Bicycle co-ops turn work into wheels

RALEIGH -- Genesis Raynor wheeled her fuchsia bicycle into the yard of the Mayview Road brick house and went right up to gathered members of 1304 Bikes, a bicycle co-op, to explain her current troubles.

A pedal of her bicycle had fallen off, and Genesis, 7, needed help getting it back on.

"You're riding too hard, Genesis," Doug Czajka told her before he and Moshe Ratner leaned over to help her work on her bicycle.

Genesis had gotten her wheels a few months before when she and her brother Benny Ceda, 14, stopped by the house on the corner of Chamberlain Street and Mayview Road, curious about the 50 or so bicycles lined up in the yard around the corner from their own home.

They learned about the Earn-a-Bike program, which offers a way for people to earn a bicycle in exchange for volunteering at the co-op.

With gas prices topping $4 a gallon at some stations, the Raleigh group and similar programs set up in Carrboro and Durham are trying to promote bicycles as transportation.

Czajka, 28, and a friend, Hans Hesselein, set up 1304 Bikes, a community bicycle repair group, in 2004 as a way of building the local bicycle community and putting discarded wheels to use. Last August, the group began Earn-a-Bike to let volunteers exchange their time for a repaired bicycle of their own. The group is part of the umbrella organization ACRE, or Action for Community in Raleigh.

The group offers bicycles to anyone, and it has become a favorite for local shelter residents and for N.C. State University students looking for a way to get around town.

Czajka estimates that the group has given away 60 to 100 bikes in the year the program has been set up.

"When you come in, we encourage you to hold the tool," Czajka said. That teaches people how to fix their own bicycles and learn basic repair techniques, he said.

The warmer weather brings out more people looking for bicycles, said Kelly Beck, 29, another co-op member.

They encourage people to donate bicycles they are no longer using, especially for children, who quickly outgrew theirs.

"That's part of our mission, to slow the waste," Beck said.

The group is starting to outgrow its space and and hopes to find warehouse space in the downtown Raleigh area, where most of the people they serve are located. With little money in their operating budget, they hope that space will come as a donation.

Agapito Breve, a resident of a shelter on South Wilmington Street, came Sunday to fix the axle on the bicycle he had earned at the co-op several months ago.

He now uses it as his primary transportation and to travel back and forth from the metal recycling companies in South Raleigh where he sells scrap metal he collects. He's quick to spread the word about the co-op.

"Everyone I see walking and needs transportation, I tell them about this place," Breve said.