Car-Lite/Community Bikes/LITE Update 2006

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Hello bike enthusiasts, car-LITEers and friends,

COMMUNITY BIKES BIRTHDAY PARTY

We are throwing ourselves a party on Sunday, January 21, from 5-9 pm, at our shop at 4009 Sebastopol Road, in Santa Rosa. Holiday drinks and substantial vegetarian finger food prepared by local chefs will be served. Please come and bring your friends and a healthy appetite! RSVP's requested. A more formal invite will go out sometime soon.


THE UPDATE:
Community Bikes has been open for one full year now at its location on Sebastopol Road. It is popular and very busy. The all-volunteer crew has been refurbishing bikes by the dozens and many of you are now proud owners of these bikes.

The Bike Elves will also be working at the shop over the next few weeks. This is a group of dedicated fire-fighters and their friends who get together at this time every year to fix and give away kids' bikes. You can help; reply to me and I'll send you the details.

Great work! This same kind of dedication lives on with our volunteers.

Community Bikes has just received a generous gift from the Santa Rosa Cycling Club. The SRCC is a top-notch club putting on world-class events. If you're a cyclist or want to be more of one, contact them at: www.SRCC.com

Last but certainly not least, last year Car-Lite broadened its scope and changed its name to LITE Initiatives. L.I.T.E stands for Living In Touch with the Earth. So far the LITE 'Initiatives' include Zero Waste Sonoma County, The Green Mentor, Car-Lite and Community Bikes. We are a "Do It Your Self" kind of group and invite you to join us in working toward a more sustainable future.

We have revived our monthly Sunday brunches at 11 am at Two Acre Wood Cohousing, 672 Robinson Rd, in Sebastopol: 1/14, 2/11 and 3/11. Please join us and bring what ever your refrigerator suggests; we will supply a main dish and a warm drink. An agenda will be going out in early January – topics to be addressed soon include classes, zero emission parades, bike rides and what else we can do to encourage people to drive less.

An exciting new LITE website is being created and will be up in the next few weeks. Until then, check out our projects at our old, old, old site: www.car-lite.org and the Sustainable Transportation Center at www.socostc.org.

Oh, don't forget us when you write your end of the year donation checks or when you clean out your garage. We have been enrolled as a formal non profit since 2001 and every dollar and quality bike helps us get more people out of their cars.


THE ADVICE WE NEED
We have become victims of our success! We have so many bikes that we will not be able to get to all of them and they keep coming. We keep the best and give lesser-quality bikes to Recycletown, a rural Ghana bike project and to the Folsom Prison Bike Workshop. We will continue to do that, but their needs are limited, and in the case of Ghana, expensive. We hate putting them in scrap metal bin!

CAN YOU THINK OF WHAT WE CAN DO WITH DOZENS AND MORE OF LESSER-QUALITY BIKES THAT NEED WORK? Better yet, do you know a project that needs them?

Please reply to me with any solutions or questions.

Thanks very much. Be LITE!

Sammy Nasr, [email protected]