny side, but it was no speed demon, still it was the fastest bike I’d ever ridden. I was taken. It made my morning commute fun and exciting and I from there it only got worse. It wasn’t long until I had built my first fixed gear bike and had dived headlong into the throws of a good sized obsession. The more I read about and obsessed over bikes the more I became enamored with bike culture, biker’s rights, and the state of bicycling in America. It was long after that I rode in my first Critical Mass. An event I would later attempt to replicate. The state of alternative modes of transportation in the states is a bit appalling. The personal automobile reigns king and anything else usually takes a back seat to them. Bicyclists, while not in bad shape, were far from protected well neither physically nor legally. Without proper bikes lanes, or at least broad shoulders, the idea of riding a bike on the road was daunting. Not only that but passing laws and enforcement of them is weak, nationwide. There are occasional bright motes of hope, progressive cities that have smart urban planning, but for the most part the idea of riding a bike for more than just leisure was a madman’s pipedream.

It had been a while and I had engaged in three or so weeks of e-mailing, asking around, and trying to figure out where the darn thing was but I found it. The bike shed. It’s across 29, right behind Bob Mathis’ office, in a garage. With his blessing a duplicate key was made the week after Homecoming and I finally got access to the Bike Shed, previously called Giracion, and got a feel for it. It was dirty, unused, and unfinished. It had been unoccupied for a year and the physical plant had stored old limestone bricks, shovels, and other garden tools in it - however it was well furnished. It came equipped with everything needed to fix and build a bike. Almost all the necessary tools, minus screw drivers and a bike pump, were there. Not only that but there were a few rusting old Mountain Bikes in desperate need of salvage, repair, or just plain junking. It took two hours but Jenna, my girlfriend, and I, had it cleaned out to where it was somewhat manageable. We only had one repair stand and the floor was unfinished. Unfortunately for me the easiest thing to fix, a flat, would be impossible, as there weren’t any kits to be found. We lucked out though, as we were finishing up, the man who runs the pirate bikes pulled up in a golf cart loaded for bear with Pirate bikes in need of repair. Steffi, the student worker who repairs them, was getting the rundown of what to do and how to do it. We made small talk, and then thankfully, we were granted partial access to some of the supplies on that side of the garage. As a bonus I was offered a job next semester fixing bikes, but that’s beside the point. With the space cleared out and a to-do list made Jenna and I ate lunch, there was so much to do.

Week 2

Part of the reason I wanted to start the bike shed back up again was to have a place where I could fix and build bicycles. My roommate was tired of having my toolkit eat the only table in our room, and I was tired of having three or four half-finished projects taking up most of the space in front of the tee vee. The other reason was to promote bike culture, and more appropriately alternative modes of transportation. Not only that but a quick google search revealed the closest bike shop to Southwestern was in Round Rock. Unfortunately for those of without a car, it’s a bit hard to walk a broken bike down I-35. Thanks to the pirate bike system, and an unfriendly bike infrastructure the idea of renting out bikes seemed less than feasible. Rather I wanted to be able to provide the folks who do have bikes on campus a place to have them repaired for free, as well as a place to learn more about the machine between their legs.

The most important things for the bike shed was funding and action. Jenna and I had got the ball rolling, but we couldn’t make real progress until we had money. The floor needed finishing, we needed screw drivers, and the shed would have difficulty existing without a revenue stream to support the need for small parts. I looked to the SEED grant to help fill that gap. So, per the grant’s application, two things had to be done: A budget, and a mission statement. Steffi and I drew up a rough budget, we would need small parts for the easiest fixes, things like chains, cables, ferrules, and bolts. The little parts that wear out quickest and need replacing most often. We figured in more stands, and another tool roll or two so more than one person could work at a time. It came out to be a bit much, not even factoring in the floor. It was a rough estimate, and we aren’t professionals, just hobbyists. Next came the hard part, trying to describe, in detail the real role of the bike shed.

What follows is a rough draft of that essay:

The SU bike shed will act as a functioning bike workshop able to provide the means to fix bicycles on campus in a cheap and reliable manner. It will also exist as a support method for the promotion of bicycling here on campus both as a utilitarian activity and as leisure one. The Bike shed will hold workshops on how to maintain and repair bicycles as well as providing a helping hand in supporting bicyclists on campus. Many people have bikes here on campus but there does not exist a bike shop within a reasonable distance and the Bike shed would offer most of services available at a normal bike shop as well as empowering people to continue repairs without us. Potentially we would also rebuild/ repair bicycles for sale back to campus, or donation.

The Bicycle Club that would oversee the operation would run the bike shed the shed. The Shed would hold monthly rides around Georgetown for fun and fitness as well as supporting other events. The SU bike club will also provide a once a month workshop, and an open weekly workshop time in which any person can use the tools available at the bike shed with the supervision of Shed managers. These workshops would encompass aspects of proper bicycle fit, proper riding techniques, wheel tensioning and building, repair and rebuilding of hubs, as well as brake line replacing and how to patch and repair tires and tubes, as well as headset and bottom bracket installation. These workshops would be led by a knowledgeable student and would hopefully encourage students to maintain and utilize their personal bike in a more knowledgeable manner. Hopefully we would also be able to sponsor and hold off campus road and mountain bike rides providing a modicum of support and sponsor bike culture on campus.

Funding would initially go toward the finishing of the shed, completing the flooring, and then would go towards expanding the number of tools and work stands so that the shed would be better equipped to handle individuals. Then we would begin the workshops and providing support to the bicycling community of Georgetown as well as Southwestern.

