Here at The International Bicycle Centers we have a program in place which allows folks to trade in any Trek or Fisher kids bike within two years of purchase for a credit of up to 50% of its value toward a new kids bike. They can even trade their kid's last juvenile bike toward their first adult bike. The program allows us to donate 100s of perfectly good bikes to kids who might not otherwise have them.
This year we chose to outfit 110 or so kids at The John P. Holland School in Dorchester, MA with bikes and Trek Vapor Youth Helmets.
All this came together quickly and with the end of the school year looming, just days away, we had to get the fleet of bikes together in short time. For about a week IBC's service center transformed into a cluttered Santa's workshop, organ donor bikes getting trampled underfoot as a team of mechanics tuned and cleaned each individual bike. With the help of Holland School 1st grade teacher Julie Sneed we were able to match bikes with specific children. Knowing that a bike would go to a particular child gave us all the more impetus to make sure each one was absolutely perfect.
The delivery of the bikes was carried out over three days. Kids would come down to the bike-filled basement of the school in groups of about ten, get fitted for a helmet, then pick their bike out of the line up. Saddles and bars were then adjusted for each child as lessons were given on proper operation of hand brakes and, in some cases, shifters.
Many of the kids didn't know how to ride without training wheels, some had never ridden a bike at all. Since none of the bikes had training wheels, demonstrations were given on how to learn to ride a bike. One of us would get on a much too small bike and roll around with their feet off the pedals, extended like outriggers as it was explained that pedaling isn't the important part of riding a bike, it's the balancing and the steering. Once you can roll around without falling over and steer away from solid objects, that's when you can start pedaling. All the kids will likely remember is laughing at a 6' tall guy riding around on a 16" wheeled bike.
The kids were awesome, polite and super-cooperative, it made the event all the more fun. In Principal Michele O'Connell's lovely thank you letter she mentioned that one of The Holland School's core values is educating the "Whole Child", these kids already seem well on their way to becoming excellent human beings. Now that they have wheels they may reach their destination even faster.
Thanks to Julie Sneed for all her work coordinating on The Holland School end, this couldn't have happened without you. Thanks to Kevin Sweeney for coming out all three days to help out, you definitely went above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks to James Parsons and Samantha for their help as well. And thanks to the IBC service staff for prepping all those bikes.
