But with the bad economy, huge bike price increases, etc, etc...
the event was still spectacular. The generosity was overflowing.
Over a thousand bikes were donated and built today to various causes. $36k was raised today and a whole lot of love was in the air.
Team mtbr, romp, passion, wrong way, mere mortals and many others were there. This event is annual and is not publicized much on these boards because there are so many volunteers. Next year though, we need a lot more experienced mechanics for QA.
Here's a little 4 minute highlight reel of the days events. I feel honored to have been able to participate and contribute a small part in helping these deserving kids have a chance to experience the joy of riding this holiday season and throughout the year. This event is a beautiful manifestation of how the bay area cycling community smiles and selflessly moves to action.
It was good to run into a lot of friends at the bike build. I led a crew from Mere Mortals. (That's me in the turquoise sweatshirt on the left.) We were next to the MTBR crew and Mountain Bikers of Santa Cruz. ROMP was there, Passion Trail Bikes, etc.
I managed to screw together 5 or 6 bikes. Multiply that by 600 and you have some idea how big this event was!
BTW, Francis, the total money raised was over $40K by the time I left!
__________________
Work is the curse of the biking classes.
Here's a little 4 minute highlight reel of the days events. I feel honored to have been able to participate and contribute a small part in helping these deserving kids have a chance to experience the joy of riding this holiday season and throughout the year. This event is a beautiful manifestation of how the bay area cycling community smiles and selflessly moves to action.
Here's a little 4 minute highlight reel of the days events. I feel honored to have been able to participate and contribute a small part in helping these deserving kids have a chance to experience the joy of riding this holiday season and throughout the year. This event is a beautiful manifestation of how the bay area cycling community smiles and selflessly moves to action.
Hundreds of volunteers will gather in San Jose this morning as part of an annual effort to assemble thousands of bicycles for low-income children who have a high risk of obesity.
Turning Wheels for Kids, a program of the Valley Medical Center Foundation, will offer Bike Build 2008 for more than 600 volunteers to build thousands of bikes for charities to distribute to low-income children, Turning Wheels director Sue Runsvold said.
Runsvold said she started building bikes for disadvantaged children during the holiday season as a personal effort in 2003. She bought 12 bikes after raising money about a week before Christmas.
After starting fundraising earlier the next year, Runsvold purchased 40 bikes and realized she could expand even further.
Runsvold, a nurse at Valley Medical Center, assembled a team of 10 people and her group became an official nonprofit organization under the Valley Medical Center Foundation.
"It started as good will during the holiday season," she said of the project's roots.
Turning Wheels focused on providing bikes to low-income children, but did not want to work on qualifying families.
Pairing with local charities to distribute the assembled bikes to children in need has worked well, Runsvold said. Keeping administrative costs low has also allowed Turning Wheels to spend all donations on bikes, locks and helmets, she said.
The program started as a holiday gift-giving venture, a component Runsvold said is important.
"Many years ago I would've been one of the kids who got one of these bikes," she said. "I used to worry I would have to lie or say nothing when asked what I got for Christmas. It comes full circle that way."
Runsvold said she also finds a common thread with the charities that give Turning Wheels bikes to families with one parent in prison, as her father was in prison.
The second part of the Turning Wheels story came about when Runsvold connected her job as a nurse with her charitable work.
"I am by trade a nurse and was aware of the issue of childhood obesity," she said. "The more I got involved the more I realized there is a connection there."
"Most of the parents love their children, but they don't have the means to provide for them exercise," she added. "This is a simple tool they can use for them to get outside."
Runsvold said in addition to the health dangers of childhood obesity, low self-esteem amongst obese children can lead to problems such as drug use, gang involvement and teen pregnancy.
Purchasing and assembling bikes became a year-round effort as part of the fight against childhood obesity within low-income areas, Runsvold said.
Still, the major push comes at Christmas. Of the roughly 2,400 bikes Turning Wheels will purchase, assemble and donate this year, about 2,100 will be assembled and distributed to charity organizations on Saturday.
