Falls City Community BikeWorks has had a very busy fall season with lots of new volunteers.  Among them we were especially fortunate to meet Nathaniel Green and Warren Fields, who have been dedicated and dependable volunteers for several months, and who typically volunteer as a team.  We appreciate their can-do attitude around the shop – when they see a problem or task, they tackle it! As recognized Extraordinary Volunteers, Warren and Nathaniel will each receive an FCCB t-shirt and a $20 shop credit for parts/accessories.

We asked Nathaniel and Warren to answer a few questions so our readers can get to know them better:

FCCB: What’s the best part about volunteering at FCCB?
Nathaniel: The best part of volunteering at FCCB is that when I’m there, I’m giving back to the community and helping to improve people’s lives. Through the connections that I make and the opportunities for service at FCCB, I am able to grow, learn, and also help transform this community in which I live, work and raise my family.

Warren: I like to help people work on bikes.

FCCB: Why do you ride? What’s your favorite ride/route?
Nathaniel: I ride for commuting, I ride for pleasure, and I ride to discover my community. I am able to feel connected to the community when I ride. I really enjoy finding the city’s hidden gems, like the beautiful artwork under I-64 in Portland, a new shop on a side street I’ve never taken, or a neighbor that waved to me for the first time while I’m on my bike.

Warren: I like to ride so i can get plenty of exercise. My favorite place to ride is around the neighborhood.

FCCB: What’s the most interesting skill you’ve learned while volunteering with FCCB?
Nathaniel: It might seem mundane, but troubleshooting a flat and fixing a tire are the most interesting to me. I used to take my bike in to a shop to get my tires replaced or flats fixed. I had never taken time or effort to learn about fixing them. When I learned these basic concepts, it woke in me a desire to learn and be more in this field.

Warren: I like to watch people take the bikes apart. I really like to shine the bikes up and make them look new.

FCCB: Tell us about your bike – do you have a favorite bike now, or perhaps one from your past?
Nathaniel: I have an old Peugeot race bike from the 70’s that a friend of mine sold to me for a song. He had been diagnosed with a heart condition and couldn’t ride any more. It was my first road bike and has taken me to a lot of places.

Warren: I have an orange bike that I used to ride all over town. It has baskets on the sides and a rack on the back of it. It has a long pole with an orange flag attached to it that goes on the back of the bike.

FCCB: What can FCCB do better to serve you and others?
Nathaniel: I think the best way for FCCB to continue to serve the community would be to expand. There is an enormous potential for growth within the mission and scope of what FCCB does. With a larger space, the possibilities are endless. I would like to see a mobile bike clinic popping up in neighborhoods, vendor booths at local events and festivals, and scheduled biking events like road/dirt meets, bike shows and fundraisers.

Thanks for being a part of our community, Warren and Nathaniel!

Ross Horsley of Middletown Cycling very kindly donated a nice pile of vintage road bikes for FCCB to restore and put back on the road. The staff at Middletown helped up pack up the bikes on our trailer and secure them for the long journey back down Shelbyville Road at 5:15pm (oof).

FCCB Star Volunteer Jan Brown helped organize the meeting and took these photos.

If you’re interested in helping FCCB restore a cool vintage road bike, come visit our shop to learn how to get involved! You can restore a bike and buy it for yourself, or pay it forward by helping us restore the bike for someone in the community in need of reliable, low-cost, and healthy transportation!

FCCB’s Bill Carey traveled to Lexington, KY to the campus of Transylvania University on Friday, where we were quite pleased to be included in a panel discussion in this year’s KY Bike Walk Summit. The purpose of the panel was described well here:

THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY BIKE SHOPS AND HOW TO GET ONE STARTED

Panelists:

• Brad Flowers, Broke Spoke Community Bike Shop
• Bill Carey, Falls City Community Bike Shop
• Todd Young, Ashland Transportation Station
• Michael Flueckiger, Spin Doctor Bike Clinic

Community bike shops provide a unique service in providing communities with resources to help people of all ages and backgrounds acquire and maintain bikes for transit and recreation at low cost or through opportunities to earn bikes through volunteer hours. This session will focus on the vital role these organizations play in the community and the various ways to create and get a community bike shop started.

