Where Is Your Old Bike?

NOVA Meet Up group loading at Springfield in March

Did you donate a bike at REI last spring in Virginia? There is a good chance we can tell you exactly where it went! Donors often ask where their bikes are going when they drop them off with us, but we can rarely pinpoint it at that particular moment. If you continue to follow our progress, however, you might just find out...OR better yet even see your bike!

Team in Ghana who unloaded the container

Back in March we loaded a container bound for the Village Bicycle Project in Ghana. We were cleaning out our Springfield trailers and the NOVA Meet Up group (photo above) came out to help us finish the load.

Two months later the container was in Accra being unloaded by the crew to the left. The Ghana team is Moro, Abokyi, Jason, Sammy and Tofic with local retailer Adi, outside the new warehouse. This was the day before our container arrived...the first one to be unloaded into the brand new warehouse.

Earlier the same week the Village Bicycle Project moved what was left in the old warehouse to their new permanent one in Accra. From their facebook page:

After relocating bicycles in Ghana for 13 years, and working out of multiple lockups and storage units, we finally signed the deed on our own warehouse space. Centralizing our distribution means we're going to be better prepared and much quicker at responding to applications.

A huge thank you! to all our supporters who helped make this happen! Today we moved 200 bikes from one of our importers and worked long into the night. We're all pretty exhausted...

Then came the container from Bikes for the World Springfield, Virginia.

Once again, here's the recap:
March 15, 2013- You uncovered your unused bike in your garage to donate Saturday

March 16, 2013- Your old bike was donated at REI in Fairfax Virginia

March 18, 2013- After being loaded onto a shipping container earlier that weekend your old bike was transported to the Port of Baltimore where it would leave on its sea journey to Africa

May 16, 2013 Village Bicycle Project finished moving their warehouse contents into a new facility in Accra Ghana

May 20, 2013 The Ghana team seen above was gearing up for our container the next day

May 21, 2013 Bikes for the World container was unloaded into the new warehouse in Ghana

May 25, 2013 Some of those bikes were transported to Ghana's Upper east region for a training program

June 17, 2013 Bikes sold to participants in the program for $5.00 USD (update on blog coming soon)

You gotta love facebook. We are getting real time updates from some of our partners. Don't believe me? You can watch the whole container being unloaded right here (you might even see YOUR bike):

Dispatch 36: Container Unloading from Ash Dumford on Vimeo.

We Did It!

In the past four weeks Bikes for the World handled close to 10,000 bikes. It wasn't so long ago when 10,000 bikes was an entire year's work! But I did say handled, which includes shipping as well as receiving. So basically in less than a month we filled up a warehouse then emptied it back out again. Really.

 You may recall how excited we were to move into our new location more centrally located in Arlington. We had big plans. More volunteers, another volunteer day, dual shipments....We loved the idea of having electric and restrooms. We'd be Metro accessible. We had a covered dock and multiple doors...

We took possession of the facility in late April and immediately started bringing collection bikes into this warehouse. In fact our Operations Manager, Nick Colombo loved driving right into our storage location so much, he began bringing ALL of our bikes here, even the ones from Maryland (which would normally go to King Farm).

This new warehouse was going to make this year's DICK'S Sporting Goods promotion run as smoothly as a high performance track bike! We were expecting over 5,000 bikes from the national retailer and we were ready.

We hired a part time staff. Devised a busy but reliable weekly unload schedule and in turn a comfortable, nicely paced shipping schedule. We put out the call for volunteers and started scheduling corporate groups to help us load.

And the bikes came pouring in, as we predicted. In just two weeks, our warehouse was filling up fast. We had decided not to ship earlier in the month to focus on bringing in, unloading, and processing bikes. In hindsight, this might have been a mistake.

What that meant was, we expected over 6,000 bikes in this location alone, counting the local collections in addition to the nationally collected DICK'S bikes. No problem, we had this warehouse until at least the end of July, probably longer.

May 31, 2013.
This is when we got the call. Even though we anticipated a late summer move, our lease with Vornado was month to month. And there was movement on the property. The grocery store chain moving into this location wanted to be in by 2015 and they still had to tear down the old BMW place we called home for a month.
We had to move. 3,000 bikes. In a month.

Luckily the warehouse right next store was empty and Vornado offered it to us as an alternative. We stopped bringing bikes into 1200 S Eads immediately and for the next three weeks we brought the remaining DICK'S bikes into the adjacent warehouse 1420. We also diverted two trucks to Chicago's Working Bikes and St. Louis Bicycle Works...there was plenty to go around.

This would ease our stress to ship in July because we would have the use of this new location through the end of the year. But we had 4,500 bikes sitting next door and they had to be gone by July 1st. Time to rework the shipping schedule!