Volunteers will gather at today at the McEnery Convention Center's South Hall, a room rented by Team San Jose and donated to Turning Wheels. After assembling the fleet of bicycles, charities will come by to retrieve the bikes.
One group of about 30 children will be allowed to handpick bicycles from the group of assembled bikes today, thanks to Variety Children's Charity of Northern California and the County of Santa Clara, variety's executive director Ellen Goodman said.
Goodman said the children are clients of the county's Department of Child Support Services.
"They are our first choice when we look for kids who are recipients," she said. "It's really the special event that brings excitement for the holidays."
The children, their siblings and families will attend helmet fitting and education before being fitted for their bikes. She said the bicycles are a wonderful way to provide exercise for disadvantaged children to exercise and stay out of trouble.
"There are so many families that are suffering more than ever, the timing of this particular event couldn't be better," Goodman said.
Despite rough economic times, Runsvold said donors and volunteers have been especially generous this year. She said Turning Wheels' annual budget is about $200,000 to purchase bikes and helmets. Providing locks for all recipients is a goal Runsvold hopes will be realized when the cost of bikes falls again after a 30 percent spike in prices this year.
"It was a challenging year but we're there," she said. "I feel very fortunate that people are stepping up."
Here's a little 4 minute highlight reel of the days events. I feel honored to have been able to participate and contribute a small part in helping these deserving kids have a chance to experience the joy of riding this holiday season and throughout the year. This event is a beautiful manifestation of how the bay area cycling community smiles and selflessly moves to action.
This is Deborah from TurningWheels and we love your video! Very nice job capturing the day! Would you mind very much if we used your video on our website and facebook?? We may want to even tap your talents next year! You turned that out so well and so fast!
and francois, thank you for your kind words, we are constantly working on making the event better every year, so we appreciate your suggestion very much!
Thanks to everyone else who came out to help, you make it all possible! If any of you want to be placed on our mailing list for early notification next year, just email me @ deborah@turningwheelsforkids.org. Thanks!!
Seeing the excitement and joy in the kids faces when they pick up there bikes makes this event so worthwhile for us. Carmen and I had a great time again this year and hope to be back next year.
Ron, Awesome job on the video....!!!
BTW: I think TWFK needs some help on bike selections,
The large full suspension " Red Mountain Bike " quality was poor, I'm sure the bike is a big hit on the bling factor with the kids, But It's going to need adjustments every other ride for shifting problems with the poor quality derailleurs and brakes and it just won't last.
I think they would be better off with more of the large Diamondback Hardtails, I have to believe they are a less expensive bike for them to buy and better quality.
This is the infamous " Mountain Bike " anyone one that worked on one knows what I'm talking about.
__________________
When a bike is stolen a fairy dies
Francis, try copy pasting the link instead of clicking on it
Quote:
Originally Posted by francois
Hey, good to see you out there Ron. You're a natural with those kids!
I can't view your video even after 30+ minutes of downloading from gallery.me.com. You might want to upload somewhere else too as an alternative.
fc
Francis,
I tried clicking the link and ran into the same problem, but when I copy pasted the link it started to stream just fine...I'm not super techy so don't know why that's the case. I'll try doing a youtube and post that after the kids go to beddy bye tonight
This is Deborah from TurningWheels and we love your video! Very nice job capturing the day! Would you mind very much if we used your video on our website and facebook??
Deborah Lemberger
Asst. Director
TWFK
Deborah,
Wow I'm just an amateur hobbyist, but it would be my honor to have your organization use this footage. I'll send you an email so we can coordinate delivery of the footage.
