ReCYCLEry brings bicycles back from the dead
by Kendal Walters
Carrboro Commons Writer
Bikes rest against a hand-painted sign that posts the “Guidelines and Idiosyncrasies.”
Number one: Help/ask for help; learn a skill and share it. The other guidelines mostly deal with safety and logistics, like signing in and out and tallying volunteer hours. Number seven on the list explains the exchange program: Cost: 10-20 hours service. Simply put, if you want a bike, fix two.
Kendal Walters photo
At Carrboro’s ReCYCLEry, a direct-service not-for-profit organization that encourages bicycle use for transportation and recreation, notice that there are not rules; there are “guidelines and idiosyncrasies.”
The ReCYCLEry accomplishes its mission in a community education setting where everyone is a teacher and a student. The Web site explains an exchange program that allows individuals to “earn a refurbished bicycle by spending time helping another member of the community.”
And the result of such an organization, says Director Chris Richmond, has to do with a quality-of-life return, not a monetary one. He adds that the mission includes both sustainability and bringing the community together, and that “the topic just happens to be bikes, but often diverges.”
Under the guidance of Richmond, who has been working with the ReCYCLEry since 2001, Sunday bike workshops are run completely by volunteers of all ages and skill levels.
Shannon Gigliotti says she didn’t know a lot about bikes before she came. But now, after a month and a half of admittedly hard work, she has successfully refurbished a bike that needed new tires, tubes, brake parts, and derailleur cables. “I thought I would never finish. It was like one step forward and five steps back,” says Gigliotti.
“Everyone has such a random mix of knowledge,” Gigliotti comments. Ryan Miller, a UNC-Chapel Hill senior, adds that “nine times out of 10, even if you don’t know anything about bikes, if you get two people working together, you’ll figure it out.”
Miller chose the ReCYCLEry out of a list of possible internship sites for his environmental studies service-learning course because he says he is interested in transportation and city planning.
Jeffrey Williams, of Winston-Salem, and Ryan Kirkman, of Kannapolis, both juniors at UNC-Chapel Hill, volunteer as part of the N.C. Teaching Fellows program in a course called Service-Learning for Educators.
They assist in the physical repairing of bikes and also welcome people to the workshop and help them sign in. Kirkman, who plans to teach high school English, says that this experience has given him a different perspective, allowing him to see a “teacher as part of the community, not detached from it.”
Kendal Walters photo
Josh Horton moved from Pittsburgh at the beginning of August and has enjoyed the more biker-friendly Chapel Hill-Carrboro area. He has been coming to the ReCYCLEry’s workshops for a little over a month now and has already become one the knowledgeable, go-to volunteers. This particular Sunday, he is helping Amy Roberson get her bike ready to ride, showing her the process of ‘truing’ the wheels - tightening the spokes to make the wheels run ‘true’ or smooth. “I just show up and people ask me questions,” Horton says.
Chapel Hill resident Bonnie Corbin has been volunteering since this summer. She notices that there are a lot of regulars at the workshops, including kids of all ages. “It’s neat to see 10-year-old kids not into playing video games, but into working on bikes,” Corbin says, adding that the kids are self-motivated and the work is empowering.
Nathan Andress, a 6th grader at Culbreth Middle School, already got a bike through the exchange program and is now paying off his hours. He has been coming to the workshops with his brother Nick and a group of friends from his nearby neighborhood, Royal Park.
Carrboro High School freshman Eamonn Percy is volunteering at the ReCYCLEry for his fourth time. Percy is getting a head start on the community service hours that are a part of his school’s graduation requirements.
Volunteer Travis Humburg has been working for Performance Bicycle for two years and now is an over-the-phone technical consultant at the company’s corporate headquarters in Chapel Hill. During the workshop, Humburg lends a hand and his knowledge to revamping a bike for Christin Ripley. Ripley, who just moved to Carrboro a couple of weeks ago, came with the intention of using her car less frequently and hopes to realize that goal with the help of a newly refurbished bike from the ReCYCLEry.
Before the afternoon is over, William Barnes, a senior at Chapel Hill High School, stops by to drop off a bike that he no longer needs. Even though the bike, a Kulana Moon Dog cruiser, has a few problems, it’s only a matter of time before someone will restore it and put it to good use again. The proud new owner can then add one of the official registration stickers that keep track of the number of bikes given away. Appropriately, each sticker reads: “Brought Back from the Dead by the ReCYCLEry.”
Regardless of your knowledge or skill level, you can come to the ReCYCLEry’s weekly workshops, held Sundays 12-5 p.m., and earn a bike with your volunteered time, or get help fixing a bike that you already have. Just remember Number 10 on that list of Guidelines and Idiosyncrasies: Come back.
For more information, please visit www.recyclery.info.
