Working Bikes Founder visits His Wheels Headquarter

Today Lee from Working Bikes located in Chicago came out to His Wheels Headquarters. Working bikes has a system where they have shipped 6,000 bikes around the world this year alone. They have trained mechanics where the shipments are sent. With the bikes they also send spare parts that are needed to repair the bikes. These bikes need more repair than we would put into them. So today we have begun a partnership with Working Bikes. Those bikes that are beyond repair will go to Working Bikes. 

 Where will this bike go? 

No problem. There's room. 

Grant is learning from Lee, the pro. 

 What # of bike does that make Grant?

Guess how many bikes ended up in this load. Add to the number you guess one HWI trike. 

 They will put our trike on display at their headquarters. Lee will also take it with him to the 50 + events he attends around the state every year.

Working Bikes Visit

Here are a few pictures from our visit to Working Bikes in Chicago last Tuesday, the 29th.

 This is their storefront where they sell bikes, do repairs, and sell a small selection of parts.  This is about a quarter of their building where Kevin estimated they have 5,000 bikes stored!

 Here Alice and Kevin are getting a run down on how volunteers get involved, while Grant wandered around gaping at the 10 work stands and full tool sets they had in this upstairs workshop.

One Working Bikes' major purposes is to send bikes overseas to partners they have in various Global South countries. All the bikes were all ready to be packed into one shipping container with tons of extra tires, wheels, seats, and other parts they might need to be replaced when they arrive. They give out 5,000 bikes a year this way.

 These polaroids are of some of their volunteers who have helped work on bikes and pack shipping containers. They look like a fun group!

This last picture is of one of the ways they like to get people excited about bikes. This old Schwinn trainer is connected to a generator that as you pedal faster turns progressively turns on the each bulb, 1 through 5.  Another bike was set up to power a turn-table that played a Diana Ross record.

1st Togo Trike Update

When the Ebersole's went back to Togo West Africa in 2007, they took one of our first generation trikes. Today I got a report back. I can't think of a better way to celebrate Christmas than knowing how God has used a trike in a person's life. Russ Ebersole wrote, "we exhibited the trike many times as we were looking for a good candidate.  Because of its larger size, it was not conducive for a younger child, and the fact that the chain moved continuously (ie, no "glide" if you stopped pedaling) made it more difficult for younger people.  But during that term, we found a young man from a village about 7 km away from the hospital who had to have his leg amputated due to a delay in seeking care after a severe fracture that became infected.  He was at our hospital for a long time, and afterwards he returned to see us on many occasions. So we gave him the trike, and we have some photos/videos...I will get forward the pictures your way.  Thanks so much for that trike, and I know this young man (in his 20s now) certainly appreciates it."

They will take one of our latest generation trikes back with them in the fall. They are interested in possibly getting some compact trike kit.

Our time at UIC

Here are a couple of pictures of the two different groups that presented on Tuesday about their findings regarding HWI potentially bringing a US trike into production. These undergrad students learned a lot about how hard it is to bring a product to market and we gained a lot more understanding about what we will have to do if we want to make that happen. 

This last picture is of Harvey and Alice laughing, I think this portrays the fun that we had that morning both at UIC and at Working Bikes.