And thanks to jeffh for your nice comments on the video, you all saw the faces of the children as they picked up their bikes and you really understand how we can change the world one bike at a time...I think you'll all agree that supporting this cause is right in our collective "wheelhouse"
I snuck some photos of my MTBR friends yesterday and posted them on Facebook. This is the third year Velo Girls has participated in the TWFK bike build -- we brought 30 women & men to build bikes yesterday. It's one of my favorite events of the entire year.
okay, so here's my$.02! right on deb ~ switchbaxr, your video was GREEEEEAT! i was so tired i was asleep at 9 last night and sorta wakin' up now ~ finally! so i am curious ~ how did you get that done so fast? thank you and great job. can't wait to post it on our website! you really are creative and captured the day. loved the interviews! okay, i gotta go post a blog! you and deb figure out the how or this!
sus
Seeing the excitement and joy in the kids faces when they pick up there bikes makes this event so worthwhile for us. Carmen and I had a great time again this year and hope to be back next year.
Ron, Awesome job on the video....!!!
BTW: I think TWFK needs some help on bike selections,
The large full suspension " Red Mountain Bike " quality was poor, I'm sure the bike is a big hit on the bling factor with the kids, But It's going to need adjustments every other ride for shifting problems with the poor quality derailleurs and brakes and it just won't last.
I think they would be better off with more of the large Diamondback Hardtails, I have to believe they are a less expensive bike for them to buy and better quality.
This is the infamous " Mountain Bike " anyone one that worked on one knows what I'm talking about.
We're in total agreement about the quality or better stated, lack of quality of that bike. The balance between buying as many bikes as possible within our budget vs. a minimum quality level for the more complex bikes is a tough one. With a huge increase in pricing due to a variety of things like oil (shipping, rubber products etc.), demand, supply, The Olympics, etc. the prices of all bikes shot way up. It's tough when scrambling to pick bikes by internet and phone with minimum access to component information to find the right combination at the right price. We would love to do all Raleigh/Diamondback for the upper end but just couldn't afford it. That Outlook hardtail has been a staple for the last few years but each unit costs us about 45-50 dollars more than that red beast. They have been a wonderful company to work with and we're hoping we'll find better deals on the 2010 models so that we can distribute a higher percentage of the better quality bikes.
As far as help with bike selections, you bet. We're always open to constructive suggestions and advice. Identifying minimum component levels is tough for us. We obviously lack the technical expertise that many of you have. We may find the right brake set, only to find the wrong rims. We stepped some of those bikes up to Shimano, but still felt like we undershot our minimum standards for those bikes. Well, we don't feel like we did, we know we did.
We're a young group that is pioneering this area of assembling the bikes we provide ourselves, on a large scale. Other bike charities just don't do this. We want to improve every year and feel we did this year in many areas although lacked in some.
We have loved our association with Team MTBR. Nick T. stepped up big time this year and did your group proud as do all of you. Whoever Channel 11 picked up was wonderful with those 3 girls. We couldn't achieve what we do without you.
From Dave and the entire TWFK team- Thanks again to all of you. Your team rocked!
YouTube - Turning Wheels For Kids - TWFK Video Highlights
Quote:
Originally Posted by switchbaxr
Francis,
I tried clicking the link and ran into the same problem, but when I copy pasted the link it started to stream just fine...I'm not super techy so don't know why that's the case. I'll try doing a youtube and post that after the kids go to beddy bye tonight
okay, so here's my$.02! right on deb ~ switchbaxr, your video was GREEEEEAT! i was so tired i was asleep at 9 last night and sorta wakin' up now ~ finally! so i am curious ~ how did you get that done so fast? thank you and great job. can't wait to post it on our website! you really are creative and captured the day. loved the interviews! okay, i gotta go post a blog! you and deb figure out the how or this!
sus
Sue, so glad that you enjoyed the video highlight reel I just used my Canon HDV Camcorder, Apple's iMovie to make my cuts and the MobileMe site to produce the video. I'm still in awe of all the coordination hours that must have went into organizing this event. My tiny 2 hours of editing were but a grain of sand on your whole beach of effort. So glad to be small part of it!
Regards,
Switchbaxr
I really don't enjoy putting together bikes so I bring both kids. Patrick always enjoys finding one of the guys to build with (Thanks SF Matt) and Garrett haas surprised me each year by increasing his mechanical skills building the smaller bikes.
