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September 24, 2005
Do the Jalapeno Hustle!
This morning I ran the "West Fest 5K Jalapeno Hustle", around Cherokee Park in St. Paul. That was a fun run. Official results are not posted yet, but I think I did about 22 minutes for 5K. The 5K race I did last January was 23:38 so I think I improved a little. We'll see when they finally post the results from today's race. I was a little out of breath when I crossed the finish line and am not sure if I was reading the numbers right, haha.
Now after standing on my feet all day rearranging the bike shop my legs are dead tired. I was planning on doing the cyclocross race tomorrow, but I'm skipping it. It's too far away, I'm too tired, and I have to finish the job I started at the bike shop (which is almost a total rehab). I know it will be much more functional when I'm done.
Regardless. I'm exhausted now. A hard run in the morning is hard on this body.
Posted by carl1236 at September 24, 2005 10:35 PM | Cycle Racing
Comments
How did I know you'd be going gangbusters on the Depot after your comments on the Grease Pit? ;)
John, what do you see as the goal of the Depot? What do you see as the goal of BikePed? Do the goals of the two jive enough that they belong under one umbrella?
It seems to me that the Depot serves as a big distraction from working the goals of BikePed as a whole; BikePed is so much bigger than the Depot but the logistics of running the Depot are far from trivial. I wonder if it would make sense to put the Depot under its own management that reports to the BikePed but runs its own operation so the BikePed can focus on bigger picture issues.
What do you think?
Posted by: nathan at September 26, 2005 03:25 PM
Frankly speaking, I believe the Greasepit is doing better at one of the goals of the Depot. That is being an open, community-based member usable shop. There are some logistic issues with the Depot doing that, but that is one thing that needs to be addressed. The Depot is also supposed to be an "Education Facility." It's falling down on that ideal also. That needs some help. The Depot also is a base for building bikes to give away. We built/fixed up 21 bikes for the Hurricane victims last weekend and are working on giving bikes to the Hmong refugees that came here (10 more bikes in addition to the 6 already given), and the Depot helped seed the Macalister College 'free bike-share' program with low cost bikes, tools and parts. The bike shop also acts as a base of operations for low-cost rentals that otherwise would not happen. For instance we have another rental coming up for a theatre group in October for 9 days. They are visiting from NY and want to rent bikes instead of a van to get around. No-one else in the cities will rent them 15 bikes for 9 days, with helmets and locks, delivered and picked up, for 350 dollars. That's not economical for a business to do, I think. But it gets this theatre group out of the van rental in onto bikes for their visit here. The depot is an essential hub for fixing, taking in donated bikes, volunteer work, training students, rentals, and low cost repairs and used parts. Most bike shops deal only in new stuff. We don't sell new stuff. There were probably 30 homeless people riding around on bikes this summer because of the depot.
It is a huge distraction if we lose our focus on why it's there in the first place. It's not there to be a merchandising marvel. We did discuss briefly about spinning it off, but then where do we teach classes and have the earn-a-bike program? Where do donations come in and volunteers fix bikes for donations? Where do we recycle bicycles and get them out of the waste stream?
Yes, better management is needed all the way through the organization, but I feel positive that the changes being made now are going in the right direction and what we need are some good people to work on the programs and purposes of the BPA, using the shop as a base of operations. All it takes is a few good people who want to make a difference.
So we need some good help in these areas: A Treasurer, A membership coordinator, A Director of Volunteers, A Training lead (Arranging for school programs and such). There are a lot more, but these are the areas I'm working on, besides making the shop usable again for a training center.
Really, we are very fortunate to have a space like the Depot to do all of that stuff. This kind of "Advocacy" is definately hands on. I'm still open to all kinds of suggestions or discussion on the merits or demerits of the Depot itself. It would be good to have different viewpoints.
One big change that would be harsh is if we lose our space this month. We'll see what happens. We may be moving, forcing us to reconsider what we actually need to accomplish the stated missions of the BPA. Nathan, come by the shop tonight. Monday nights are a great new, volunteer-run time slot. Tonight we have a 16-yr old and his mom coming to 'earn a bike' by putting in some volunteer hours.
Posted by: John at September 26, 2005 04:29 PM