The chronicle of a summertime fling at Pittsburgh’s do-it-yourself bicycle recovery center

Wednesday, August 01, 2007
By Michael Birnbaum, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

In May I moved to Pittsburgh for the summer. I didn’t bother with a car, not that I have one to bother with. A car-less summer would be great. I’d get to see the city by bus and by foot — a more eco-friendly way to explore. And lugging groceries home to Giant-Eagle-free Oakland would build character.

But I thought it might be nice to have a bike. So when I learned about Free Ride in North Point Breeze, I decided to go and poke around.

Free Ride is no typical bike shop. Located within Construction Junction, Free Ride gives shelter to donated bikes, most in dire need of repair. Through the Earn-a-Bike program, you pick one and fix things yourself with the help of Free Ride’s tools and volunteers. In exchange, you agree to volunteer at the shop for a certain amount of time, depending on the quality of the bike chosen.

Free Ride (www.freeridepgh.org) is one of many such places that have sprung up around the country in the last decade. It is run entirely by volunteers. Very little cash is exchanged in a typical day.

Walking into Free Ride is like walking into a cavern of cyclery. Hundreds of bicycles jumble 15 feet up the wall. Rows of stripped frames hang off the ceiling rafters like steel sides of meat at a butcher’s shop. Underneath the rafters, a dozen or so people fix their bicycles as French accordion music plays on the stereo.

The first step: Pick a bike. It’s a pleasure just to read the model names. In my browsing I passed a purple Custom Drawn Tange Stormer Mongoose, a bright blue Casino L.D. Ranger, a Jazz Voltage and a Free Love Peace (a custom job, I believe).

But I settled on an old sky-blue Schwinn Varsity 10-speed. It didn’t look like anybody had paid it much attention in a decade or two. A massive rust bubble on the top beam threatened to devour the rest of the bike. And it didn’t have wheels, or brakes, or gear shifts. But it fit me — surprising given that I’m almost 6’3″ — and I imagined that I’d have it running in no time.

Elijah, one of the volunteers, valued the bike at $10.

“In other words,” he said, “please take this bike away from us.”

Volunteer time is valued at $5 an hour. So I spent two hours sweeping floors, stacking tires and swabbing the bathroom floor before the Schwinn was mine to fix.

That was the beginning of June. I imagined it would take a few quick visits to tinker the bike into something that could eat up the hills of Pittsburgh.

The first thing I needed was wheels. They hang row upon row in the back of the shop, like giant aluminum flowers. Unfortunately, 27-inch wheels weren’t terribly abundant, and the ones that were available were circular only in the most generous sense of the word. So I had to “true” them, meaning to straighten them out.

Johnny, a friendly volunteer with a profusion of bicycle tattoos, quickly briefed me: I wanted to tighten this bolt here to pull the wheel to the right. Loosen this one to pull it to the left. Spin the wheel, tighten the calipers, listen to the scrape of metal that meant that I had just made the problem worse.

Right.

One hour later, still tinkering at the same wheel with no appreciable results, I asked Elijah for some help.

He looked at it, made some twists and turns, and promptly made the rim scrape even more vigorously against the trueing device.

“Hmm. I’m usually really good at this,” he said.

Ten minutes later, he had it back to where he started. Ten minutes after that, he managed to get it slightly better.

“I think that’s about as good as you’re going to get it,” he said. “Now do you want to do the other one?”

I decided to leave my bike a unicycle for a bit. Rooting around for a rear derailleur was more appealing.

June was ticking away, and still no bicycle. One factor is that Free Ride is open only on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 10 p.m. and Saturday afternoons (plus two Wednesdays a month for women only).

But on my next visit, I trued the other wheel. Things started to get more fun. Even if the bike wasn’t rideable — still no tires — it at least resembled its final form. And a new CD had been thrown into the mix on the stereo — strange, lilting Balkan folk music played by a French anarchist band.

I needed inner tubes before I could put on the tires, and I went through a few overflowing bins before I found two that didn’t leak. The bins looked as though they were overflowing with squishy black eels. Tires came easily enough. Once I had levered them onto the rims, I almost had a real bike.

I thought about doing without brakes but decided that they could be a useful accessory. So I put them on, threaded a cable, and got them so that they leisurely moved in the direction of the tire when I squeezed the lever on the handlebars.

I make it sound so easy! Presumably it is — for people who know what they’re doing.

Well, I finally took my first ride — on Thursday, July 26. Since the brakes still didn’t work very well, I didn’t go very fast, or very far.

And since my last day on the job at the Post-Gazette was Friday, and I left town Saturday, I didn’t actually manage to see much of the city from atop a bicycle seat.

But a lot of Pittsburgh passed through the shop — everybody from stressed parents with kids in tow, to people so serious about bike maintenance that technical diagrams are tattooed on their arms.

People had started and finished many projects while I was there. Entire bikes had been constructed and deconstructed. And still my sky-blue Schwinn Varsity 10-speed maintained the functional level of a bike constructed around 1890.

Oh, well. Even if I didn’t take the Schwinn with me — I donated it back to Free Ride — I still learned a few lessons about bike maintenance.

Lesson No. 1: Beware of the $10 bike.

Michael Birnbaum was a Post-Gazette intern this summer. He is entering his senior year at Yale University, majoring in history. Reg Henry is on vacation.