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| The main Yellow Bike Project warehouse in Austin |
The main
location is a warehouse type building that houses multiple bike work stations and huge silos of bike parts, as well as two full trailers out back with bikes
that needed work.
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| Inside the Yellow Bike Project Building |
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| The part silos |
The premise is that you can come, pick out bike parts, put
together a bike yourself (with help from the volunteers) and then pay for it.
OR you can volunteer 24 hours of your time, and then you get to put together a
bike for free. OR you could just volunteer your time and put together bikes
that other folks come in and buy, the ready-to-go bikes. All together it was a
very interesting place to visit as there were all types of folks there, and
everyone was extremely nice.
We originally went there in hopes of buying me a ready-to-go
bike, but there is a huge event going on a few weeks from now, and most of
their fixed up bikes have gone to that cause. So then we hit up the two
trailers and looked around. In the trailers you will find bikes in all shapes
and stages. By stages I mean you might find just a frame, or a frame with handlebars,
or a full bike but no tires.
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| Inside one of the trailers |
We actually found me a decent bike that needed new
cables, a repacked rear bearing and some brake adjustments, but after
determining how much time it would take Sky to put that all together we decided
it was a better use of our time that Skyler get to work on his mountain bike.
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| The view of the building from the outside |
Sky brought in his bike, signed in, and was assigned a
station. The station comes equipped with all the tools and grease one would
need. A volunteer came over and he and Sky spent the next two hours servicing
the rear hub. Too bad the shop closed at 9pm, as Sky didn’t get a chance to
start working on the part he had meant to fix, his rear brakes…
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| Sky, working on his hubs |
Overall it was a very interesting experience. It would be
nice to have a community project like this where ever we choose to live next.
Happy Bike Fixin’,
M.
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