WILLMAR - Bright yellow stands are being set up today at 21 sites near public buildings and businesses.
On Friday, 40 bright yellow bikes will be placed in those racks. A map of the rack locations will also go online Friday.
Steve Brisendine, director of Willmar Community Education and Recreation, said the bicycles will be available for anyone to use for free for as long as riders follow the new program’s motto: “Ride. Respect. Return.”
To mark the program’s beginning, a ribbon cutting will be held at 4:45 p.m. Friday as riders prepare to depart on the third annual Mayor’s Bike Ride at the Glacial Lakes State Trail parking lot at the Willmar Civic Center.
Along with Community Education and Recreation, the Willmar Lakes Area Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Statewide Health Improvement Program and the Jennie-O Turkey Store sponsored the program.
By the end of summer, there should be about 100 bikes in the program, Brisendine said. All the bikes are from donors or the city impound lot, two sources discovered through Community Education’s
Wheels4Kids program.
That program has provided 100 bikes to children since 2012, Brisendine said. In the process, “We found we had easy access to bikes,” he said.
Bikes from both sources are refurbished at Rick’s Cycling & Sports Center in Willmar.
“Basically what we’re doing is taking mountain bikes and stripping off everything and putting on a coaster brake wheel,” Rick Norsten, the owner of Rick’s, said.
Norsten and his technicians also install new chains and do some realigning and lubrication, he said.
As a result, the bikes have no handlebar shifters or brake levers. They have one gear or speed and their brakes are engaged by pedaling backwards.
Refurbishing the bikes has taken up most weeknights for the past several weeks, Norsten said, and there are nine bikes left to be converted.
But they will be ready by Friday, Norsten said.
“We’re really excited that these bikes are coming from repurposing,” said Pam Vruwink, a community education and recreation coordinator.
“We don’t know of any program like this,” fellow coordinator Casey Hagert said.
If bike users have minor problems, there will be two fix stations with pumps and simple tools at Swansson Field and the Glacial Lakes trail head, Vruwink said.
The tools will also be available to any other cyclist who might need them, she said.
Community Education’s summer staff will also be checking the program’s bikes for low tires and other minor maintenance issues as well, Brisendine said .
Making the bikes easy for his staff and others to spot is the reason for the bright yellow paint, Brisendine said.
“We wanted a distinctive color,” he said.
Then, if a bike is spotted in someone’s yard day after day, Community Education will know about it.
“We don’t have a problem if someone uses a bike for a week or two,” Brisendine said. “But we can ask ‘Are you going to return that bike any time soon?”
For more information about Yellow Bike, call Community Education at 320-231-8490 or visit the website where the map of rack locations and other information will be posted at
http://www.willmar.k12.mn.us/communityed
.
