Bike Co-op offers knowledge, needs support
by Mia Herring, Rosie Jacobson and Katie Laushman
Hey, we’re the Earlham Bike Co-op. You may have heard a lot of stuff about us, both good and bad, but we are here to clear things up and ask you for help.
The Bike Co-op was started in 2005 by some nice dudes who graduated. They saw that Earlham talks big game about being environmentally friendly, but wasn’t really doing a whole lot that the student body could be involved in. Thus, the Co-op came about.
At this point, five years into our organization’s life, we have endured a move (to our current location) and several regime changes as convenership changes hands every semester. We are working hard to bring sustainability and knowledge about bikes both to campus and to the wider Richmond community.
Our main objective is bike maintenance, so we have regular hours on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from 3-5 p.m. We don’t currently have any women’s only hours, although we have done it successfully in the past, and would like to start that up again soon.
Also, because we have limited mechanics, all of whom are also full time students operating on a volunteer basis, we can’t offer more hours that are easier for non-students to attend.
Our other main service is the Bike Share Program. We began it last semester and it has been hugely successful. The biggest problem we’ve run into is the high demand for our small supply of four bikes.
The deal with bike sharing is when you want to use a bike, you go to Runyan Desk and ask to sign out a bike. You leave your student ID and get to use the bike for free for six hours.
In the past, we have run events ranging from our monthly Critical Mass ride, which is the last Friday of every month at 4:30 p.m. (so mark your calendars!), to bike-in movies where we show such classics as “Breaking Away” and “The Triplets of Belleville.”
We’ve even done longer rides to surrounding communities like Oxford and Centerville, and races, like the infamous Donut Derby of last semester (check it out, pictures can be seen in our group on Facebook!) and the Tour de Richmonde last month.
We are, slowly but surely, accumulating a considerable library of bike related information; maintenance manuals, zines and movies.
Also, have you ever heard of bike jousting? Tall bikes? Bike polo? Want to find out more about them? Come by during our hours listed above and learn all about your bike and a bit more about the truly amazing world of bike culture that exists around the globe.
We do this because it is what we love, but we are struggling a little. We need more people to be actively involved because we are incredibly understaffed as it stands right now.
We have a limited number of mechanics. Right now we have enough people to have a head mechanic and at least one assistant mechanic in the Co-op during hours however; many of our active members will be graduating come May.
We are writing this Word article to ask you, the Earlham community, for help. If you have any interest in bicycles or are excited by the idea of the Bike Co-op and want to get involved, let us know! Drop us an email at earlhambicyclecoop@gmail.com or stop by the Co-op (located in the basement of Gurney House) between 3-5 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday or Friday. As the weather gets worse, we’ll have more time to teach interested folks about bikes, or just talk about the Bike Co-op. Thanks for all your support in the past, hope to see you soon!
Mia Herring is a senior art major and English minor, and can be reached at meherri06@earlham.edu.
Rosie Jacobson is a senior sociology and anthropology major and can be reached at rjacob06@earlham.edu
Katie Laushman is a sophomore biology major and can be reached at kmlaush08@earlham.edu
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