CHS Interact Club hosts Bike Drive

CHS Interact Club hosts Bike Drive

By Heather

The Chesterton High School Interact Club, sponsored by the Chesterton-Porter Rotary Club, will be holding a bike drive on May 15th from 9 am-3 pm in the high school parking lot. Used and broken bikes from the community will be gathered and donated to Working Bikes Cooperative, a not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization based in Chicago. Working Bikes repairs used bikes and ships them overseas to the Gulf Coast, Ghana, Tanzania, Angola, Cuba, Guatemala, and Peru. The bikes are highly valued in these countries as a crucial means of transportation. Even bikes in poor condition are valuable for parts! For more information on the event, please click the link

Working Bikes and LL Bean

Working Bikes was invited to participate at LL Bean's Spring Sports Weekend April 9-11, 2010. Katie Windelborn is the Visual Coordinator at the LL Bean store in South Barrington. She included information about Working Bikes in her email newsletter to their customers and collected bikes for Working Bikes all weekend.

On Saturday afternoon Working Bikes Volunteer Gary Gilbert talked with various customers about the mission of Working Bikes. LL Bean collected several used bicycles for Working Bikes. Volunteer Alan Lloyd picked up the bikes and delivered them to 2324 S Western.

There is a nice mix of bicycles appropriate for shipping internationally as well as some appropriate for our local donations project.

If you find yourself in South Barrington, stop in and say Hello to Katie and the folks in the LL Bean Bike Shop and thank them for supporting Working Bikes.

Bracing for the busy season

Despite it being so warm & cozy in the upstairs workshop throughout these winter months, our volunteer from the prior blog post ("A Little Inspiration...") decided to spend as much time in the meat locker-esque warehouse away from the aforementioned heated workspace. Long underwear can be your friend!

Picking up where we left off, additional shelves have been installed. Remember the wheel pile, aka, "The Inspiration"?

After the last iteration, the wheel aisle looked like this:

...and, unfortunately, things didn't get any better...

But changes were afoot...

Another step in the right direction.

A whole lot of debris was hiding in/under/around the cages.

All cleaned up & ready for the next step.

Room has been made for an additional wheel aisle and two more double rows of bike "shelves".

The shelves are built and ready for use.

Populated: again, with road bikes on top and cruisers below. Cruisers are just too heavy to be stored on the second level.

Still more work was to be done. The area to the right of this pic had 2 rows of double stacked bikes - unfortunately a pic didn't get snapped prior to dismantling the first row. It soon became obvious that it is far easier to stack the bikes than to unstack... Doh!

From this prior blog post pic you can see the double stacked bikes in the background - most notably how the aisle is barely passable & definitely not wide enough to ride a bike through (well, Aaron probably could but...).

The majority of the double row of double stacked bikes were local donation type bikes.

Shelves built and the aisle appears to be wide enough.

Loaded with bikes and sure enough - the aisle is wide enough to safely ride a bike through!

BUT, the bike shelving wasn't the only thing going on. Recall that unsorted wheels was the impetus of all of the aforementioned organization. So, a wall of wheels (the WoW) was built. Before the WoW, about 75 wheels were hung in the aisle between the first two bike racks. Well, now more than 400 wheels can be hung in the same aisle.
The original Mtn Bike wheel aisle:

Why have only 1 row when you can have 3?

By hanging the wheels 3 rows high the amount of wheels stored in the aisle between the bike shelves multiplied by a factor of 6.

View of the same section, but from the other side.

Building the frame & fastening the rods was quite an acrobatic feat.

Once all 3 rows were hung and secure they were ready to be filled with 27" front wheels.

This triple stacking should make finding the "perfect" replacement wheel a cinch.

Opposite side view.

A preview of the second WoW in between the new cages. Unfortunately, we've run out of the hooks :(

Once more hooks are procured, the remaining wheels will be hung. Ideally, all of the wheels that are currently in the original "cages" (see the pics at the top of this blog) will be easily perused and pulled rather than having to dig through a mess sharp metal.


More to come soon...

A little insipration goes a long way...

On a random autumn evening, a volunteer couldn’t find a replacement 26” front wheel and was asked “Did you look in the wheel pile?”. Said volunteer stared at the pile – frozen like a deer in headlights – and thought: “There must be a better way”. And so the journey began…

The aforementioned wheel pile (aka “The Inspiration”):

The wheels were separated (by size, front, rear, etc) into “cages”. These cages were donated by a volunteer whose company was ready to send them into the scrap metal abyss. While it was not a perfect system, it was a step in the right direction...


Once the wheel aisle was sorted, it was time to focus attention on making the most efficient use of the warehouse space. Many will remember that the upstairs area, just outside of the workshop, looked like this:


The cages were erected and slightly modified to ensure the bikes on the second level stayed in place (approx 12” extension on each side). This allowed for the bicycles to be stacked vertically with the idea of maximizing the usable space and at the same time establishing fixed rows and hopefully maintaining clear isles!

A space that once accommodated approximately 100 bikes without the cages now allows for storage of about 175:

It was decided that road bikes are better placed on the top level because, on average, they weigh less than mountain bikes or “cruisers”. After separating the bikes into the three different categories it became clear that the cruisers currently outnumber the others by a factor of about 3.



After the first section of bike “shelving” proved successful, space for a second section was allocated:

This is the view from the top of the stairs as of December 2009, directly outside of the enclosed (and heated!) workshop:

An aisle was created between the cages / shelves to allow mountain bike wheels to be easily accessed:



The search for space for a third row of cages was on:




With a little help from a volunteer’s workhorse (VW Beetle)...

...additional shelving materials were delivered. The before pic:

The “after” pic (which is a bit fuzzy) shows a space that could once accommodate only 80 bikes now stores nearly 140.

...and space for additional cages has been cleared and is ready for more…

This organizational effort could not have been realized without the help of the usual suspects (Lee, Raul, and Aaron) as well as volunteers Garry Vandevusse (donated the shelving) and Pete Travnicek (manual laborer).

Working Bikes could not thrive without the help of its volunteers. If you have an idea that you believe will help the Co-op better continue its mission (see here: http://workingbikes.org/about) we humbly ask that you bring your unique skills, energy, and effort into Working Bikes during volunteer hours:

• Tuesday evenings from 5pm to 9pm
• Wednesday afternoons from noon to 5pm
• Saturday afternoons from noon to 5pm

Here are a few pictures from the November 4th Tanzania Shipping party.


Captain Lee using a disembodied wheelset to navigate the sea of mountain bikes.


Student volunteers preparing bikes for the container.


Volunteers inside the loading dock area.


The logistics of loading a shipping container most efficiently.


Almost ready to hit the road.


Lee looking vaguely dangerous with a radial saw.


The empty warehouse floor.


Finishing touches by the irrepressible Mr. Brown.