We had a warehouse sale scheduled for 1PM on 8/22. There was a power outage affecting our segment of Columbia City, and thankfully the bike shop was not impacted. 

A few years ago we had an active sewage leak leading to the cancellation of a sale. While staff were tending to the murky, textured water, warehouse sale regulars still wanted to shop. We couldn’t let that happen then, just as we couldn’t let folks shop by candlelight last weekend. All of that said, we recognize how stoked people get about our warehouse sales and it brings us no joy to cancel them. 

So. We are having a special one-off sale from 1-4PM on 8/29 to make up for the cancellation (and to move some bikes). This will be a big sale, with prices ranging from free to $500 for primo bicycles in good condition. 

If the end of summer has you feeling like you didn’t ride enough, and also you want a new used bike, this could be your ticket. We have an abundance of as-is road bikes. Some of them just need a safety check and some air in the tires, while others might need a weeklong bath in degreaser and the attention of a patient mechanic with experience setting up braking and shifting systems that were designed specifically to not work together. That’s all part of the magic. 

Would you have a look at my saddle height? We were rolling out for a group ride when an acquaintance made the request. She told me the shop had set her saddle height when she bought her bike, but she’d never been fit on it. I pedaled alongside her and at the bottom of every pedal stroke, her leg straightened.

After more than 30 years of seeing what good fits look like, and correcting bad ones, my eye can spot a fit that needs fixing, much like a crooked painting on a wall. Seeing the skin on the back of her knee pull taut made my eyes hurt the way fingernails on a chalkboard do our ears.

As we pedaled, I looked at her reach to the handlebar. She looked like she was reaching across a table for the salt shaker. I asked if her shoulders hurt. She turned and asked, “How did you know?”

I dropped by her home the next afternoon and within a half hour I had lowered her saddle to an appropriate height and flipped her -6 stem up into the +6 position, decreasing her reach. I sent her around the block and when she returned she observed that she felt more confident in corners, that the bike behaved more predictably.

An appropriate share of your weight on the front wheel will do that.

Many riders struggle to justify spending $300 dollars or more on a fit that may run several hours. People understandably wonder: “I’m pedaling this bike just fine. How much improvement do I really need? How much room is there for improvement? Surely not two hours’ worth?”

And that brings me what I’m going to call Brady’s 80/80/30 Axiom: I can provide 80% of riders with 80% of the improvements that can be made in their fit in just a half hour.

I think it’s possible that the bike industry has done riders a disservice by making the perfect the enemy of the good. I think the cost in both time and money of most fits scares off a great many cyclists who would benefit from a basic, but professionally performed, fitting session.

Bike fit doesn’t need to be an elaborate, time-consuming process. It doesn’t need to be expensive, either. And the benefits extend beyond your comfort. A proper fit will change how your bike handles, making its movement beneath you feel more natural, like it’s an extension of your body. 

Some time ago I wrote a little thing about so-called “advancements” in bike tech that exclude many of us from the cool kids club. It’s fun to hate on the bike industry, but what the world needs now is love, sweet love. And so, here are some things I enjoy about modern bike stuff. Please pardon the jargon and plethora of parentheticals (or don’t, whatever).

My absolute favorite bit of bike tech from the past 15 years is easily the dropper seatpost. As a shredder-to-the-core I strive to increase stoke and reach premium radness on every ride. (You can tell I’m serious about it by my use of ninja turtles-esque surfer slang.) These things are hard to achieve when your tall seatpost prevents you from getting low and moving around freely. Conversely, it’s hard on the body to climb hills when your seat is slammed down. Up until a few months ago (probably no surprise that I’m slow to adopt new technology) I would regularly stop, get off my bike, adjust the saddle height as needed, ride, stop, get off my bike, adjust the saddle, etc. With a dropper post I now can flip a switch and in less than a second I’m right where I need to be to get appropriate leg extension or low center of gravity. Who woulda thought I’d increase my gnar in my 40s? Probably wouldn’t have happened without this magical, modern device.