An audience of about 25 asked questions which demonstrated that most in the room had thought about a similar venture, or were presently considering it. The panelists offered what insight they could and directed them to some resources they had come across in their years of operation.

The entire event was very well run and full of people doing pretty amazing things. We highly recommend it if you ever have a chance to go.

Speaking of which…..

I hope you will all have a chance to go to CycLOUvia: Three Points on Sunday, August 19, 2018, from 2 to 6 pm. Regular FCCB Open Shop hours are cancelled. We will be closed but we will be at Cyclouvia all afternoon.

Thanks, hope to see you there!

As we approach the end of summer, there are some exciting events taking place in our neighborhood. Both events were a hit last year and we’d love to have a big FCCB presence at each event this year! These events are a great way to earn some sweat-equity volunteer hours while enjoying a change of scenery from the shop.

Hal & Ben’s Bike-In – Saturday, August 11 from 5PM-11PM.

Join us in neaby Shelby Park for Hal & Ben’s Bike-In 2018: Shelby Park. Like a drive-in movie, but for bikes! FCCB will have a tent to share info, sell some t-shirts, and make new friends. We’ll be set up from the beginning until the movie begins at around 8:45. If you’d like to help out, please sign up HERE.

CycLOUvia Three Points – Sunday, August 19th from 2PM-6PM.

CycLOUvia is a celebration of bikes and community in our neighborhood! Goss Ave. and Logan St. will be closed to cars and open to skateboards, rollerblades, strollers, and, of course, bikes from Texas to Kentucky streets. FCCB will be closed for normal shop operations that day but we’ll be out front to greet participants, recruit new FCCB members, and do basic repair tasks like inflate tires and adjust saddles.Please sign up to help HERE.

Nancy Owens visited our shop tonight and kindly donated several excellent bicycles and a few boxes of bike parts. We are happy for the opportunity to get these bikes back on the road again, and will be able to use the parts to refurbish other bikes.

Nancy’s comment: “My husband was a bicycle mechanic when I met him at Highland Cycle in 1983. When I entered your shop on Logan Street, I was overcome with emotion. My husband passed away in 2015. I hope you are able to use his things. I think it’s great what you all are doing.”

FCCB is honored to accept your donation, Nancy! Thank you for stopping in. And please visit again with any bike repair questions – we’ll be glad to help.

***

Pete Peters also stopped in at our shop tonight and donated a few nice vintage French bikes and a modern frame. (Unfortunately the Lance-era carbon Trek frame has a big crack in the downtube – but we can still use the fork, headset, and other bits).

We appreciate your donation, Pete! (and thanks for the heads-up about the crack)

If you are interested to help FCCB refurbish these bikes and others, please offer your time as a Volunteer!  We can teach you the skills you’ll need to do repairs ranging from a basic tuneup to a complete frame-up rebuild of a vintage bike.  Stop by for a shop tour, or send us a message via email or Facebook!

Frankfort ave will once again be closed to automobiles for the always fun and popular Cyclouvia on Sunday, June 24th from 2-6 pm. Broke Down Bike Club is partnering with New Belgium Brewing and setting up in front of Hilltop Tavern and holding a raffle, as well as selling beverages and bringing a fun vinyl press which can add logos to your favorite hat or shirt. Portions of the proceeds will go to Falls City Community BikeWorks, a non-profit providing tools and know how to help people learn how to perform some basic fixes and maintenance to keep them rolling! FCCB will be in front of Hilltop all afternoon, so please come by and see us!

If you would like to volunteer, even better! We will need help at noon at the shop to transport the mobile station to Frankfort and then a few shifts while we were there, as well as a little time to clean up at the end of the event. It should be a really fun event and not a lot of work, but we will still throw in a t shirt for you for your time! Link to sign up genius below.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30e0545ada62ba0f58-cyclouvia2

Falls City Community BikeWorks is extremely fortunate to have dedicated and helpful volunteers.  In this post, we recognize Scott (“Scotty”) Fast as the first recipient of the Extraordinary Volunteer award!  Scott has been a regular at the shop for several months and has worked with mechanics and shop patrons to repair bikes, organize parts and accessories, clean the shop, and more.  The Extraordinary Volunteer award earns Scott an FCCB T-shirt and a shop credit for some new bar tape, brake pads, or cables or whatever.

