Visiting We-Cycle

On the road to pick up some bicycles.

Since I've started working for the Cedar Valley Bicycle Collective, I've had some pretty interesting days, but my favorites have been the two days this year that I was able to connect with two other "collectives" in Iowa that serve a similar mission to what our mission is at the CVBC. 

My first experience was with the Des Moines Street Collective, and that was a real eye-opening experience that taught me a lot. This time I got to visit We-Cycle in Ames, and that was a very different, but no less enlightening experience. 

The day started out cold, blustery, and with a little Sun out as we headed out to the South and West. Curt, a board member for the CVBC was driving again, as he had for the Des Moines trip. The countryside looked like it was in the grips of mid-Winter, not the beginnings of the season! Drifted in ditches with various wavy, overlapping folds of snow were everywhere and snow was even blowing across the roadway in spots. That along with the low temperatures made it feel more like January than late November. 

We actually did not go to We-Cycle first, but to a small town where the CEO/Director of We-Cycle Ames, Val Nehls, lives. She had an overflow of donated bicycles there which we were there to help clear out. We made a small dent in the pile, and then we moved on to Ames and the We-Cycle location, which was in part of an old grain elevator/co-op business.

We didn't pick up all the bikes from Val's house, but we made a dent!

The road from Val's home to We-Cycle was treacherous!

I'm not a big fan of heights, so when we arrived at We-Cycle I was a bit concerned about the exposed wire mesh staircase bolted to the side of the building which was the only way to access We-Cycle for us. Think "industrial" stair case and you'll get what I mean. I was amazed, by the way, at how Val just bounded up and down those stairs like it was no big deal. She could shoulder a bike, and almost run down the steps, light as an elf on her feet. I remarked to her that perhaps she should give cyclo cross a try!

We-Cycle is located in the second story of this warehouse above a coffee shop.

We-Cycle occupies a small corner of this sprawling space.

Val was very kind to us and her volunteer, Allen, who showed up to lend a hand, and bought us coffee from the coffee shop in the lower level. It was a bit of an odd place, since I could not really see any reason to suspect that there would be a coffee shop in that space. But there it was, and it was a bustling place Friday morning with college aged folks coming in and out on a regular basis as we were loading up bicycles. 

Then it was time to bid Val and Allen farewell as we headed back with our load of goods to Waterloo and the CVBC. I enjoyed getting another look at a place that is essentially doing the same thing as the Cedar Valley Bicycle Collective and getting low-income and at-risk individuals on reliable two-wheeled transportation while helping the communities that we serve to move old bicycles from garages, sheds, and barns which might otherwise end up in a landfill someday. 

I know of one other place in Iowa like this that I have yet to visit, and that is the Iowa City Bike Library. I need to make a connection there as well. I think it would be pretty cool to have all these organizations interconnected in a relational way to help further our missions in Iowa.