July Schedule and Updates – List is Closed

First off, the list to receive a bicycle is now closed. We plan to reopen it on September 1, 2016 at 9 AM.

The July shop schedule is as follows:

Sundays – July 3, 17, and 24 – Shop open noon to 4 PM (Closed July 10 and 31)

Tuesdays – July 5 and 19 – Shop open 4 PM to 9 PM (Closed July 12 and 26)

Thursdays – July 7, 21, and 28 – Shop open 4 PM to 9 PM (Closed July 14)

We have been very busy at the shop with repairing bicycles to give away, as well as paid repairs from customers. Revenue-wise, we are having our best year ever. We also anticipate a large work load in August for fixing bicycles for the University of Minnesota Re-Use Center. They take the abandoned bicycles on campus, fix those that make sense to fix, and then resell them to incoming students in the fall. This program is new for us, but will help us to keep the doors open, and the heat and lights running come winter.

We went deeper than ever into this year without closing the wait list. Normally it closes in mid-May, but this year we made it through the end of June. We don’t like turning anyone away, but we can’t manage a wait list longer than 60 people, so we finally had to close it. We normally allow 8 weeks to clear the backlog. This takes into account the times that we are away. Speaking of going away, we will be riding the Habitat 500 Bike Tour this year. Habitat for Humanity is our first and second quarter designated charity, and your purchases allowed us to donate $1,700 to HFH! The quarter 3 charity will be Cranksgiving, which is an alley cat race where participants ride from store to store and buy food items that are donated to area food shelves. Last year we gave $500. I hope we can top that this year.

There are a lot of closings in July, so plan accordingly. We will be there most of August, so you will have plenty of opportunities to visit the shop. Thanks for all of you who buy our stuff and make it possible for us to give away bicycles.