There has never been an instance in the last three years when one of the boys rolled their eyes saying they didn't want to go. I find that nice.
For me...I like cleaning up the area of all the boxes and garbage that builds up.
It has also been a good place to run into faces that I may only see once a year.
Carol Silva and I raced on different teams in the Transrockies many moons ago. And of course it's also good to say hello to one or two of Frank's past flings.
Great video Ron! I had to watch the youTube version also.
Great event again! Such a rewarding feeling. A lot of us put an effort toward our personal bike skills (riding, building, etc), and it feels good that some of it can be used back toward the community. I look forward to next year.
Seeing the excitement and joy in the kids faces when they pick up there bikes makes this event so worthwhile for us. Carmen and I had a great time again this year and hope to be back next year.
Ron, Awesome job on the video....!!!
BTW: I think TWFK needs some help on bike selections,
The large full suspension " Red Mountain Bike " quality was poor, I'm sure the bike is a big hit on the bling factor with the kids, But It's going to need adjustments every other ride for shifting problems with the poor quality derailleurs and brakes and it just won't last.
I think they would be better off with more of the large Diamondback Hardtails, I have to believe they are a less expensive bike for them to buy and better quality.
This is the infamous " Mountain Bike " anyone one that worked on one knows what I'm talking about.
Hiya Jeff.
I wanted to pipe up and let you know that TWFK was also less than satisfied at some of the quality and type of bikes we were able to procure this year. in fact, we darned near couldn't procure bicycles at all because of the cost increases/bike shortages/overall quality and availability of bikes this year due to a plethora of reasons. anyway, you can be assured that we much prefer the raleigh/diamondback bicycles, and had MUCH discussion on the type of bikes distributed the day after the build because the bicycles we had were so problematic to QA and really held up the works as far as getting the bikes out the door. good grief. but i guess if we weren't learning, we wouldn't be growing! thanks for your suggestions, these are just the type of things i am lurking for!
I wanted to pipe up and let you know that TWFK was also less than satisfied at some of the quality and type of bikes we were able to procure this year. in fact, we darned near couldn't procure bicycles at all because of the cost increases/bike shortages/overall quality and availability of bikes this year due to a plethora of reasons. anyway, you can be assured that we much prefer the raleigh/diamondback bicycles, and had MUCH discussion on the type of bikes distributed the day after the build because the bicycles we had were so problematic to QA and really held up the works as far as getting the bikes out the door. good grief. but i guess if we weren't learning, we wouldn't be growing! thanks for your suggestions, these are just the type of things i am lurking for!
First off, Deb and Dave and the whole TWFK staff you guys are doing a great Job keep it up !
I'm sure the picking of bikes is a huge amount work, stress and a little unknown black magic.
I worked on only geared bikes on Saturday with six or seven of them being the Red Beasts. The ones that had upgraded components shifted very well out of the box and should be fine for the kids, I was only having problems with the base model Red Beasts with the stamped steel front derailleurs, All the other geared bikes seemed to be good.
__________________
When a bike is stolen a fairy dies
I had a great time at the bike build. Great job to all the volunteers. I'm really proud of the Bay Area cycling community for stepping up and building bikes for kids. Thanks to the TWFK organization for creating and running an awesome event.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jeffh
BTW: I think TWFK needs some help on bike selections,
The large full suspension " Red Mountain Bike " quality was poor, I'm sure the bike is a big hit on the bling factor with the kids, But It's going to need adjustments every other ride for shifting problems with the poor quality derailleurs and brakes and it just won't last.
I think they would be better off with more of the large Diamondback Hardtails, I have to believe they are a less expensive bike for them to buy and better quality.
This is the infamous " Mountain Bike " anyone one that worked on one knows what I'm talking about.
I built one of these red beast and was really disappointed with the quality. Getting the brakes and derailers to work correctly was a challenge.
I recommend that TWFK do *not* purchase full suspension bikes for kids. At the low end these are heavy and potentially dangerous. I agree that the green Diamondback mountain bikes were a better value and quality.
