"Hey, you have flyers. Let's trade." A tall, young man walking with a fixed gear bicycle handed my friend Katie and me a couple of mini-flyers for a local musician's performance. We handed him a poster for a weekly bike repair night.
The sky looked like a postcard. Katie and I were taking a break, soaking up some sun next to the industrious lobsterman statue in the Old Port. Familiar faces passed by, waved, stopped to chat. The city responded to the beginning of the warm-weather season with delight.
Katie and I set out to look for local business support on behalf of my bike trip. Strolling through the downtown district and down Exchange Street, we were met with incredibly positive responses. Longfellow Books handed me a gift certificate to contribute to the Bicycle Coalition of Maine's silent auction in May. Something Fishy and Cool Jewels offered merchandise for the same event. One employee asked, "Can I come too?"
In between stores and talking to friends on the street, Katie was busy posting flyers for the Women's and Trans' bike repair and maintenance night that I host on Tuesday nights at the People's Free Space. She held a stack of flyers in one hand and held—not a staple gun—but what I would more accurately describe as a staple sledge-hammer in the other. kaCHUNK. Hmmm...I don't think capitalizing the phonetic call of the tool can really do it justice.
But regardless of what sound the staple sledge-hammer made, the message is most important: Come learn how to fix your own bike. I began leading this night two weeks ago, after the opening of the Rusty Chain, a bike room constructed within the People's Free Space. The tools and parts were donated by the Bike Cycle and individual supporters. Volunteers hang out in the space and help people fix their bikes. The service is entirely free and open to the public. Although we lack space for bike storage at the moment, there are visions of a future create-a-commuter program, where individuals can learn how to build their own bikes (at low or no cost), and can then practice sustainable transportation lifestyles in the city of Portland.
In the meantime, we'll just hang out and play with bike tools. After all, they say that bike grease is pretty sexy.
