Email from Jacob Benjamin:

Snow! First significant snowfall of the year. Made for a messy commute in, but always better than driving.

This upcoming weekend is the Bike Project’s event Cranksgiving, a bicycle food drive. We have a bike trailer set up for canned food donations this week. Weather’ll be great for the event—projected to be 70°!

We’ll continue to tackle donations this week and get some more bikes done for our various programs.

The numbers:

Visitors:
Sales: $823.50

Bikes (Refurb): 1 for $170
Memberships: 11 for $330

Tires/tubes: 13 for $105

Thanks!

Email from Jacob Benjamin:

I was out Friday and Monday so this is a day late. I was in Berkeley, CA which has roundabouts at all of their side-street intersections. (Hint, hint.)

Pretty uneventful week otherwise. I’ll continue work on the containers and begin prep for our Kids Bike Giveaway event, which’ll be on 12/20. Look for flyers/advertisements for that next week.

The numbers:

Visitors: 106

Sales: $157.50
Memberships: 15 for $450
Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
Tires/tubes: 12 for $101

Thanks!

Email from Jacob Benjamin:

All,

Last week was the conclusion of the bike retrieval period for abandoned bikes.  We got three claims in the 11th hour, which was good. I’ll begin organizing the leftovers this week, with help from my staff. We are critically low on some used parts, so this is fortuitous timing.

Elsewhere, I have two new staffers starting this week—just in time for October!

The numbers:

Visitors: 94
Sales: $1,319.25
Bikes (refurb): 1 for $100
Memberships: 24 for $720
Tires/tubes: 28 for $153

Thanks!

The Tree Campus Advisory Committee met to review the overall program and committee membership. 

• The new Campus Landscape Architect, Bridgette Moen, joined the committee. 
• Team members discussed potential additions to the committee, including students, faculty, and staff.
• Justin Vozzo shared a status update on the tree grant.
  • Picking up several trees - 90 planted total this year
  • Ryan is heading up the F&S side, Stirling is helping to manage the contracts
  • Justin is hosting some tree plantings across the state, Urbana and in Macomb
  • Two events each spring and fall for next tw o years
• The South Arboretum Woods rehab has several plants being added, and there are student employees funded by the SSC.
• The Red Oak Rain Garden (RORG) is doing another plant installation this fall, and works with volunteers. They also installed interpretive signage.
• The Urban Wood Reuse program is going well.  The new mill is here, and they are working to hire more students.
• The Committee began reviewing the goals in the 2024 Tree Care Plan.
  • The Tree Keeper Inventory is complete for F&S, and it is still in progress for the Arboretum. 
    • There is also the ARC GIS inventory - which pulls from Tree Keeper
    • Ongoing to keep it up to date
    • Tree surgeons are responsible for logging them into the system
    • Assistants are responsible for logging the stump removals - the sub-foreperson goes in to remove it and change it to open or vacant site
    • When it is removed it is no longer counted in the inventory
    • When a new tree is planted - working with the vacant sites and updating those, planning and potential planting spots and adding the new tree in there
    • We need to identify opportunities to update the existing inventory
      
      • Longer-term - should do an update - including the diameters of the trees - should update that, changes over time
      • Might need to be a tree expert - how to appropriately update it regularly - tree health - arborist or someone who knows a lot about trees
      • Potentially it could be through dendrology - students could potentially do DBH measurements and baseline health questions
      • ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Justin is working on developing an arboriculture class, could do some tree inventory as part to that class 
    • ​​​​​​​Set a goal in 2025 Tree Care Plan to develop a comprehensive plan for handling tree inventory updates: get a plan together for how to do a regular update and comprehensive update.

Not as busy as expecting but that gave us some time to fix up more bikes. We’re currently at capacity in the front lobby area and rearranged things in the back to accommodate some of the For Sale bikes back there.

Got a count of the incoming collection of abandoned bikes, so once those are released to us, we’ll have a good plan for how to handle the influx.

Interviewing for a couple positions and waiting to hear back from a few returning staff this week. And, of course, turning out bikes for the rush.

The numbers:

Visitors: 11
Sales: $179.50
Memberships: 3 for $90
Tires/tubes: 8 for $44

All,
We’ve been working through some old stock of used parts that are too rusty/damaged to be worth keeping and scrapping them—mostly wheels and a few frames. Getting our stock of sale bikes up into the 20s, which is good but won’t be close to meeting demand. We have almost the same number of bikes available for our Build-a-Bike program, so hopefully folks will take advantage of that when our refurbished bikes sell out.

Last Friday morning F&S workers were finishing up repairing the outdoor bike pump—news I’m happy to report. On Friday, we also sold the kid’s bikes we had refurbished. In the high bike season, probably good to have a few of those fixed up, something we can quickly remedy this week.

This evening is the Bike Project Monthly Member Meeting, which I will attend. 

The numbers:
Visitors: 19
Sales: $611.50
Bikes (refurb): 1 for $175
Memberships: 8 for $240
Tires/tubes: 16 for $129

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

All,

To my mind, a bit of a slow week. Sold some bikes and prepped more for B-a-B/sale bikes.

This week I’ll be bringing staff in extra hours to help build more bikes for the inevitable Beginning Of Semester rush. We’re still hovering around 20 for sale now but are building a good inventory of fully-prepped B-a-Bs for when we sell out of our refurbed bikes. We are paring down our inventory of old/bad wheels that are taking up valuable space and creating safety hazards, which will make way for our more valuable and useful parts/bikes.

The numbers:

Visitors: 16
Sales: $499
Bikes (refurb): 1 for $200
Memberships: 6 for $180

Tires/tubes: 12 for $78

Jacob Benjamin
Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center
 

All,
The heat is upon us! The high temps have kept us less busy than we might have otherwise been. Still had some folks in and had a Build-a-Bike completed—which is always especially rewarding. Our new door has been working swimmingly, as folks have been able to enter/exit without wrestling with the door and their bike at the same time.

The numbers:

Visitors: 15
Sales: $525.50
Bikes (refurb): 1 for $200
Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
Tires/tubes: 14 for $93

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

All, Been slow but good here, as we’re in a lull between spring semester and summer sessions. Slow times allow us to provide better service to the folks that do come through, so that’s a positive.

Training up new staff and trying to keep on top of builds/donations as the spring and summer clean outs have netted us a good amount of bikes. But of course no matter how many bikes we have for sale, we’ll sell out come August. A good problem to have, I suppose.

The numbers:

Visitors: 31
Sales: $841
Memberships: 6 for $180
Bikes (refurb): 2 for $335
Tires/tubes: 10 for $72

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center