Checking In From The Collective

With heat indices above 100° over the weekend I decided to lay low and not do any big rides out in the country. Younger folks with less heat related failures can do that stuff. I'm passing on those experiences these days! 

That doesn't mean I haven't been riding. I have. I just haven't been out on anything longer than an hour or so ride just to keep from getting too hot and probably more importantly, because I've been busy with things relating to my job at the Cedar Valley Bicycle Collective. 

Recently the Collective had another donation from the Waterloo Police Department of bicycles that they pick up which were abandoned in most cases. Occasionally a bike comes through a court case, but typically, in my opinion, these are stolen bikes that are ridden for a bit and then abandoned. I could be wrong about that but.....

Most of these bikes are really pretty used up or just deteriorated from having been made so poorly, out of rust-prone materials, that they are scrapped immediately. One in about every four is a keeper. These bikes get harvested for parts or refurbished and sold to the local population at reduced rates. Some are donated to immigrants, homeless, veterans in need, or are donated to other charitable organizations to help families in need.

This is still a bit of a mystery.

Donations also come through the Collectives front door. Last week was a pretty rare week where we were gifted a lot of parts and bicycles from the public. These get used up as the bikes from the police department do, and the parts are squirreled away for fund raisers like bicycle parts swaps the Collective puts on from time to time. Most of the usable parts get stored for use later on refurbished bikes or marked for sale to customers looking for parts or accessories for older bikes. 

Once in a while something shows up that is a mystery. This happened last week. This strange cage marked with a hand-written tag that said "King Cage Gear Pack SS Handmade USA" on it. I Googled and searched but to no avail. Then I put it out on social media. 

One responder said it was a mount for a tool roll that fit into the open space and that a water bottle cage could go on top. One said it was a tubular tire holder. Both explanations make sense. 

But one person said that King Cage marks their product on the mounting "bridges" with a maker's mark that doesn't exist on this piece. Another person pointed out the "cobby welds" and questioned whether that is congruent with typical King Cage quality. 

Well, I may be a bit closer to finding out what this was for and who made it, or not. I don't know. But it is a curious piece and who knows..... All I can say is that it is hard to know what to do with items like this that come into the Collective when you have no good idea about what it is or how valuable - or not - the thing might be. 

On another front, I have been trying to have a regular schedule of educational classes at the Collective. I've settled on a three hour "Bike 101" class teaching the care and feeding of a typical bicycle, including flat repair, and a break-out of just the flat repair section in its own right. Things around this area are not like other towns and cities, and the populace here doesn't seem to be all that interested in either class, which are free, by the way. But those that do show up are very grateful, for the most part, and that gives me some hope. 

And that's a look at how things are going down at the Collective.