Especially for the kids. The "in" thing is full suspension.
While we know most everyone doesn't need full suspension - I would wager that is what the kids want.
My own kid was envious when I bought his brother a FS. Even though used, he let me know that was the kind of bike he wanted. I told him he didn't ride enough to warrant the expense. He asked how often I wanted him to ride and said OK. I am amazed to realize he kept to his end of the bargain. He was on the Kennedy ride and rode Annadel with me the next day. I made both kids get up at 6 am - 2 days out of a four day weekend. The younger kid loved the pig.
I had a great time at the bike build. Great job to all the volunteers. I'm really proud of the Bay Area cycling community for stepping up and building bikes for kids. Thanks to the TWFK organization for creating and running an awesome event.
I built one of these red beast and was really disappointed with the quality. Getting the brakes and derailers to work correctly was a challenge.
I recommend that TWFK do *not* purchase full suspension bikes for kids. At the low end these are heavy and potentially dangerous. I agree that the green Diamondback mountain bikes were a better value and quality.
You were there? Man, sorry I missed you.
Agreed on the red FS beast. Just say no. As experienced mountain bikers, our advice is not too buy full suspension bikes under $500 for any reason. At that price point or lower, the compromises in quality and design are too great to provide a safe and enjoyable ride.
Although i am of a similar opinion that a few of the FS bikes at TWFK would not be safe for any real *off road* use....please remember that these bikes are "First" bikes for many recipients....and they will never see anything more than sidewalks, bike paths....and possibly some creek side ST...
As long as the bike stops...goes forward....wheels stay on.....handle bars stay upright and straight the bike is good-to-go and fun to ride IMHO......plus these bikes were were built/checked and held to much higher level than any of the other Wally World brands out there......
Reflect back on your very first bikes.....and the crazy shenanigans you pulled on them......i recall picking my way thru limestone creekbeds in TX attempting to jump everything i could find on lesser quality bikes (really...it was just crashing).......the world is not Nerf......
I had a blast in QC this year...and look forward to contributing further to the TWFK charities.
- Nick
Yea, I should have came over to reintroduce myself. I didn't socialize with other groups as much as I would have liked to. Talked to some familiar faces like Frank from Fox, TWW and ROMP and got to know Chuck Fry a little better but I would have liked to have got around more.
Quote:
Originally Posted by francois
Agreed on the red FS beast. Just say no. As experienced mountain bikers, our advice is not too buy full suspension bikes under $500 for any reason. At that price point or lower, the compromises in quality and design are too great to provide a safe and enjoyable ride.
fc
Although i am of a similar opinion that a few of the FS bikes at TWFK would not be safe for any real *off road* use....please remember that these bikes are "First" bikes for many recipients....and they will never see anything more than sidewalks, bike paths....and possibly some creek side ST...
As long as the bike stops...goes forward....wheels stay on.....handle bars stay upright and straight the bike is good-to-go and fun to ride IMHO......plus these bikes were were built/checked and held to much higher level than any of the other Wally World brands out there......
Reflect back on your very first bikes.....and the crazy shenanigans you pulled on them......i recall picking my way thru limestone creekbeds in TX attempting to jump everything i could find on lesser quality bikes (really...it was just crashing).......the world is not Nerf......
I had a blast in QC this year...and look forward to contributing further to the TWFK charities.
- Nick
Just fyi,
Nick is the man responsible for team mtbr. He got us involved. He does everything. He takes no credit and accepts no accolades.
It was my pleasure to volunteer for this event. I'll be back again next year for sure.
I'll leave the comments about the red beast out as they have already been covered.
Instead I'll focus on some things that were really done right and impressed me. One of the things I really liked was having Sharkie there roaming around. The food was well organized and well managed too. I also thought parking and unloading was amazingly smooth.
Thanks so much to the organizers and to the people that donated soo much money so that kids that could not normally afford bikes can have one to ride around and hopefully create a lifetime love of the sport that we all enjoy so much. I too would have been one of those kids years ago...
" Mountain Bike " 
That would be me
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