Rim brakes provided riders with proficient stopping capabilities for over a century. I will always love them and prefer them in most riding environments. That said, it’s undeniable that disc brakes have had an overwhelmingly positive effect on bikes. Hydraulic disc brakes especially offer stopping capabilities worlds above any alternative. When descending some of Seattle’s steep roads in the rain, snow, slush, plague of locusts, or whatever our current hellscape of a reality comes up with, it’s nice to know you’ll be able to control your speed and stop on a dime when needed. For some that could be the deciding factor between riding or driving. In many instances, like cargo bikes, e-bikes, and e-cargo bikes, they are an absolute necessity. 

Bigger wheels! The larger the rolling diameter of a wheel, the more stuff you can run over without having to think twice. 32” bike wheels will soon be rolling out (see what I did there?) into the marketplace. I don’t know if they will take off as a new standard since they seem silly for anyone under 6’ tall. We’ll see. 29” wheels came out sometime in the 2000s and turned bikes into unstoppable beasts… for riders over 5’8”. For shorter folks it feels like we’re sitting between two wagon wheels. Luckily, after a few years of neglect, the industry adopted the 650b standard for those of us on the littler side of the rider spectrum who still wanna plow through trails like a combine. They call it 27.5”. Proliferation of 650b also opened the door for gravel bikes and commuters since they allow for a similar rolling diameter of 700c road wheels with much larger, cushier, grippier tires. For me 26” wheels still provide the most fun ride, but these other sizes definitely serve a purpose and have made riding better overall. 

One-by drivetrains and narrow-wide chainrings can be seen on everything from beefcake downhill whips to utilitarian touring steeds to ultra-light road-racing machines. I don’t think they are appropriate for all kinds of riding, but if you like it and it’s not hurting anyone, I say go for it. I’m not here to yuck anyone’s yum. Besides, they are exceptionally appropriate in certain situations and I love them for those. Being able to mindlessly shift without concerns of chain tension or position is pure bliss. Whatever type of riding in which you wish to experience said bliss, I say go for it. 

In the aforementioned “little thing” I wrote about stuff I hate and what’s still great, I mentioned a Trek Singletrack that was for sale in the Bike Works Werehaus. Well, a couple warehouse sales came and went and the bike was still there. So I decided to give it a good home and raise it as one of my own. I made some alterations to suit my needs and fill the gaps left by my other bikes. Since it includes everything I’ve mentioned above, I thought it appropriate to share a photo. (Plus I like showing off my exceptional bike assembling skills. They don’t call me a velomancer for nothing.) 

If you find all these recent developments in cycling as exciting as I do, I have some good news for you. These features and more can be found on many of the bikes we sell at the Bike Works bike shop (when we have bikes, that is) or we can possibly add them to preexisting bikes if you wanna soup up your current rig. Swing by sometime and see what all the hubbub is about.

By Mickey Buendia

In the bike shop we see a lot of new parts and pieces that were not around a few years ago. We also see a lot of parts that cannot be serviced or replaced. Bike companies call it advancements in bicycle technology. I call it planned obsolescence. (Buckle up, you’re in for some serious jargon.) Shifter pull ratios, wheel spacing, wheel sizes, pressfit bearings, suspension technology, electronic shifting; all these things are in wild flux and have been for the better part of a decade.

If you have a suspension fork from 2016, better just throw it away. No distributors carry parts for that anymore. I learned this lesson the hard way. There was a 2015 Santa Cruz Bronson C from the warehouse for $450. A Crazy Deal. Originally sold for $3200. It needed work, which I could do, and suspension service, which I couldn’t. I brought the fork and rear suspension into another shop and was told my components were too old and couldn’t be serviced. It’s not the shop’s fault, they can’t find parts for it through their distributors. I could buy a rebuild kit on eBay, but there’s a 50% chance of success if I were to do that work. Imagine that- yesterday’s top of the line is today’s top of the trash heap.

Have an Octolink crankset? Good luck finding a bottom bracket that works with it. 142mm thru axle? What is this, the time of Charlemagne? Contemporize! Everyone is riding 148mm now. All of this amounts to having to spend more just to continue feeding the landfill. As long as The 1%™ keeps buying up the newest tech, the train of “progress” will keep on rolling. And as bikes change, so do the cultures and settings around them. Mountain bikes get squishier, trails get steeper and rockier. Road bikes get lighter, pelotons get faster. It’s a gain for performance, but a loss to the culture as it creates yet another barrier (look up sexism, racism, gentrification and/or ableism in cycling and you’ll get a plethora of results) to riding. 

