28 Jan Update - After the flood

Good evening,
I thought it would be appropriate to post events since the flood at our shop. The good news is we were back in business the next day, although it took another week for the carpets and walls to dry out. It was a warm and windy week, allowing us to keep the windows open. After it turned cold dehumidifiers were brought in to keep down the dampness. It seems to have worked, although there is still a musty smell when we open the shop after being closed a few days. We don't know if the landlord will remodel (we hope so, since all we would have them do is check the wiring and strip it to bare/painted walls, floor and ceiling). We're looking to clear out as much stuff as possible in case they do. We'd probably have to move out for a few weeks.

We've worked down our pile of strip bikes - the ones that aren't feasible to repair - and are now just fixing bikes up for tradeup day (April 28) and various charities. We have come to an informal agreement with Christian Help in downtown Morgantown. We provide them with bikes for their homeless or car-free clients on a running basis. This gives us an outlet for inexpensive bikes that we couldn't sell and wouldn't be worth shipping overseas.

Several other charities have contacted us with interest in bikes for kids. If you know an agency or needy family that would put a free bike to good use, have them contact us.

Tau Beta Pi will be coming to the shop Feb 7 for a workday.

Our "Safe Routes to Schools" application has been received by WVDOT and is in consideration.

Here's where we can use more volunteers:
Starting unfunded Safe Routes activities
Fixing bikes
Tradeup Day volunteers
Office assistance
Many, many more

Have a great day.
Nick Hein
Director

All's wet that ends well

Good evening,
On Jan 5 at 8:30 am I received a phone call from our landlord at Grand Central Station to say that there had been a water leak in the floors above our shop from a burst pipe and our shop was flooded. The accompanying picture is what greeted us when we opened the door. Thanks to heroic work by the building maintenance crews and a restoration company Positive Spin is back in business - for now. However, in the long term we'll need to vacate the building in the near future to allow replacement of the carpets, sheetrock and ceilings that got saturated and will need to be gutted.

As always, we can use volunteers to help us fix up bikes for local sale and donation. In addition, we're trying to get rid of surplus bikes from an embarassingly successful Christmas collection. If you know of non-profit groups that could use kids' bikes mention our name. We also have parts (pedals, tubes, tires, seats, etc) from our salvage stock.

We also appreciate any and all cash donations as we would like to have money to do any custom remodeling (beyond what the landlord plans) and to build out our new retail location.

We also have inexpensive adult bikes available for sale (donation). Proceeds will support our programs and projects.

Thanks for your continuing support.
Nick Hein, Director

Happy New Year - January1, 2007 update

Welcome to 2007,
I'm guilty again of letting the blog site go while we've worked on projects and programs in the shop. Here's what's happened...

Christmas bikes.
We had extremely good and positive press coverage in November that resulted in more than 200 donated bikes from local residents. 35 of these were repaired in time (and beautiful enough) for the Christian Help Toy Drive Dec. 14. Because this was more bikes than they've ever received they didn't have to be stingy with them. Families were allowed to count them as a small item, so they could get more than one/family. Two bikes went to a family whose house had burned to the ground, with the bikes under the house. I'm told this was a HUGE emotional boost to them.
We also sent 8 bikes to Scott's Run Settlement house with tremendous help from Tau Beta Pi.
We'd also like to thank Tau Beta Pi profusely for paying our shop bill for the repair effort. Thanks to their generosity we were able to buy new tires for the first time ever.

Safe Routes to School
There's a panic afoot on this one. I sent in the "Intent to Apply" form after having prepared it single-handedly. It was accepted and now the big job of preparing the final application (due Jan 15) starts. If you have any interest and experience in grant-writing we could use you. There are only 2 of us working on it now. We'd like another 3.

Generators
We now have parts lined up for making our generator design, all we need are volunteers to build them. We'd like to sell these to raise money for our other programs.

New location
In October BOPARC generously offered us space at the waterfront in a warehouse they are fitting out for various recreational groups. We will continue repairs and classes in our present location but this new space gives us a retail outlet to finance our operations.
With this new space we'll need to raise money to build out and equip it. We're considering a major fundraising event in February and we could use volunteers to help make it happen.
BOPARC will also be operating bike rentals for the trail from this location, with our cooperation.


THANK YOU!!!!
If you've donated bikes, time, money or inspiration this year we owe you a great debt of thanks. You're making a big difference to the citizens, visitors and charities in town with your passion and generosity. This morning the Dominion Post mentioned it specifically in Norm Julian's column. We're looking forward to another big year of making Morgantown ALL its citizens, not just the ones in cars. Wishing a Happy New year to you, your family, friends and your city.

Nick Hein
Director, Positive Spin