Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Bicycles for Humanity

It's going to be a balmy +10 ºC (50 ºF) today! I know that sounds pretty chilly to some of you in warmer parts of the world, but to us that's awesome! Today marks the opening of the garage for some much needed spring cleaning and organizing. That's right - bike building officially begins next week.

We've been learning about an incredible not-for-profit organization, Bicycles for Humanity (B4H), that refurbishes used bicycles and sends them to parts of Africa where they are desperately needed. B4H is the feature story in the May issue of the Atomic Zombie Extreme Machines newsletter. They do some pretty incredible work in their communities to help the poor in many regions of Africa.

You can read more here: http://www.atomiczombie.com/newsletter/may-2009.pdf .

It got me to thinking about how much we Westerners waste and how easily we throw stuff away instead of fixing it and reusing. Today was garbage day in our neighborhood. We had our usual one bag of stuff, others along our street had four or more bags (the limit is four bags). That's alot of garbage for one household. Don't those people recycle? This topic gets me riled. I digress.

Back to the newsletter, there's a funny piece submitted to the forum by one of our bike building gurus, Richie Rich. It will crack you up. And, there are some interesting stories on efforts in South Korea to expand that country's bike manufacturing and projects to promote the use of vehicles instead of gas guzzlers. Another piece details the electric bike phenomenon in the Netherlands and the European Union, and events by some Toronto artists who are also bike enthusiasts.

If you have news, events, recipes or suggestions for the next issue, contact Kat through the forum: http://forum.atomiczombie.com .

Will be back tomorrow with more news about the garage cleaning progress.

Cheers, friends.