What if you can’t afford to upgrade? Or what if you spent all year saving up to get your modern dream bike only to learn that it can’t be serviced 5 years later because all those hi-tech components are no longer being manufactured and we’ve moved on to the next trends. The bike industry doesn’t care about that. The bike industry doesn’t care about you. Sustainability doesn’t lead to profits. If you can’t keep up with the trends, you can’t ride.

If you can’t read my tone, I’m not particularly stoked about this. I don’t care about weight savings or low shift intervals. I love bikes because they are fun. Give me anything with 2 wheels, a plank of wood, and a cinderblock and I’m having a blast. 

I ride a ‘90 Trek Singletrack, which is about as rare as a Herb Alpert record at a thrift store. That is to say, not rare at all. In fact, there is a ‘91 Trek Singletrack in the Bike Works warehouse right now for $80. You can pick up as-is bikes like this on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays, from 1-4pm, through the summer. Further details on my bike and your potential bike below.

Meet my beloved “Ungoliant”. The one bike to rule them all. With enough power to drain the light from the trees of Valinor and still make it over the mountains of Ered Gorgoroth (IYKYK):

Here’s the singletrack that is currently for sale in the warehouse.

Here’s how you can make this bike cool like Ungoliant:

First, you gotta strip the bike down and sand all the paint off. This takes longer than you imagine so be patient or get it sand blasted at a powdercoat place around town. Usually around $100. I wish I knew that before I dedicated hours to removing the factory paint by hand. Second, paint it. I just used whatever from the hardware store. The internet has mad videos for cool painting techniques. Third, you gotta figure out what you want the bike to do. If you’re like me, you’ll want it to do everything from jumplines at Cheasty to tours around the San Juans. That means grippy fat tires, racks, and versatile handlebars. I also need my skateboard, so I’ll order a Fairdale skate rack through the shop. Everything else is kinda preferential, so I’ll leave it be for now. Then, assemble the bike. Take a bike maintenance 101 class if needed. Finally, ride the bike.

$80 – Bike (as-is)

$85 – Handlebars (new VO Klunker)

$36 – Tires (used – folding)

$20 Tubes (new)

$18 – Rear Rack (used)

$58 – Skate Rack (new Fairdale Skate Rack)

$60 – Front Rack (new Soma Lucas)

$18 – Basket (used)

$18 – Lowrider rack (used)

$28 – Spray Paint (4 cans)

So there you have it. For around $420 the world opens up and you have a forever bike that is obsolescence resistant. Replace the consumables as needed, and if you need new brakes in the future, find them in the parts bin at Bike Works. Trails, roads, islands, gravel, cheap transportation, cool factor, all within reach. And that’s with my Gucci accessories. If you wanna keep it simple and affordable, we offer all kinds of used parts at great deals. But don’t take my word for it. Come on down to Bike Works and see for yourself!

Does modern bike technology make riding more fun? Maybe marginally, but not enough for me to trade in the 90s mountain bike. I may not be the fastest on the road, or shredding the gnarliest trails on the mountain, but I’ve always believed that the best rider is the one having the most fun. And money can’t buy happiness. 

Back in 2024, the BikeMobile–Bike Works’ most nimble programming tool–was described as a vehicle that evokes almost as much joy as an ice-cream truck, but instead of ice cream, it serves up bike parts.

This big blue truck was a mainstay at community rides, street fairs, and especially neighborhoods that lack bike shops and bike infrastructure. During the warm months, it wasn’t uncommon to see the BikeMobile delivering free and sliding scale services to kids and adults whose bikes need service, but whose neighborhoods do not have a bike shop. Reminder that a well-maintained bicycle is safer for the person riding it, other cyclists, pedestrians, and automobiles. Few things are more delightful than a bicycle in good repair. 

Last August, we made the tough call to sell the BikeMobile. After numerous break-ins, a stolen catalytic converter, and a sliced fuel line, it was decided that the big blue behemoth was more of a headache (definitely not a brain freeze) than it was worth. This long-serving flagship of the Bike Works Community Resources department was sold to an outfit down in Oregon, one that specializes in converting vehicles like the BikeMobile into food trucks.  

