[TheThinkTank] honoring earn-a-bike hours from other co-ops / collectives?

[kyle mckinley]

sounds cool.a lot of the folks that are most likely to use such a program
are the dear traveling punk kids amongst us, right? (just in the sense of
moving frequently and being in the know about connections b/t community bike
projects...).
I've been really impressed with BICAS's rental bike program for some of
those needs: we have a fleet of I dunno, 10 bikes, mostly beater/cruisers,
that we rent for $5/day or $25/week. We credit at $8/hr. for worktrade, so
about a half hour gets you rolling. Lots of folks use this service while
they are working on build-a-bike hours. Plus, it is an easy option when
someone's bike is in pieces on the floor at closing time (and 'home' is too
far to walk). And it seems like we make a fair amount of dough on the whole
thing too. We recently welded big steel "bicas rental bike" signs into the
main triangle on all of them, and welded chain with a padlock to the
seattube (all the locks have the same key, so checkout is streamlined, and
we haven't lost one bike since we did this).
This doesn't need to replace your excellent idea about sharing worktrade
hours b/t shops, but it might offset some of your needs. The only drawback
is that they take up a bit of space, and need tune-ups once in a while.
best,
kyle

On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 2:57 PM, Durham Bike Co-op <durhambikecoop at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hey all,
>
> Maybe there's been another thread on this in the past, but I'll go
> ahead anyways. Fairly regularly we get e-mails from people who are
> moving to / staying in town for a while about getting a bike, and I
> had the thought that sometimes a nice way to deal with this would be
> to honor earn-a-bike volunteer hours worked at the other programs out
> there, particularly as transporation is definately a first priority
> when moving some place new, and in our program (being volunteer run
> and only open 1-2 days a week) it can take a couple weeks to complete
> the earn-a-bike. What do other peeps think about this? A good idea, or
> too much work dropping other programs a line to say what's what?
>
> peace,
> Colin - shop coordinator, DBC.
>
>
> --
> Durham Bike Co-op
> 723 N. Mangum St.
> Durham, NC 27701
> www.durhambikecoop.org
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> Thethinktank at bikecollectives.org
>
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>



-- 
If an Easyrider rides easy, then a bicirider rides bicis
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