Bike Build 2011 aka Turning Wheels for Kids

A sea of bike boxes awaits.

This past Saturday was the Bike Build 2011 aka Turning Wheels for Kids in San Jose. The basic idea goes something like this, get a large number of donated bikes, get a large number of motivated bike mechanics, put them together and have at it. This was my second year doing it as I rather enjoyed it last year!

2700 bikes in 4 hours. I built 4 myself (I think I built 5 last year). Would have gotten more done but that stupid front derailleur was seriously killing me. Spent nearly 45 minutes on it alone. Had to remind myself that the kid this was going to wasn't likely going to be able to adjust the thing on his or her own.

Ooooh, right tilt.

Anyway, building the most bikes wasn't the point. Building bikes so that they were the safest possible introduction to bicycling was really the main point. A good thing to remember when your "building" blood starts flowing.

Ooooh, slight left tilt.

Here's a bunch of pics in sequence that might help give an idea of what it was like. I wish there was a sweet video of me riding an oversized trike around the whole place but that would be too easy and, apparently, I've done something to irritate my auto-focus.

Also, big shout out kudos to whoever got the Andy's BBQ for lunch. The pizza was fine last year and all but the BBQ this year really was bitchin'! The only downside is that all the bikes were done being built by the time we finished eating and got back inside.

Some dedicated and very fast build teams. I think the Team Specialized team had something like 18 or 20 of the Raleigh mountain bikes (the ones with the wonkedity front derailleurs) all arranged out in front. It was definitely a competition for them and they ripped it up.

Further on down the stack of bikes.

I didn't get as much of a chance to tour the floor this time. Just one quick buzz towards the end, the build went much more quickly this time around it seemed.

And there were quite a bit fewer over-inflated inner tube explosions. But enough to make it fun!
 Better, or at least more, pictures down below.