So the old BikeMobile got a chance at a new life, and the Community Resources department got some time to envision what the next iteration of the BikeMobile would look like. One of the key needs was maneuverability–the old BikeMobile was notoriously difficult to drive through narrow Seattle streets and parking lots designed for maximum capacity. While the old truck didn’t require special licensing to drive, it did require special training from a place down in Sumner. Only a few staff members were trained to drive the thing, and nobody was super jazzed about it. Imagine being responsible for driving around a living room. 

The new BikeMobile needed to be user-friendly, tall enough to stand in comfortably, and plain looking enough to blend into its environment. After months of craigslisting, facebook marketplacing, and strolling through used car lots with a clipboard and a list of ideal characteristics, the Community Resource team found precisely what they were looking for out in Port Orchard. The 2018 Ram Promaster 3500 EXT calls for an oil change every 10,000 miles and was designed for low-cost, low maintenance ownership. And while we won’t ever need to haul two tons of extra materials, it’s sweet to know we could haul around 8,581 mechanical XTR rear derailers if we had to. We are now, slowly but surely, building out the BikeMobile 2.0 into the thing we need it to be for the long haul.

Executive Director Ed Ewing says, “The new BikeMobile enables us to be in more places and serve more people, more frequently.” 

This season the BikeMobile will split its time between City Hall Park, John C. Little Park in NewHolly and High Point, both neighborhoods within the Seattle Housing Authority, and a special guest appearance at the Seattle to Portland ride. All repair services performed by the BikeMobile are available for free or on a sliding scale. Most bike parts are offered at cost and we have used parts to fit almost any budget.

“The previous BikeMobile worked for us, but it was hard for people to watch us fix their bikes. Their bikes would disappear and come back repaired,” says Community Resources Director Bekah Ko. The old BikeMobile had a built-in bench that reduced the cargo area and also obstructed the view. “Now, kids and adults can stand by and watch. It takes some of the mystery out of what we do, and it helps us empower people to fix their own bikes.”

The current build of the BikeMobile does not include what we’ll refer to here as an ice cream truck alert system yet, though are anticipating crowds. But no headaches, and still no brainfreezes.

Photo: geoorgenaterry.com

If you’re seeking a marker for how inclusivity is good business, look to Georgena Terry. She founded Terry Precision Cycling in 1985, producing 20 bikes for friends. Interest in her bikes, designed specifically for women, grew rapidly, and in 1987 she produced 5,000 bicycles. Some of her bikes featured a smaller front wheel, to account for smaller bodies, though she is quick to point out the small front wheel design for smaller bodies did not originate with her. “Remember,” she says, “Bill Boston, an excellent framebuilder, gave the small front wheel credence for both small men and women.” What differentiated Terry from Boston was simple, “I focused solely on the women’s market.” Terry expanded to produce bikes and accessories for men and women, but really mostly women. 

One of those accessories, a component really, is the cut-away saddle which Terry now produces for women and men. The cut-away saddle is said to reduce pressure in particular areas, and Terry says she can’t be credited for that either. “Fred Black did this in 1932. He wasn’t focused on female cyclists specifically. It seemed logical to figure out how to benefit women in particular – something ‘anatomical’ saddles in the 1990sstill hadn’t achieved.” So while it’s inaccurate to credit Terry with this innovation, it could be argued that bringing the cut-out saddle back to the market in the 90’s has impacted how saddles are made by designers and how end-users select them. 

Terry’s career in cycling has overlapped with an overwhelming truth— the bike world is mostly populated with white men at every level, from riders on the road, to mechanics in shops, to people in leadership positions at the company and organizational level, a truth the rest of American society mirrors as well. But things are changing slowly. Terry says this reality has shifted since she got her start in the industry. “It’s great to see so many more riders — diverse in terms of gender and race. The more people we have on bikes, the better!”

“The more people we have on bikes, the better!”

The cycling world is changing slowly, and Terry’s influence cannot be underestimated. The jump from 20 bikes per year to 5,000 bikes per year certainly wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by market analysts at Big Bike Companies. Consider any large scale bike company: Trek, Specialized, Cannondale, Giant, and REI– they all make bikes with geometries designed specifically for women now, but that didn’t happen until the late 1990’s. Terry didn’t just kick down the door for women in cycling, she made sure they got to ride sick bikes that fit.

