As you may know, the San Marcos Community Bike Project is one year old! In just one year, what started out as a couple of bike-loving friends hanging out and helping fix bikes has evolved into a dedicated community collective with a strong vision for the future of cycling in San Marcos. The bike project has helped hundreds of San Marcos and Hays County residents get pedaling for transportation and recreation. We hosted Bike!Bike! in June 2011, an international conference of community supported bike collectives and co-operatives with lots of help from the San Marcos community. We’ve set up our mobile shop at locations like the San Marcos Farmers Market, Concerts in the Park, Earth Day, and Bike to School Day at Texas State University. We have worked with the Bike Cave, Texas State University’s awesome student bicycle cooperative.

Now, our lease at the 155 S. LBJ shop location is up. We’ve decided not to renew it, and have moved our tools and inventory into a storage facility. So what now? We need YOUR help! We have a lot of new and exciting things in store for the future, and we’d like YOU to be a part of it. We need your energy, whether that means coming to volunteer or learn some bike repair, giving us some publicity through your organizations, donating that used bike or old box or parts, or even sharing your ideas of what you would like YOUR community bike project to offer. If you have a lead on a space for rent or know someone who is interested in donating space for the bike project to operate out of, we need to talk!

We have been working very hard to bring structure to the shop and identify short and long term goals moving forward. I’d like to share a few of those goals with you.

Short-term

-Receive 501(c)(3) non-profit status

-Expand outreach through flyers, social media, city events, etc.

-Expand volunteer base

-Build a mobile shop

Long-term

-Acquire a permanent space for the Bike Project.

-Organize donation channels and/or community sponsors (Green Guy Recycling for bicycles, Tuttle Lumber for tools, etc).

-Work together with other community organizations to help promote our message of sustainability.

The shop survives off of volunteers and donations, and I’d like to ask for YOUR help. If you have any time to spare, whether it is one hour a week or ten, please consider volunteering. We always have a variety of tasks to do that include fixing bicycles, building things, organizing parts, making recycled/upcycled items out of used bike parts, and clerical stuff (if you or anyone you know has experience creating a 501(c)(3) organization, please contact us!). Really, if you read this and have even just a bit of free time, we can use your skills. If you or your organization has a newsletter, mailing list, website or any other means of publicity, please consider helping us by giving us a plug. We would be happy to exchange links on our website with other like minded organizations dedicated to promoting community and sustainability in San Marcos.

These next few months should be very busy and a lot of fun, so I hope to see all of you around at some point. Please send an email to shopinfo@bikesanmarcos.com if you would like to get in contact.

Thanks for reading!

-Kenny

Nature Center location: http://g.co/maps/9fpfg

Meeting info:
Conway Park
504 Bliss Lane
6 p.m. on Monday, April 23
http://g.co/maps/afzze

More info: http://www.sanmarcosrecord.com/local/x733696749/Bike-lanes-planned-for-River-Road-meeting-set

-SMCBP

Truing a wheel.

We occasionally refurbish bicycles that were donated to our shop and post them for sale. 100% of the proceeds we receive from bike sales go towards improving the shop. This means replacing tools that are broken, worn out or lost, increasing our parts inventory, purchasing things like degreaser and small parts lubricant, and paying our rent. If you ever have an issue with a Bike Project bike, you can bring it in and we’ll teach you how to fix it.
 
Here is a link to some bikes we have listed: http://sanmarcos.craigslist.org/bid/2946221129.html
 
Please email us at shopinfo@bikesanmarcos.com with any questions.

-San Marcos Community Bike Project