Freewheel Bicycle Co @freewheelbikesmadison@sunbeam.city

folks who rely on volunteer labor to make things go:

How do you reward your most reliable volunteers?

folks who volunteer:

How do you like to be recognized for your work? What do you need to keep coming back?

Today:

cleaned: one haystack of donated bikes and wheels into neat little useable rows

given away: one rack, two wheels, one axle, several hours of volunteer mechanic time

sold: two tires, two brake pads

sorted: scrap into separate piles of recyclable steel and aluminum and tires

taught: four!! students in need!! from commuters-to-work to crashed Iron Man racers on a non class day

seen: equal amounts of new and old faces

Proud of us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

now I'm watching TV Lenny commercials and learning -- at some point he got some good looking Peugeots with decent parts and was giving those away too :o I wonder how many Wisconsin Peugeots come from American TV...

some local history: "Crazy TV Lenny" banked on the reputation of Italian bikes when he had 100,000 "Firenze" bikes (NOT Italian) produced to give away as an advertising stunt... theyre still popping up out of people's garages and making it to our recycle pile.

He runs an e-bike store these days and we use his secondhand cardboard for shipping :)

I herd some of you are in the madison area: come volunteer Sunday to break down and recycle damaged bikes! #bikeshop

Met with a visiting volunteer-friend-of-the-shop to talk about grant applications and fundraising strategy :o #bikeshop #nonprofit #hockeystickgrowth

! Batch Bakehouse did a genuine apology on social media just now, with a promise to fund a city driver/cyclist safety education program.

I worry about cancel culture, because material amends like this means they could turn out to be a good ally in the city.

(jokes about paying us off with very good bread are still allowed, but I'm excited to see something positive come out of this) #bikesafety #conflictresolution

Two big donations of parts and tools yesterday, thanks to some neighbors who heard about us for the first time on TV recently, or from their friend who saw us on TV :D

That vote-getting week was intense, but it's still paying off !!!

turns out there's a lot of cyclists on FB.

the batch bakery guy is on the phone, being encouraged to make material amends

direct action gets the goods!

breaking: we've discovered that FINALLY everyone in the shop can agree on irish punk music.

the delivery driver and co-owner of https://www.facebook.com/BatchBakehouse/ deliberately threatened and endangered a cyclist's life yesterday, because they were unhappy with this person driving lawfully in the full lane width of a bike boulevard. Please help us call them to account until this person takes responsibility for what he did and makes amends. Negative reviews on yelp, google, etc mentioning this episode will help show them consequences of these actions.#bike #cycling #velopunk #bikeshop

40 adult and kids' bikes, various 26 24 and 20 inch wheels, and a big crate of spare parts dispatched today to the Gambia :) Glad we got them sorted or that could have been a huge pain...

grateful to today's volunteers for teaching the free mechanics class, hooking up some neighborhood kids too young to do all the work themselves with some bikes, and sorting a huge haystack of bikes destined to be passed on to African neighbors.

I could be frustrated about what can't be accomplished today but I'm trying to focus on how miraculous what we do get done can be.