And that’s essentially what I want to do with the space. Ultimately the Bike Shed is simply a jumping off point for the promotion of Bicycling as a whole.

Week 3: The Event

This is a story on how not to put together an event. This is also a story in what not to do. Unsure of how to promote the shed effectively I used SEAK as a means to get at that. The CPS nuclear energy event had dropped into our laps and a lot of SEAK’s attention had been drawn there, but there was an open weekend in which we had arranged and very poorly advertised a critical mass ride which I had hoped would get a few bicyclists out. I had talked about it with a few of my friends, but I hadn’t whole heartedly promoted it as it should have. The Facebook event was made, and the expectation was laid out on thursday at the SEAK meeting, but when the time came... It was me and two extra bikes. So, after giving it twenty minutes for stragglers I set off on my own ride. I had spent the morning fixing up my fixed gear, the back tire had gotten a nasty gash in it after a run in with something sharp, so I’d be damned if I didn’t have a bit of fun anyways. As I rode down Maple, toward San Gabriel I started to think about bicycling, the shed, and a few other things. It was relaxing, and it felt good to move my legs. The roads I took were narrow, back roads, with small shoulders however I didn’t encounter any driver that was particularly averse to me being on it. Bicyclist’s rights were important to me, especially after a ride three previous weekends ago when I attempted to go south on Austin Avenue and found myself without space on the road (the shoulders were tiny) and the cars going about fifty miles an hour. However Bicyclists rights to a back seat to Bike infrastructure. I found myself on Farm to Market 971, and as I got progressively more lost the more I thought that it was critical that bike routes be established not simply as leisure lanes, but as important aspects of alternative transportation. I had read a few articles that had come out, mostly in the New York Times, on the resurgence of Bike culture on the east coast, mostly New York, after the city drastically restructured it’s streets to accommodate Bicycle specific lanes. Since then the city has progressively become more and more People friendly. Fewer cars meant a more human city. As I rode through Georgetown on a beautiful Saturday afternoon I slowly realized something, there was no one out. I made a quick cut through a subdivision to try and get away from traffic, but there wasn’t a soul on the street, and the street even had sidewalks (A seeming rarity these days). I reached North East Loop, a somewhat largish road and found the shoulder to be acceptably wide, and the road to be nicely empty. It was a good day. The one thing I could think as I struggled up a hill was about the litter and how I hope the glass shards wouldn’t ruin my tires, is how odd it must look to the various trucks and SUV’s that pass buy, some college kid in rolled up jeans on a silly bike with yellow rims struggling to get up a hill with a gradient of no more than 11 degrees.

So what did I want out of the shed and bike culture? I suppose what I wanted in the end was bizzaro world. I wanted a nation of people who rode their bikes everywhere. Where the Highway was an empty strip of endless tarmac waiting for some kid to bomb down it on steel frame trying to get somewhere. Don’t get me wrong, I like cars and I appreciate the technology behind them but the Dream is dead to me. As someone who has always been slow on the transportation train I slowly realize now that Personal Automobiles are not only wasteful, but silly. Bicycles provide an efficient and beautiful means of transportation that no car could ever hope to match, both in efficiency and beauty. I admit beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the efficiency thing is real. Bicycles are the most efficient means of transportation on the road, period. In terms of converting energy to motion the Internal Combustion Engine is sorely lacking. However how do we make a bike nation? Is it possible for us to rely only on bicycles and public transit? What are the social and environmental impacts? These questions rattled around my brain as I showered after getting home. I needed a meal and a sit down.

The Wrap-Up:

Ultimately my Activism Project wasn’t as successful as I would have liked, but it’s ongoing and persists. I have no intention on giving up on the shed, and want to plan another Critical Mass as soon as the weather eases up next spring. I still love bikes, and I still think that this campus is capable of supporting a great cycling community. I look forward to holding regular weekly rides around Georgetown and getting campus informed on how to fix their own bike and giving them the tools to do it. Combining the Shed, and this class did remind of something that I’m still dealing with. I’d love a cycling nation - much more than a driving one - but what of the environmental impact? As we read through “Stuff” the author talks about the make up of his Mountain bike, some 26 (very heavy) pounds of aluminum, rubber, and plastic. I started thinking about my own bikes and bicycle building as a whole. Bicycles are traditionally made of Steel, however Aluminum, Carbon Fiber, wood, bamboo, and Titanium as well as Scandium and bad taste have all been used as materials to build bikes before, and each comes with it’s own supply chain. As a product bikes require the use of toxic brazing or welding, as well as significant energy inputs to create the alloys and chemicals that are needed to bond together any of the aforementioned materials into a sturdy and long-lasting product. As it stands the wooden bikes that exist require more work to become something worth riding (wood offers a strangely soft ride which makes going fast/getting speed hard) and has to undergo chemically intensive treatments to make it long lasting. Despite the lack of Oil inputs, a definite saving grace for the bicycle footprint, the bike itself relies, somewhat, on a global market for it’s parts. It requires numerous alloys and rubbers manufactured abroad and shipped here to sustain itself as a viable means of getting around. Bike tubes aren’t made of rubber that’s grown in the US of A. Tires require a significant petroleum input for them to be as efficient as they are. Not only that the Kevlar or Aramid bead requires specialized materials as well, not to mention the necessity of rubber or cork grips. On a large scale I suppose there are a lot of questions that are waiting to be answered, however I know this. The Bike Shed’s a-comin’. If you need a fix, talk to me, I’d love to help. Also, do me a favor and get out and ride.