Volunteer night at the Depot
After taking the wheelbuilding class at the Sibley Bike Depot a few weeks back, I thought I'd show up on volunteer night (every Wed, 6-8:30pm) and see what was going on, and what I might be able to contribute.
On this particular night, it was "scrap cleanup night", meaning that they were loading up scrap steel (junk frames, rims, spokes, components) to be sold as scrap. So myself and maybe 3 other guys dislodged junk frames from the giant heap outside the building, and loaded them into two new heaps in a pickup truck and a trailer. Must have loaded up, I don't know, at least fifty? seventy? hundred? junk frames total (lots of huffys and crap like that) and I don't know how many rims and 5-gallon buckets of junk metal. Apparently we didn't get the load balanced on the trailer quite right, because it rocked backwards like a seesaw, and we had to redistribute the weight forward so it was better balanced.
Afterwards, I got talking to another guy who had also taken the wheelbuilding class. It seems Tom, who's 20 years old, did a 9000 mile bike trek on his mountain bike in late '03-early '04. Pretty freakin hard core. He rode south out of Minnesota (trying to beat the cold weather), down to Florida, through Louisiana, Texas, Nevada, up to Oregon, then across Montana and back to Minnesota. He planned his route to coincide with as much public land as possible (National Forests and whatnot) where he could camp for free. Says the whole thing cost him a little over $1000 - he traveled cheaply, camped almost all the time, ate out very little (subsisting mainly on oatmeal and other staples) and did whatever he could to keep his cost down. He was riding a Schwinn Mtn bike (with knobbies!) which he fitted with drop bars. Interesting stuff, and again, freakin hard core.
On this particular night, it was "scrap cleanup night", meaning that they were loading up scrap steel (junk frames, rims, spokes, components) to be sold as scrap. So myself and maybe 3 other guys dislodged junk frames from the giant heap outside the building, and loaded them into two new heaps in a pickup truck and a trailer. Must have loaded up, I don't know, at least fifty? seventy? hundred? junk frames total (lots of huffys and crap like that) and I don't know how many rims and 5-gallon buckets of junk metal. Apparently we didn't get the load balanced on the trailer quite right, because it rocked backwards like a seesaw, and we had to redistribute the weight forward so it was better balanced.
Afterwards, I got talking to another guy who had also taken the wheelbuilding class. It seems Tom, who's 20 years old, did a 9000 mile bike trek on his mountain bike in late '03-early '04. Pretty freakin hard core. He rode south out of Minnesota (trying to beat the cold weather), down to Florida, through Louisiana, Texas, Nevada, up to Oregon, then across Montana and back to Minnesota. He planned his route to coincide with as much public land as possible (National Forests and whatnot) where he could camp for free. Says the whole thing cost him a little over $1000 - he traveled cheaply, camped almost all the time, ate out very little (subsisting mainly on oatmeal and other staples) and did whatever he could to keep his cost down. He was riding a Schwinn Mtn bike (with knobbies!) which he fitted with drop bars. Interesting stuff, and again, freakin hard core.
posted by equipoise at 6:33 PM
1 Comments:
You never know what you're gonna end up with at the Depot. My first night there (late last fall) was a scrap night. Other times it's been "Here, fix this." Then, one night, there wasn't much to do so it turned into a bike ride.
I suppose Forrest would say it's like a box of chocolates. I wouldn't, though - that would be stupid. ;)
That trek of Tom's sounds awesome - wow!
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