‘Bike cave’ allows Duluthians to promote bike use
By day, Greg Schultz works at the Dorothy Day Loaves and Fishes House in Duluth. But at night, he retires to the bike cave.
Published February 27, 2008 by Duluth News Tribune
By Janna Goerdt
By day, Greg Schultz works at the Dorothy Day Loaves and Fishes House in Duluth.
But at night, he retires to the bike cave.
OK, scratch that. Schultz retires to the bike cave whenever he wants, not just in the evenings. Because it’s from this small, cool, basement room that Schultz hopes to spark a surge in Duluth’s bicycle culture.
“You’re so isolated in a car,” said Schultz, 21, partly explaining why he prefers two-wheeled transportation. There are others, too: good exercise, good for the planet, fewer parking problems, being more engaged with the community.
All these reasons together are why Schultz and a group of friends have operated a bicycle cooperative out of this basement workshop for the past year or so. The group rescues abandoned bikes, fixes them and sells or gives them away to those in need. Eugene Wearing of Superior received one of those bikes and, though he also owns a car, he often turns back to the bicycle.
“When I’m in a car, I’m closed off from the outside,” Wearing said. “But on a bike, I’m connected to the outside world; I can smile at people, be more spontaneous.”
Wearing sometimes rides from Superior to Duluth and has been known to take the
co-op’s unicycle for a spin.
“There’s nothing you can do by car that you can’t do by bike,” Schultz said and, once a week at least, he proves it. The Loaves and Fishes houses rely partly on food donations from the community. A few times each week, interns drive around to collect surplus food from the Amazing Grace Bakery and Café and the Whole Foods Co-op in Duluth.
But for his turn, Schultz hitches up a homemade trailer made from an abandoned shopping cart, straps down the boxes with old inner tubes, and pedals away with the 200-or-so-pound load.
It’s a good 10-mile round-trip, and when his trailer is fully loaded it takes some work. But Schultz likes the symbolism of it, and he likes making people look. “It’s hard, but definitely better than driving,” he said.
Duluth is slowly growing more bicycle-friendly, said Dennis Sauve, who has co-owned Twin Ports Cyclery since 1975.
Acceptance of bicyclers along city streets “has improved dramatically, and a lot has to do with people’s attitudes,” Sauve said. The city also has helped by including wide shoulders along some refurbished streets, and so has the Duluth Transit Authority’s “Bike and Bus” service of fitting buses with bike racks during the riding season. The number of transported bikes has jumped from about 9,000 in 2000 to more than 16,000 in 2007.
There are still barriers to biking Duluth — bone-chilling February cold, bumpy streets and few places to store bikes downtown, Sauve said. But there’s also hope.
Schultz has helped organize Critical Mass bike events in Duluth, where riders gather at a certain spot on a certain day (near the statue in Leif Erickson Park at 5:30 p.m. the last Friday of each month) for a free-ranging bike ride through the city.
“It’s a worldwide movement to take back the streets for bikes,” Schultz said. Past Duluth rides have attracted 10 to 30 riders, while events in the Twin Cities have drawn about 350 riders at a time to flood the streets and make drivers take notice, Schultz said. “Cars don’t like it, but we ride within all the bike laws.”
As entitled, Schultz takes up a full lane of traffic along Duluth’s streets as he tows his load of donated food, announcing his turns with arm signals and merging into traffic. Heads do turn, and people do smile.
They smile even more when Schultz or his friends break out the co-op’s “silly bikes,” including a unicycle and the tall bike with a seat about 6 feet above the ground. That one puts Schultz eyeball-to-eyeball with people driving 4×4 trucks and leaves him looking down on most car drivers. Schultz took a few tumbles while learning to ride it — he built the bike himself — but now he likes the tall bike for the reactions it brings.
“It’s hilarious,” Schultz said. “It’s therapy for me. You can’t take yourself seriously on it, and no one else does, either. Everyone you see is smiling and laughing. I like to think those smiles are contagious.”
The bike cave is clean and rather quiet for the winter. Schultz is waiting for the riding season to begin again in earnest.
Along one wall is an armada of rescued bicycles, each refurbished and ready for use again. Along another is a small pile of repair manuals, and a collection of tools and parts hangs from the basement walls. Schultz points to one rescue, a shiny 10-speed road bike that looks to be in great condition. When he plucked it from the materials recovery pile at the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District, there was just one thing wrong with it: There was no air in the tires.
A few pumps, a bit of polishing, and the bike is as good as new — ready for a new owner and a new life back on the road.