Thursday 22 April 2010

Chopshop 2!


a very practical bike trailer and ridiculous chopper bike with 5ft forks!

Wednesday 14 April 2010

A Beautiful Machine - Our Very Own Bike for Auction!

The bike on display as part of the "A Beautiful Machine" exhibition.

Following on from the two-week cycling event, A Beautiful Machine, up at the Howies store in Bristol recently, at which James was invited to speak about the project and what we get up to here, we are pleased to say that our group project bike build is up at the store and is being auctioned off to raise money for the project along with a bunch of other bike goodies kindly donated by Charge, Hope Technology, Brooks of England, Rapha and The Ride Magazine.

Colin proudly displaying the bike that he and others put so much work into.

The bike was given to the project about 4 months ago and was originally a lime-green peugeot racer in a pretty bad conditon. The first thing we did was to strip it down and wire brush it (with an angle grinder) back to bare metal. It then had 5 coats of clear spray lacquer before being built back up into a single-speed with reclaimed parts here at the workshop. We very much look forward to seeing it blitzing its way around the streets of Bristol soon!

To make a bid for the bike or any other of the bike bits in the auction please visit the Beautiful Machine blog where you can see what's up for grabs and find out how to make a bid. A huge thanks again to Nick Hand and John McFaul for inviting us to be a part of this event.

James speaking at the Howies store about The Bristol Bike Project

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Supporting Foodcycle

The food distribution system has changed dramatically in the last several decades. As the economy moves from small local retailers to large supermarkets it is an inevitable consequence that food waste is generated and it is now estimated that food retailers waste 500,000 tonnes of food each year in the UK with a similar amount generated from the private catering sector.

FoodCycle's main goal is to fight food poverty using this surplus food and to feed people suffering from poor nutrition and malnourishment. FoodCycle is different because young volunteers from many backgrounds lead each project and their programmes use food to reconnect young adults with their local communites; social cohesion is formed amongst them and disadvantaged and underprivileged people as they directly help improve the communities that they live in.

Louis (pictured), a volunteer at Foodcycle, has also been lending a hand at the bike project for a while now and 2 weeks ago refurbished a donated bicycle to be used by Foodcycle in Bristol for transporting meals with the use of a bike trailer.

For more information about the Foodworks project and how to get involved please take a look at their website: www.foodworksuk.org