Mother Caroline Youth Cycling/Roll It Forward Giveaway

 

RIF recently gave 28 bikes to the girls of Mother Caroline Academy, a college prep school for 5th to 8th graders located in Dorchester. This was kind of a unique giveaway— it started out as a Youth Cycling Program event and transitioned into a RIF donation. Youth Cycling Program is Roll It Forward's sister program. YCP events take place at Boston schools, community centers, and camps. There is always a classroom component to these events — kids are given bicycle and helmet safety instruction prior to riding. The events usually last three days, generally an hour per day with each class. By the end of the session the kids are riding safely and in control with others. Most YCP events culminate with a cycling tour...maybe just of the school grounds for third graders or of the neighborhood or a town park for the older kids. The goal is to show kids that the bicycle is a safe, healthy way to navigate their environment...while having fun!

Often we find that many kids, primarily at lower grade levels, have never ridden before. It isn't uncommon to teach a half dozen or so individual kids to ride for the first time in one session. Our instructors never get tired of that "FLY AWAY LITTLE BIRD, FLY AWAY!" feeling they get from seeing a kid ride off on his or her own. 

More on YCP in future blog posts, back to RIF and Mother Caroline...

So a YCP event occurred at Mother Caroline and the girls there were so awesome, it turned into a RIF event where they got to keep the bikes at the school. Now you might be asking: "Why didn't they just keep the YCP bikes?" Good question. The YCP bikes take a BEATING going from school to school all year, so we use only the highest quality Trek bikes, most of which have been donated by RIF sponsor International Bicycle. Also, if we gave away our YCP bikes, we might not be able to replace them...24" wheeled, and small 26" wheeled mountain bikes are very hard to come by. The mechanics in the 'Boston Bike Mines' had to scrape and dig to come up with the 28 bikes that made it to Mother Caroline. 

Hey, if you have a line on where RIF can get some more small mountain bikes, we're all ears!

Jonathan Chamberlain is one of mechanics in the Boston Bike Mines. He spends countless hours prepping bikes for Roll It Forward.

Ice Weasels Cometh Cyclocross Race: RIF Bike Donation Location

 The 2011 Ice Weasels Cometh At White Barn Farm cyclocross race is doubling as a bike donation location for the Roll It Forward Program. If you're not familiar with RIF, check out our About page. So if you have old bikes, particularly small mountain bikes, 24" wheeled bikes, and hybrids, bring them to the event this coming Saturday, December 10th at 458 South St. in Wrentham, MA. While our need is primarily for smaller bikes, we will accept any bikes at all. We are also badly in need of 700c and 26" rear wheels. Any spare used parts or old tires you might having lying around would be welcome as well.

Even if you're not a 'cross fan, you can still drop a bike by White Barn Farm on your way to do some Wrentham Outlets shopping!

But wait...there's more!

And, if you donate a high-quality bike, you will be entered into a raffle for a free powdercoat for your bike, courtesy of Sugarcoat and Geekhouse Bikes.

See Thom Parsons at the event about donating your bike. He'll be the guy in the red hat, running around like a chicken with its head cut off...wearing a red hat.

Not familiar with Cyclocross? This is cyclocross:





Watch more video of NBX GP Of Cyclocross 2011 on cyclingdirt.org

Thanks To Kryptonite Locks

Often when Roll It Forward donates bicycles to folks in the Boston area, those bicycles are accompanied by safety training and U-Locks. And thanks to a really good deal from our buddy Daryl at Kryptonite, we now have some high quality Kryptonite Keeper Locks to donate.

Did you know that Kryptonite is a Massachusetts-based company? Just another reason why they're awesome. 

Thanks Kryptonite!

We'll Get By With A Lot of Help From Our Friends (At Cantabrigian Mechanics)

 At Roll It Forward we get some real, uh...gems sometimes bike-wise. We spend a lot of time playing the role of alchemists, attempting to turn lead (or something else) into gold. The other day we were working on a Free Spirit "OUTRAGE" and the cable stops for the rear derailleur broke off during "pre-stretching." Pre-stretching is where you kind of tug on the cables lightly to settle the ferrules (housing end-caps) so that they don't do it themselves during use, causing the derailleur adjustment to go all out of whack. The cables don't really "stretch" at all.

The lifespan of a Free Spirit with a busted cable stop is about that of horse in the old west with a broken leg...

usually.

Except for when you have friends like Ricky DeFrancisco from Cantabrigian Mechanics to help you out. Ricky offered to braze a new cable stop onto our otherwise doomed OUTRAGE so that it could get fixed up and donated to a deserving Boston resident. Cantabrigian generally does very high end, high quality work, but they took time out of their busy schedule to get awesome on a maybe-not-so-awesome-bike for the Roll It Forward program and we appreciate it greatly. Thanks guys!

Thanks To Eastern Mountain Sports

 

Roll It Forward relies on various partners in the Boston area to provide the program with bikes, Eastern Mountain Sports is one of those awesome partners. EMS encourages their customers to donate their old bikes to RIF and thus far they have have been incredibly successful — collecting countless bikes, many of them in phenomenal condition!

 

Big, HUGE thanks to EMS for their support of the Roll It Forward program.

Thank You JRA Cycles

A lot of businesses help the Roll It Forward Program do what it does. One of these businesses is JRA Cycles in Medford, MA. They handle the ordering of all the parts used to get our bikes ready for donation. And they're great guys. Recently, when we stopped in to pick up our parts order, the crew at JRA was in the midst of handing out Halloween candy to trick-or-treaters, and getting a little goofy while doing it.

Thanks for being awesome JRA!

Big Thank You To Pedro's For Their Support of Roll It Forward

We just wanted to give a big shout out today to HUGE Roll It Forward supporter, Pedro's Bike Care. Pedro's has really thrown itself behind cycling advocacy on the local and national level, supporting all sorts of great events and programs. The Roll It Forward "Bike Mines" are fully stocked with an array of Pedro's products, from Bike Lust to Chain J., to ratcheting wrenches and vise whips. Pedro's is based out of Haverhill, MA. We say, when it comes to bike tools and lubes...buy local!