Christmas bikes: new again
For the past 34 years, Share-A-Gift has been collecting toys, books and bikes and giving them to 3,000 kids in the Boulder area. Each year, local bike mechanics fix up the donated bikes. Tonight we dialed 145 of ’em.
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Alex from The Fix tweaks one of the easier customers. |
There must have been 100 coaster-brake pixies. Those go fast: air the tires, check the bolts and you’re out. The low-end geared bikes are nightmares. Hoist 50 pounds of high-tensile steel onto the stand then twist and tighten and lube until you scream at the Malicious God of Magna.
You polish the workable bikes and stack the wounded in the corner. Once the adjustables are adjusted, you go through the broken pile and start scrounging. Take the pedals from this one, the headset from that one, the back wheel from the other one and — sweet — you have a bike.
All these bikes — the pink and the green and the purple, the Princess and the Warrior and the Sledgehammer — they’ve already make 145 kids happy. And they’re about to do it again.
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