More than 200 bikes line the back of a concrete residential parking lot that sits on the corner of Mayview Road and Chamberlain Street.
Some of them are more than 40 years old. Some are rusted so badly that the wheels don’t spin well. Some don’t have seats. Others lack finished handle bars or tires. And others, like the bike Marcus Gaskin, a sophomore at Broughton High School, chose, needed new chains, brakes and gears.
But it’s not the end of the road for these bikes. Instead of sitting discarded in a landfill or unused in a garage, 1304 Bikes volunteers like Kelly Beck, an alumna in education, are giving them a chance at a second life.
Beck said Doug Czajka, an alumnus in geology, and Raleigh residents Hans Hesslein and Andrew Breeland, started 1304 Bikes in November 2004 as an effort to promote healthy lifestyles, clean transportation and knowledge of how bikes work.
“All the bikes are donated,” Beck said. “There’s everything from bikes from the ’60s to bikes from just a couple of years ago.”
These bikes are available for anyone — as long as they’re willing to both fix the bike themselves using free parts from 1304 Bikes’ work shop and put in volunteer hours around the shop.
“We don’t really fix bikes and give them away,” Beck said. “People either earn a bike or fix the bike they have. We want people to bike more and we want people to learn about their bikes.”
It takes about eight hours to earn a bike. That includes volunteer hours and work hours spent fixing the bike, according to volunteer Lynne Walter, who said she works at 1304 Bikes on most Thursdays and Sundays (the two days the work shop is open to the public).
“Volunteer hours are here at the shop,” Walter said. “It’s whatever we need to do. There are things that always tend to need to be done, like strip bikes for parts that go to fixing other bikes. Bike mechanics use their skills to help other people fix their bikes, too.”
But before people can work on a bike, it has to go through inspection.
With clipboard in hand, Beck inspected the bike a volunteer had chosen from the line. She looked closely at each part of the bike, making sure the wheels were aligned correctly and weren’t missing any spokes, and that the pedals were functional.
When she was done, she gave the volunteer an estimate — that’s an estimate for how long it would take to fix the bike as well as how many volunteer hours he needed to complete. In total, it should add up to about eight hours.
For Gaskin, that estimate was three and a half hours to fix his bike and another four and a half hours of volunteer work to complete.
On Sunday afternoon at about 2 p.m., Gaskin estimated he had about an hour left of work on his bike. After that, though he’s technically completed the project, he plans to return to complete volunteer hours for his senior project.
“I love working with bikes,” Gaskin said. “I was looking on the Internet for a place to build a bike or fix it.”
He came across 1304, which enabled him to fix up a bike and earn volunteer hours toward his senior project.
Mark Panarusky, a member of the Catholic Campus Ministry’s Doggett Center, came to 1304 on Sunday for a different reason.
The ministry has been sponsoring a family from Africa for six months. Panarusky said one of the sons, Paka, wrecked his bike. Panarusky said he heard of the work shop from someone at the church, and he came “looking for for some expertise and maybe some spare parts to help out this refugee family.”
With the bike hanging from one of the bike stands 1304 organizers provide to help volunteers more easily fix their bikes, he looked closer at the chains, wheels and brake lines.
“The more I look at this thing, the more messed up it seems,” he said. “I have no idea how long this will take.”
He said he planned to spend the afternoon fixing the bike.
Beck said she has also seen a change in the community that surrounds the bike shop. At least six children visited 1304 on Sunday afternoon, many of whom had come before to fix up an old bike for themselves. As a family that lives across the street passed the parking lot, Beck greeted them and promised to give them pictures the next time she saw them.
“It’s OK, it’s OK,” one of the children said.
The group has seen 1304 Bikes become closer with the neighborhood around them, Walter said.
Beck said she has been noticing a change in how many people have started riding bikes regularly, noting high gas prices as a main cause.
“I see people all around town that have gotten bikes here,” she said. “Just at brunch we ran into some folks who completed the program. They’re pretty much everywhere. … It makes me really happy.”