We started June 14-15 with a container for Barbados. The corporate group from PBS did such a great job loading it we actually had to cancel the group coming the next day because we didn't have enough left to do. This made us rethink the rest of the schedule.

The following week we scheduled THREE containers in ONE week. The next, FOUR! We invited PBS back and they didn't disappoint. The group from GMU/US State Department (seen left) finished the first of the last four containers and started another one at the same time for Kenya. Then we did another Kenya and finished up with one heading to El Salvador.

The bottom line is we had an impossible job to complete...and we did it! We moved a ton of bikes in those last two weeks of June. Over 50% of the bikes we've donated so far this year have been shipped from this 1200 S Eads warehouse. 4,637 bikes total. Besides one container for Costa Rica that was loaded in May with 506 bikes, we did it all in the month of June. Over half the bikes we've shipped this year (8,013) happened in the last two weeks of June 2013. Monumental to say the least!

Somebody call Guinness, if it's not a world record it's at least worthy of a toast! My Goodness. Brilliant!

Featured Volunteer: Otterbein UM Church Collects Another 200 Bikes

2,230 bicycles and 78 sewing machines

That's more bikes than we've shipped to over half of our overseas partners! That's almost five containers of bikes donated. For the projects we support more frequently like Village Bicycle Project or Goodwill Panama, that's an entire year's worth of bicycles we would donate to them. From ONE church...Otterbein United Methodist Church. Otterbein sets the bar high...then they compact it for shipping!

Otterbein United Methodist is located in Hagerstown Maryland and they have been partnered with Bikes for the World since we started in 2005. The last weekend in April for the past decade they have had an annual bike drive with BfW. But do the math: 2,000 divided by 10 is still 200. That means every collection Otterbein has been accepting, processing, and loading about 200 bikes EVERY single year, religiously. Pun intended.

Some years see more bikes than others. Last year they didn't quite break 200. One year they got 400 bikes.  In 2013 with a last minute addition of a few bikes in Greencastle PA they will definitely meet their 200 goal and then some.

How, you ask? It's not because they are way out in Hagerstown away from any other bike collections, although it may help a little. Otterbein has been committed to this effort since the start and Cindy Brown, Director of Programs has been promoting it heavily ever since.

She cites the regularity of the collection, the same weekend every year, as part of the reason for their success. She's actually scheduled Otterbein collections through 2016! And they work with other groups like police departments and recycling centers to divert bikes to their annual collection rather than landfills.

Courtesy Cindy Brown

They also gets the word out through media outlets, flyers, emails...And as you can see occasionally they reinvent the wheel. This big bike is parked at various locations around town leading up to the big event. You can't miss it! Cindy has been exploring new options with social media. This group doesn't sit still! They are changing with the times and always looking for something new. This year they gave out notepads with the BfW logo on the back to all donors. And she always follows up with a thank you message.

What we saw at this collection was a community coming together to serve one common good. At Bikes for the World we are proud to be this bridge that allows all walks of life to come together in one community or church parking lot, as the case may be, to offer a valuable service to its community (recycling) that in turns offers another (affordable transportation) to another oceans away. And the bi-product at both ends appears to be lives changed.  That's a great days work!

From Cindy Brown:

 There are several reasons we continue to give to this effort. First - the stability of Bikes for the World reaches across local and global partnerships to address real human needs. Stories shared by recipients of bicycles are often astounding. Second - it is "recycling" at it's best! Our efforts provide a place other than an attic or the local landfill for these bikes to gather dust and rust; processing the bikes means the family, and medical care workers will be more accessible. Bicycling in America is predominantly recreational. For those whom we serve, the gift of a bike means survival and dignity.

Not only does our partnership with Bikes for the World extend to global projects, it creates a unique local opportunity for service and outreach. For Otterbein, it is one of many "parking lot" ministries offered throughout the year. Outreach on our lot brings together church neighborhood and members. This year's 37 bike collection volunteers included grandparents and grandchildren working side by side, neighbors with known history of conviction and incarceration, Eagle scouts, members of the church and their friends. This is a typcial cross-section whether we are worshiping together, conducting a program on the parking lot, or collaborating with other community agencies and resources. Our "official" mission statement is:

To be the body of Christ on this corner, serving and influencing the neighborhood and the larger community with the grace and power of God.

We value and enjoy the partnership with Bikes for the World which enables us to live out our mission and purpose.

 

NORM!

Norm Jacob, Kevin Dolan, and Keith Oberg

Cheers! We had a donor give us TEN brand NEW Kona Africa bikes around Christmastime last year and we want everyone to know his name. So when you wander into Race Pace Bicycles in Columbia this season we want you to yell, "Norm" like you just walked into that famous bar in Boston.

This isn't the first time Norm Jacob donated a fleet of new bicycles to Bikes for the World. A few years back he bought quite a few one speed Kona Africa Bikes that we shipped to Uganda.