Today it’s not uncommon to see used Terrys or women-specific bikes donated at the Bike Works warehouse, and since they’re the right size for many people, they’re always the first to get refurbished and sent to the bike shop for another go. Her work on women-specific needs has undoubtedly changed the world of cycling. “But the greatest need is proper fit,” she says. “Proper fit is the heart of the bicycle ride.”

Nowadays Terry spends her time riding bikes in the morning, Zwift when the weather is bad, and outdoors when it’s not. Her daily rider is a road bike with bar-end shifters and wide-range gearing and a 9-speed drivetrain. “I like to keep things simple and easy to maintain,” she says. “My bike is perfect for road riding or hard packed gravel.” Once she’s done riding, she devotes the rest of the day to working on bike designs for customers. 

She sold Terry Bicycles in 2009, but continues designing handbuilt steel bicycles under her name – she kept that part of her business. One thing she notes about modern bikes is they keep getting larger. “The average height of women isn’t getting any larger, so I worry about the industry’s ability to fit shorter women and that the consumer is still getting short shrift.” Terry’s framebuilding material of choice is still steel, and as sales in our shop reflect, steel is built to last. Many of our long-time customers ride 30+ year old bicycles that will only occasionally need the consumables replaced. And she encourages anyone who is interested in building bikes or getting into the bike business to follow their heart. “Being an only child, I have always been comfortable fending for myself. I am my inspiration and support,” she says.

Back in 1887, Scottish veterinarian and inventor John Boyd Dunlop invented a pneumatic tire for his child’s tricycle. It wasn’t the first pneumatic tire patented—another Scot named Robert William Thompson gets the credit for his 1847 patent. When you google who made the first pneumatic tire, it mostly comes up Dunlop. But all you want to know is where do tires go to die.

The average bike tire lasts between 1,000 and 3,000 miles if inflated properly, kept clear of sharps, and is stored away from the elements. Bike Works accepts the donation of tires in any form, and some are new enough for use on the refurbished bikes we sell in the shop, while others are nice enough to sell as-is in the shop and during warehouse sales. What about the punctured, the rotten, the tires worn to the threads? Well, we hoard them out back in a pile, and once a year we load up a van and haul them to be recycled at Liberty Tire in Portland.

It is said that the horse always pulls the strongest when it faces the barn, and there may be some synergistic relevance to loading and unloading tires. On average, it takes ten people about an hour to load a year’s worth of tires, though it takes two people about twenty minutes to unload them at the recycler. Needless to say, people aren’t horses and tires are a handful, particularly when they’re wet, dirty, and full of bugs. 

So what happens to the tires? They are ground up, and separated into reusable resources including but not limited to: asphalt, loose and rigid playground surfacing, the weird stuff that sits under astroturfed sporting surfaces, wire, and a couple different types of fuels. And while those processes do involve many physical and chemical treatments, it is the industry standard for lifeless tires, and Portland is the nearest option.

The costs associated with recycling just shy of a ton of tires are nothing to shake a spoke at. All told, the expenses include around 15 hours of living wage labor, around $300 for the recycling fee, fuel costs, and vehicle maintenance. While much of the bike industry’s market offerings are designed for obsolescence, the concept of the forever bike does minimize waste to consumable parts like tires, inner tubes, cables, and so-forth. So while it’s true a waste-free bicycle experience does not exist, we can all extend the practice of minimizing harm to the decisions we make with bike componentry. And if you have an armload of tires in your garage, unburden yourself. We got you. We’ll reuse what we can and recycle the rest.

Last month, Recycle & Reuse Director Steve Gadingan wrote an essay about the increasingly wasteful bicycle industry and the concept of a forever bike, a bike that is resistant to wear and tear and if treated well, will last, well, forever. What follows is the story of a Bike Works customer and his purple forever bike. 

Mark Epstein retired from teaching history at Rainier Beach High School back in 2019 and reflects that his legacy is riding his bike to work every day. But perhaps he’s being modest. He started teaching for three reasons, namely: the energy of kids, the desire for union work, and a secure job. The fourth reason, he says without missing a beat, was to activate kids for the future.  

