Esperanza Community Bike Shop is giving bikes to anyone with $10 and five hours to spare.
The shop offers an Earn-a-Bike program for youth and adults, shop manager Hugh Hulse said. The program requires each individual take one two-hour class on road safety and one three-hour class that covers simple bike repairs.
In the youth-targeted Build-a-Bike program, kids get to pick their own frames to work on for themselves, he said.
“The kids start with a bare frame, and over the course of two weeks they build the bike,” Hulse said.
The shop reaches out to people in need of bicycles through an educational perspective, he said, but it also offers a free place to do repairs.
The bike shop is open on Sundays for individuals or groups to work on their bikes, he said. Each of its seven work stations is equipped with the tools needed for basic repairs.
All of the bikes in the shop are donated, Hulse added. The bike shop sees about 250 new bikes each year, he said.
Ryan Harris, the youth educator who leads the Build-a-Bike program, said the most important thing the shop does is educate people, especially kids, on how to ride safely.
“Getting kids on bikes is going to make adult cyclists later who are going to ride on the proper side of the road,” Harris said. “We are teaching them good habits from the start. The more cyclists there are out there, the safer we all are.”
The enthusiasm of everyone who works with the bike shop encourages people to take an interest in cycling.
“It is good for a town’s economy,” Harris said. “You don’t know a town until you ride through it. It slows you down, makes you look around you — there’s a sense of freedom involved.”
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John Fowles, who works primarily as a bike mechanic, enjoys helping people to understand how to repair their bicycles.
Fowles said he used to volunteer at Esperanza while he worked for Performance bike shop. Eventually, he quit working at Performance and started working entirely at Esperanza.
He was drawn to the welcoming environment of the community shop, he said. As well, at the community bike shop there always seems to be someone in need.
“We can focus on what the individual rider wants and what makes them happy,” Fowles said. “We can put them on a bike they like, we can talk about what they are riding, how they feel about it, and then we can give out input. There’s no pressure to change how they ride.”
It is a good feeling to put people on bikes, and a great vibe on riding bikes, he said.
“We are bicycle super heroes,” Fowles said.
Moriah Carty is the assistant culture editor for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at cultureassistant@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @MoriahCarty.
