Since just before giving up my car, I’ve been working at a new, experimental high school call One Stone. This is the first year One Stone is offering classes as a replacement for high school. In years past, they’ve run after school programs focused on Design Thinking. With the new project, they also started looking for their own building and looking for ways to connect this new building with the surrounding community.

Several students in the after school program worked with a couple of school students and

Photo by Daniel Oines.

the schools development director to apply for an Air/Repair Station grant through Whole Foods. Currently, there are about a dozen of these stations around Boise where anyone can stop by and do work on their bike for free. The students worked hard to make the case that our school, located in a neighborhood with a large immigrant population, would be a great place to add another bicycle repair station.

When we found out we won, the first thought was, “How will we pick it up?” The idea of driving over to pick up a bike repair station seemed wrong. Luckily, I’ve got a trailer that can handle the weight of the air pump and repair station, so that’s how we got it. We rode back along the Greenbelt for about a mile to get it to the school and got many odd looks along the way.  At one point, another biker rode up along side me and asked, “Is that one of the bike repair stations?”

“Yep.”

“Um… Why do you have it on a trailer?”

“You should always be prepared… This is my turn off. Have a good one.”

It felt good to be able to pick this up with a bike, rather than getting a truck to move it. I also think it showed the students what you can do with a bike other than get yourself from one place to another. I’m excited to see what impact my year of biking will have on them.