Did your bike chose you?

googly eyes for your bike! kinda cute, right :)

 “Life always seems sweetest when we stumble upon a new experience, whether it be a new trial, an open road, rush hour traffic, a freshly tamped set of rollers or in this case a fixer upper project bike.”

via urbanvelo

Change Lots Of Lives. Build A Bike!

One of the most interesting things about blogging, to me at least, is getting the chance to see where our readers come from.  I use a stats program that can give me a world map of readership over a specified period of time.  When the world map comes up, there are little dots for where each visitor's general area is.

Today, when I looked there were dots in Finland, New Zealand, Rio de Janeiro, Ghana and Turkey all within the same time period.  What a global spread!!  It got me to wondering what kind of information I could easily find about bicycling in some of these places, starting with Turkey.

There isn't a lot of easily findable material from a first person perspective about bicycling in Turkey.  There are a few stories about people having a bicycle vacation in Turkey, but I didn't find (with a very limited search) anything written by a Turk about riding in Turkey.  I have to admit, I was a little disappointed.  Lucky for me, I wasn't disappointed for long!

In my search I found this story about De Fietsfabriek, The Bicycle Factory, in the Hurriyet Daily News.  It turns out that De Fietsfabriek was started by a Turkish immigrant to the Netherlands, Yalcin Cihangir.

"Cihangir discovered that he liked fixing bicycles and wanted to make his own bikes; after six months, he started his own business in Amsterdam. Teaming up with a local colleague in 2004, he started the Bicycle Factory (www.defietsfabriek.nl)."*

The best part of this story is that Cihangir has his parts manufactured in his small hometown in Turkey.

"Bike parts are produced in Büyükcamili, creating jobs for almost 30 men in a small place in danger of being abandoned. Cihangir opened the factory in his home village in order to give something back. People working at the factory have reasonable working hours and get a decent salary, between 1,300 and 1,700 Turkish Liras. Next to the bicycle factory, an atelier has been created where women make special clothing that is sold in the Netherlands and returns the revenues to Anatolia.

Cihangir is also financing a local agricultural project to grow products in an environmentally friendly way. His final goal is to make his home village an attractive place for young people to stay and make a living."*

Here are some of the people who make his bicycles in Turkey

and here is a wonderful little documentary of the opening of his factory. It is in Dutch and Turkish but you will get a very good idea of how big a deal this factory is and just how much good it is doing.

I have never met Yalcin Cihangir and I probably never will, but I would be very proud to own one of his bicycles.  He proves through his actions that there is so much more to bicycles than any of us think of when we jump on them to go to work or play.  Bicycles can save your home town!  Maybe Flint and Detroit, Michigan should get on the bandwagon, too.  After all, Henry Ford built and sold bicycles before cars and now Michigan is suffering the after effects.  Maybe those same bicycles could help repair some of that damage.  I know I would buy an American made bicycle like we used to be able to.  

I would certainly buy a De Fietsfabriek bicycle.  I may not be from a tiny village in Turkey, but it doesn't mean I can't help one out!

*excerpt from "The Turkish Bicycle Factory" by JOOST LAGENDİJK and linked to above.

Advice Needed

This is my lovely friend, Raphael.

Raphael is one of my adventurous friends. He is an artist, a teacher, a chef, a comedian and just a really nice friend to have on a rainy night in North Beach. Recently, Raphael packed up and moved to Berlin where he currently resides. Without a bicycle.

Raphael is looking for advice on where to buy a bicycle in Berlin. He is not a German speaker (yet) and because of the cross world move not exactly dripping in money. Raphael would like to buy a used bicycle, but is afraid of ending up with stolen property.

So, who out there in the blogosphere has some ideas to help this fantastic friend of mine out? Where are the good used bicycles in Berlin? What should a 20 year old Gazelle (or something like it) cost? Are you in Berlin and have a bicycle for sale? Raphael will be checking in to see what you all have to say so let's get the advice going!!