“I still substitute once or twice every few weeks,” he says. “And I usually get four or four and a half minutes of undivided attention. I want students to make sure they’re aware of what’s going on in the world and be alert to the historical possibility of their involvement.”  

Mark helped with the Major Taylor Project at RBHS and maintained the habit of riding his bike to school from Seward Park. “It was five easy minutes downhill in the morning, and twenty struggling minutes back up the hill in the evening. I’d have to zigzag.”  

Mark’s Trek 920 doesn’t have a name, at least not that he’s aware of, but it has endured. He brings it to the shop for repairs ahead of summer or winter for a tune up, and he’s stopped trying to fix flats himself. His wife rides a nice Cannondale and has encouraged him to just get a new bike for himself, but he says his Trek is fine. “Why get rid of it when I can get it fixed by competent mechanics?” 

Bike Works is the only bike shop in South Seattle, and it’s also where Mark purchased his bike back in 1998. It’s only ever been serviced by Bike Works, and when something breaks or malfunctions, the mechanics do what they must do to keep the purple bike as high functioning as his wife’s newer and “classier” Cannondale or Kona e-bike.

Over the years they’ve replaced wheels, handlebars, the drivetrain, and consumables like tires and cables.  It’s also the only shop in Seattle with a community-based pricing model for refurbished bikes. Whenever somebody buys a bike, they are asked to choose which of the three price options are best for their budget, whether that means a lower price, or a higher one that supports bike access for a neighbor.

Each year, Bike Works diverts around 6,000 bicycles from the waste stream. We refurbish some, we sell some as-is at our warehouse sales, and we donate or responsibly recycle the rest. By choosing to be happy with his perfectly serviceable bike, Mark is actively participating in this secondary economy. A steel bicycle built in the 1980s or 1990s will often outlast its rider if given routine maintenance and kept from the elements. A good bike does not need to cost a month’s wages. 

“We see a lot of adult bikes re-donated” says Recycle & Reuse Outreach Manager Seth Short. “And it’s a conscious decision, too. People understand what we do and they know their bike has plenty of life left even though they may be done with it.” 

A few months ago, Mark was at a protest organized after the ICE arrest of labor leader David Huerta in Los Angeles. Through the noise of many voices heard one he recognized, a former student and participant in the Major Taylor Project.

“I want to express my solidarity with immigrant workers,” she said. “No hardworking person should be snatched from the streets and taken from their family, just because they look like they might not have the right paperwork.”

When the speech was over, Mark found the student—now a labor leader herself— and she pointed at him and said, “you taught me how to ride a bike!”  

But it was more than just bikes, it was a foundational understanding of the need for resistance and strength in the face of adversity. As they continued to visit, the former student said, “You taught us things nobody else could show us, and I see it now!” Mark tells this story like it could have happened without him, but it could not have. A good teacher’s work can impact a person for an entire lifetime, building self-confidence, resilience, and curiosity for the unknown. 

Bike Works Executive Director Ed Ewing says that when you teach a person to ride a bike, they start to realize that they have choices. They can decide to go fast or slow, they can decide where they want to ride. “And through the process of learning, they become more equipped to see opportunities they otherwise may not have recognized.” 

Many scientific studies have found youth who start riding their bikes to school at a young age continue to ride as they grow older. The impact this has on a person is undeniable, but there are greater implications. More people riding bikes means not only are there fewer cars on the road, it means more people are moving through their communities without a barrier, connected. 

“Riding your bike everyday changes how you perceive the world,” says Mark. 

“Some of my former students now work at Rainier Beach, and some of them are now parents themselves.” Mark says he remembers being in the classroom with them and catching their attention for four minutes here and there. “Now, my former students are teaching. But kids have always been the best teachers.” 

Let me paint you a picture. 

The other day as my family drove past the protected bike lane on Othello in South Seattle, my 13-year-old daughter said, “There should be separated bike lanes like that everywhere. Why don’t we have more of that?” 

(If I could bottle and sell the feeling I had in that moment I could retire tomorrow.) 

This kid has heard me rant about bike infrastructure her whole life and has never had a thing to say about it. So, what’s changed? 