Then late last year, we got word from Race Pace that he was at it again! This time he bought 10 3-speed Africa Bikes that were included in our latest shipment to Kenya.

But we wanted to know more about our "Secret Santa" so we went up to Race Pace to meet him in person. Turns out Norm is a part time mechanic there.

Norm shared with us how that happened, "I used to be in public service. I'd just like to do something completely different. And this is completely different."

When Norm retired he was looking around for something to do (besides ride his bike) and an employee at Race Pace suggested he take their Parks Tool course. After he finished up the guy approached him and offered him a job.

"I thought, let's give this a shot. That was seven or eight years ago."

That would be about right. Norm told us the reason he originally took the job at Race Pace was because he had heard about Bikes for the World and he wanted to get involved with the organization. "I got to thinking that was a pretty good thing to do," says Norm. So he wanted to hone his skills to help BfW.

"We often had to wrestle, literally, with them in the back 'til they got picked up." He is talking about our bike donations that come in through Race Pace. All Race Pace locations serve as an intake point for us. In fact, before opening their new shop, they even let us park a trailer at their Ellicott City location.

 When Norm found out we ship the bikes overseas 'as is' to help generate employment there, he decided to make an even bigger impact. So he decided to use an employee discount to buy new bikes to donate.

New bike donation from Donald Mahley

"I certainly hope I'm not the only one who's donated new bikes," Norm humbly questioned.

And after poking around the warehouse, we managed to find this brand new Trek (left) that came in through Spokes Etc., also around the holidays.

All of these new bikes were recently loaded by Sasha Bruce Youthwork, who came out to Lorton for a service project. This shipment will be sent to BfW partner Wheels of Africa in Kenya.

Several regular volunteers as well as some from Fairfax Volunteers for Change came out during the two-day load to help us process many bikes that came in from area bike shops.

After a year-end holiday sales offer, Spokes Etc, our largest local bike retailer partner, added another 50 or more bikes to our supply. Many of these bikes were included in this 522 bike shipment (quite a few of them 'like new'). We are confident that our Kenyan partner will LOVE this container.

How'd He Do That

Volunteer Phil Ruth's Load in Shepherdstown WV

One question we get a lot is Do you pick up individual bikes? The short answer is: No. Our drivers would never be able to get 30-40 bikes packed into their pick ups collecting individual bikes, not to mention the time it would take to do so.

We make it easy and convenient for donors by partnering with over 100 community groups and over a dozen bike shops in the Metro DC area. This gives folks a multitude of options on where to donate a bike throughout the year. We wish we could pick up each and every bike but then we wouldn't have time to do what we do.

Not a very efficient way to transport bikes

And what we do is ship over a dozen 40' containers annually to our partner programs overseas. Thanks to the hard work of hundreds of volunteers helping us process bikes throughout the year we can typically pack over 500 bikes per container.

Doing the math you'll see Bikes for the World collects and ships over 10,000 bikes annually, making us the nation's largest bicycle reuse program.

 

BfW bikes at Lorton

 

Over the year, in addition to bike shops and collections, we also regularly pick up bikes from universities, police departments, recycle centers, and condo and apartment buildings.

If you work at one of these areas or managed a collection for Bikes for the World you have probably met Nick. Nick Colombo is our Operations Manager and does a lot of the bike pick ups. We also have a small handful of dedicated volunteers who use their vehicles in ways they probably weren't meant to be used in order to deliver bikes to one of our storage areas. You can pick them out by the grease marks on the ceiling and the unmistakable odor of WD40 emanating from their cars.


Nick and Chris of Spokes Etc. Loading bikes

The word around the water bottle (we don't sit still long enough to have water cooler chats) is Nick is a bike stacker extraordinaire. In the bike collecting community Nick is a bit of a celebrity. A quick scan of his facebook page and you might find a friendly competition between similar organizations like Working Bikes, boasting who got more bikes in their truck.

"Interesting. You're using the "shuffle the top layer in" method instead of the "stack them on top" method. I may have to revisit this." said one Working Bikes employee.

Nick swears by his method. 15 upside down, 15 on top, and then he throws more flat on top of that. His personal best? Somewhere between 43-48 bikes, now that he added a bike rack to the back. Yes, this is a regular sized pick up truck NO TRAILER.

"I've never lost a bike," brags Colombo.

Nick with the Blue Flame

Unfortunately, he has lost a truck. It's true. The Blue Flame petered out on him. He used to stack about 35 bikes in that little truck of his and "you had to floor it to get up a hill".

His new truck is a little bigger. And he outfitted it with extra springs and wider tires to give him 500lbs extra towing capacity.

What it's missing is Flames. And he's taking requests on colors if you want to weigh in. nick@bikesfortheworld.org