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Frequent commenter and contributer (see bar end light entry) Ryan gives this example of a bike community service project . . .
A local greenway trail had a section covered in about 4″ of muck from recent rain storms. I knew I wanted to clear it off but how would I get a shovel there? I spent some time in my garage looking through all the stuff I had kicking around. Out of some junk I made this rack.
The body of the rack is a 1×6 piece of wood. I mounted it to the bike using conduit clamps. The shovel blade sits in the groove on the bottom, and the u-bolt gets tightened down to keep it from bouncing around. I spent about two and a half hours shoveling the muck off the trail and when I was done it looked fantastic. The pictures show the rack and the before/afters of the cleanup. If each of us does one little thing to improve our community for other cyclists the whole world will become a great place to ride.
Secure that puppy
Get groovy
Ready to Go
The dirty trail
A better community for all bikekind
2 comments for this entry ↓
1 Ryan // Feb 15, 2008 at 7:44 am
Update: I emailed the lady who coordinates the local bicycle programs here in Knoxville to tell her I had cleared the trail. (yeah, I’m an attention whore). She forwarded my email to the city employee responsible for keeping the greenways in operable condition. I was later told that my act of clearing the trail myself rather than whining and waiting on the city to do it had “shamed the city into sending an engineer out to investigate why the water backs up and allows this mud to collect”.
I guess demonstrating that volunteers can do your job faster than you can (and for free) is a motivating factor in getting things accomplished.
2 Joshua // Feb 15, 2008 at 11:01 am
I would say that this is a great example about what a lot of bicycling is: DIY stuff that helps others, whether it’s running a blog that spreads information about cool tips and tricks (like Bike Hacks), putting out a zine that has a lot of DIY bike info (such as Resist Zine), or just getting out there and getting messes cleaned up.
Ryan, I bet a lot of people won’t know that you did this. But I bet that all the people using that trail will have a better day than they would have if they had gotten covered in that muck. On their behalf, thanks a ton!
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