Well, she attended Black Girls Bike camp last month, offered by Young Women Empowered (Y-WE), in partnership with Bike Works. 

As any parent of a teen can tell you, they don’t fully believe what you say until they experience things on their own. I can yap at her about urban planning until I’m blue in the face (and have, lol), but she didn’t really get it until she had biked the roads of South Seattle herself. 

My daughter’s relationship with her neighborhood shifted overnight. She understands now that the built environment is the result of decisions made by people, and that those decisions directly impact her safety. She’s gone from passenger to cyclist, and she has the new-found road awareness to prove it. 

This is how the future of biking is built. Youth bike camps (and year-round programs) teach not only riding skills; they create future advocates and activists.  In fact, a Rutgers study of four New Jersey Schools found that students who rely on active transportation as young people are much more likely to continue utilizing active transportation as they grow older. And as we know, cycling isn’t one of those pastimes people have to retire from when their knees get popcorny in their 30s. 

Bike Works has three more camps this summer, and at the start of the  school year, we resume our bike education programs in every high school in Southeast Seattle, plus South Shore K-8 and Chief Sealth High School. Would you help us keep building the future of cycling with a donation of any amount that is meaningful to you? 

My kid is one of thousands of kids who have participated in Bike Works programs through the years, and thousands more to come. Thank you for helping us get more of Seattle on two wheels. See you in the bike lane. 

In community, 

Chelsea Alvarez 

Bike Works Development Director

Preventing bicycles from entering the waste stream feels more like common sense than an act of environmentalism. When word got to me that the Recycle & Reuse department received a Green Globe award as a “Leader of the Circular Economy”, the highest honor of environmental stewardship from King County Natural Resources and Parks (KCNRP), our warehouse was bursting with donations, like an over-inflated tube. We triage, sort, breakdown, rebuild, and redistribute at a small scale compared to the output of the bike industry. In 2024 we processed just over 5,000 bicycles from King County, while all of the factories overseas combined can produce 55,000 bikes a day. While I feel honor and deep gratitude for the acknowledgement from KCNRP, the Recycle & Reuse department is a patch-kit sized response to the bicycle industrial complex.  

The largest bicycle companies in the world spend millions of dollars in an arms race for a few extra watts of power and a few hundred less grams of weight just to shave a few seconds over the competition. Once a symbol of environmentalism, the bicycle industrial complex derailed an uncomplicated machine into a disposable commodity. Department store bike-shaped-objects and the elite bikes of the Tour de France have much more in common than we think. Despite the staggering differences in price and technology, these bikes simply will not last longer than a generation. In 20-30 years, do you think your eBike’s battery will still function? What about your apps and batteries for wireless shifting? Will they still be manufacturing that proprietary bottom bracket or headset? Who is accountable for maintaining all of these systems after they are built? How many more tools will we need to fix the future of bicycles? 

We ask questions like this all the time in Recycle & Reuse. Our team simply cannot recycle nor reuse every product of the bicycle industrial complex, despite how often they green wash their involvement with the circular economy. Three years ago I documented my search for an ethical tire recycler in the Pacific Northwest, that search led me to making a sixty second dark comedy. When we are not sorting through the noise, we try to uphold the values of building the forever bike. Analog, mechanical, non-powered, old-fashioned systems that can survive generations are still being mass produced. A forever bike has parts that can be repaired, replaced, and refurbished in the rich cultural centers of the global south or in the sprawling suburbs of the dystopian west. One could even pedal backwards through time 25 years and still manage to find the correct chain compatibility.  

The Recycle & Reuse team here at Bike Works and the many other nonprofits, bike kitchens, bike shops, and home mechanics focusing on forever bicycles are the real environmental stewards of the circular economy.  

Adopting a forever bike mindset is not only about taking care in our consumer decisions; there are many ways to practice this outlook. Here at Bike Works, we offer community Dirty Bike Parties and Volunteer Repair Parties where people with or without mechanical experience help us clean and fix salvaged bikes. We welcome tax deductible financial contributions, which keep the lights on and our staff paid. And of course, you can push, pull, or haul your excess bikes to our warehouse in Columbia City or to one of our convenient drop-off locations.