We asked Scott to answer a few questions so our members can get to know him better:

FCCB: What’s the best part about volunteering at FCCB?
Scott: I like to give back to the community, and help people out.  I enjoy meeting and working with people, from all different walks of life.  I like the mission of FCCB to get people moving, education, and reducing carbon footprint, by recycling and getting people on bikes vs. driving cars.

FCCB: Why do you ride?
Scott: For exercise, and a sense of adventure.

FCCB: What’s your favorite ride/route?
Scott: The river walk and Belle Isle state park in Detroit, Michigan.

FCCB: Tell us about your bike – do you have a favorite bike now, or perhaps one from your past?
Scott: I’ve been riding a Klein mountain bike for the past 20 years.  As I’ve gotten older, I prefer the upright position of a cruiser.  When I first visited FCCB in March, I dropped off an unused 10 speed, and I was given a tour of the shop.  I spotted a vintage 10 speed Schwinn Suburban for sale, and immediately bought it. It is reminiscent of my 5 speed Suburban I grew up riding for years.

FCCB: What can FCCB do better to serve you and others?
Scott: Have other platforms to communicate instead of Facebook.  I don’t have or really want a Facebook account, and I feel I’m missing out by not being on Facebook.

Noted, Scott.  We’ll work on a non-Facebook platform for distributing announcements and other information.

Hello there.  I’m Scott Render (Pictured over there in the bicycle t-shirt.) I joined the board at FCCB this year and I’m lovin’ it!

Back around 1989, I was working as a new writer at WHAS Radio in downtown Louisville. At the time they wanted to charge me $50 a month to park my car. I was barely making $50 a week. Then I read an article by Joe Ward at the Courier-Journal.  At the time, Joe had been bicycle commuting for many years, having started in the early 1970s. His article about his experiences bike commuting drew a stark contrast between driving the car and taking the more adventurous bicycle.  Smelling flowers in the spring. Seeing and hearing things you never do in a closed up car. Staying in shape. Not polluting. Having an adventure twice a day, going and coming. I was inspired. The next day I got my bike out and gave it a try, riding the short distance from Butchertown to Chestnut and 6th. I was able to park my bike right next to my desk in my office.  No one said a thing. I remember thinking I’m getting away with something here!  This was too easy.  And it felt great. That was 29 years ago, and except for a 4 year stretch working in Frankfort, I’ve been riding to work pretty consistently ever since, both in Louisville and Seattle where I lived in the 90’s for a few years. I can’t tell you how much money I’ve saved, how much more I’ve experienced, and how many cool people I’ve met along the way.

Riding to work today in Louisville, I’m likely to see a lot more folks out there joining me on any given morning. The city has a much more developed bicycle infrastructure now. It’s not perfect. It never will be. It certainly wasn’t when I started, or when Joe started. If you’re waiting for Louisville to be 100% safe and perfect to start riding for transportation, you’re riding down the wrong path. Just join us. Reach out to someone you know (someone at FCCB) and ask how you can start commuting. Reach out to me. It takes some time to get used to. Finding the right bike, the right clothing, the right gear, the best routes. But it’s all worth it. Bicycle commuting has changed my life in so many ways. I hope it can do the same for you.

For me it all started with a short article by Joe Ward. Thanks Joe for inspiring me to start commuting. Hopefully I can do the same for someone else. We really miss you!

Scott Render

If you are new to bicycling and would like to sharpen your riding skills and learn the rules of the road, check out Louisville Bicycle Club’s 2018 New Rider Clinics.  These classes are offered for FREE to the public, and consist of a series of 5 classes for beginner riders, covering essentials like:

• Bike fit and equipment safety check, helmet check
• Gears and Shifting technique, lane positioning
• Riding safely in groups
• Basic repairs, flat fixing
• Nutrition and hydration

Riders who complete the 5-class clinic series earn a free bike jersey too!

Check out full details and dates for the LBC New Rider Clinic sessions over at the LBC page.