dimrub
Senior Member
As one can imagine, things are tense here in Israel these past 2 months, and many people are doing their best to help keep things afloat - either helping the farmers who're experiencing an acute shortage of working hands, or providing missing equipment to the servicemen and women, or serving as a free shuttle for when public transportation is not working. Probably the main venue for volunteering is helping the roughly 200,000 civilians who were uprooted by the war from either the South or the North of the country.
I finally discovered a way of volunteering that is actually fun and a personalized learning experience - fixing bikes! A lot of the evacuees were placed in the hotels in and around Tel-Aviv, and the municipality put out a call to the locals - to donate bikes, scooters, ride-on kid cars, given that most of the evacuees were uprooted at the moment notice, and left most of their posessions behind. Most of the bikes being donated have been neglected for quite some time, and the municipality has donated money and equipment for a rather decent workshop.
The amazingly nice and motherly lady by name of Dalia, the head of the city's road safety center, is running the place on behalf of the municipality, but her role is mostly to provide sandwiches, hot drinks and moral support to the volunteers. Nir the volunteer is actually running the place, receiving the bikes, doing most of the fixes and distributing the bikes to the receiving hotels.
My sister told me about this project, and suggested we come and see what's what. She's been in the activist circle for years, among other things involved in a project called "pnimit" ("inner tube") where people can learn how to fix bikes, and I've wanted to up my fixing mojo for quite some time, so this seemed like a win-win situation. I came, I fixed a bike, I became hooked! I've been there 4 times by now, and it's a terrific fun, seeing how a bike that looked like garbage just an hour ago is gradually becoming ridable - on a way to make life better for a kid who's been locked in a room with his whole family for months.
Some of the bikes present interesting challenges. I've learned how to fix BMX brakes - a rather ingeneous system, allowing the rider to rotate the handlebar 360 while riding. I've seen Nir cannibalize a bunch of bikes to come up with a single ridable unit - like that MTB that got wheels from my sister's broken bike! And I also get to talk to Nir and other volunteers. Nir was supposed to start learning towards a degree this fall, but the beginning of the semester has been postponed, so he spends all his days at this place. He learned some initial fixing skills at a bike shop where he worked mostly as a salesman. After the beginning of the war he's been laid off, and now, two months later, he's quite a mechanic, fixing bottom brackets like there's no tomorrow.
Aside from coming to help, I also brought with me a bunch of stuff that has been accumulating for a while back home, as well as a bicycle a neighbor has donated - a very decent EVOKE 27.5 MTB. In return, I hope to get better at this fixing bikes thing. Perhaps I'll even learn to true wheels - that will be quite an achievement!
I finally discovered a way of volunteering that is actually fun and a personalized learning experience - fixing bikes! A lot of the evacuees were placed in the hotels in and around Tel-Aviv, and the municipality put out a call to the locals - to donate bikes, scooters, ride-on kid cars, given that most of the evacuees were uprooted at the moment notice, and left most of their posessions behind. Most of the bikes being donated have been neglected for quite some time, and the municipality has donated money and equipment for a rather decent workshop.
The amazingly nice and motherly lady by name of Dalia, the head of the city's road safety center, is running the place on behalf of the municipality, but her role is mostly to provide sandwiches, hot drinks and moral support to the volunteers. Nir the volunteer is actually running the place, receiving the bikes, doing most of the fixes and distributing the bikes to the receiving hotels.
My sister told me about this project, and suggested we come and see what's what. She's been in the activist circle for years, among other things involved in a project called "pnimit" ("inner tube") where people can learn how to fix bikes, and I've wanted to up my fixing mojo for quite some time, so this seemed like a win-win situation. I came, I fixed a bike, I became hooked! I've been there 4 times by now, and it's a terrific fun, seeing how a bike that looked like garbage just an hour ago is gradually becoming ridable - on a way to make life better for a kid who's been locked in a room with his whole family for months.
Some of the bikes present interesting challenges. I've learned how to fix BMX brakes - a rather ingeneous system, allowing the rider to rotate the handlebar 360 while riding. I've seen Nir cannibalize a bunch of bikes to come up with a single ridable unit - like that MTB that got wheels from my sister's broken bike! And I also get to talk to Nir and other volunteers. Nir was supposed to start learning towards a degree this fall, but the beginning of the semester has been postponed, so he spends all his days at this place. He learned some initial fixing skills at a bike shop where he worked mostly as a salesman. After the beginning of the war he's been laid off, and now, two months later, he's quite a mechanic, fixing bottom brackets like there's no tomorrow.
Aside from coming to help, I also brought with me a bunch of stuff that has been accumulating for a while back home, as well as a bicycle a neighbor has donated - a very decent EVOKE 27.5 MTB. In return, I hope to get better at this fixing bikes thing. Perhaps I'll even learn to true wheels - that will be quite an achievement!
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