Re:cycle

Every so often the green painted floor of our house garage disappears from view under the relentless spread of boxes, bags, belongings and bicycles. It is as though a tide has washed through depositing flotsam and jetsam from its previous and reasonably ordered stacking position against the inner walls. 

The first three of the four categories are items we can do little about. 

The boxes are of the stout transparent plastic storage type and with one or more allocated to each of our trio of children. These contain some of their treasured possessions or at least those that have not stayed close to them in that separate part of their lives that goes with independence in adulthood. 

The term bags, is a bit vague I admit and may conjur up images of poor durable polythene or slightly better but in fact refers to those strengthened ones that can equally be used for garden waste or come with materials from a builder’s merchants. These contain surplus clothes or larger household items such as pots, plans and crockery, eventually intended for home-making when our siblings set up a permanent residence, whenever and wherever that time comes. 

The description of belongings I use to mop up on everything else not otherwise falling into the previous categories but nevertheless to be carefully preserved ….just in case. 

So, in reality the only moveable objects in our garage are the bicycles. 

We have a mixed approach to them. The master plan is to progressively upgrade, over time, our collection of bikes but the enabling factors of time and money rarely coincide. Consequently, the age range of our current stable is 35 years, that is if you exclude the bits of a 1950’s bike frame which I have seen as a restoration project for quite a few years now. 

The actual space in the garage to cater for bikes is restricted and so we have adopted a policy of thinning out. 

So what fate awaits a bike that is surplus to our plans? 

First priority is to find a home for them amongst family and friends. In the past we tended to hang onto starter bikes and childrens’ bikes for just that reason but trends and fashions change rapidly in the cycling world and what were top of the range for our own children when young look distinctly dated within only a few years. There is nothing more precious and exciting to parents and children than that process of buying and learning to ride that first bike and so second hand offerings tend to be relegated, even if offered on a traditional hand me down basis by kith and kin. 

An increasingly available option to pass on a bike is charitable donation. This can take the form of a home grown organisation looking for bikes to teach repair and maintenance skills to , for example, vulnerable young adults or where the initiative is an overseas project. 

Our latest donation is to be sent to Africa. 

A local scheme to us, The Avenues Bicycle Project, was established in 2010 to recycle complete bicycles, spare parts and tools for sending by shipping container to Sierra Leone and Ghana. 

There is no greater contrast to the role and purpose of a bike in England than in Africa. I have been guilty in agonising over the superficial aspects of components, brand name and type for a bike in the same way I would approach an item of clothing. It is a lifestyle decision. Compare this to the life enhancing effect of a bike as personal transport in parts of Africa. 

After contacting the local project I started to experience significant doubts as to the suitability of the donor bike for its intended destination. It was a purchase for our son when he was about 12 years old, a Mongoose Fireball which was described as a dirt bike but was more of an entry level mountain bike. 

Certainly sturdy it had the innovation for that time of disc brakes of which I had no knowledge or experience. This was no more evident when after replacing the front wheel following a puncture repair I found a strangely shaped metal casting on the floor where I had been working. I could not, at first reconcile this discovery and the fact that the brake did not work. More by trial and error than any logical reasoning I eventually deduced that they were linked and mechanical operation was restored after a bit of a fiddly task. 

The volunteers who came to collect the Mongoose appeared very pleased with it and felt that it would be well suited to the terrain and knocks of West Africa. That was a good thing to hear. 

The flop-flop of the flat back tyre as the bike was wheeled to the waiting van was a bit of an embarrassing epilogue but I was certain in my mind that our cast-off would become a much loved and appreciated asset in a faraway place.