Falmouth Bike Lab Searches For New Home
After spending nine years operating out of John Wesley United Methodist Church, the Falmouth Bike Lab is searching for a new home.
Tom Weaver, a volunteer with the lab, said the bike lab will be leaving John Wesley because the church has decided to expand its youth group program and needs the space.
“John Wesley Church has been incredibly generous,” Mr. Weaver said. “They started the program, they supported us, they’ve given us room for nine years. Thank you, John Wesley, we can’t thank you enough. You’re looking to expand your youth program, that’s great; you need the space, we understand.”
The program first began in 2013 as a youth program under the leadership of the then-youth minister at the church. After he left, the bike lab continued. Jacob Perry, one of the volunteers, has been with the bike lab since it first began. Now he is a student at Cape Cod Community College, pursuing his passion for automotive and mechanical work, something he has been able to explore through years at the bike lab.
“We take donated bicycles, evaluate them, and if they’re in good enough shape, we will rehab them,” Mr. Weaver said. “If they are not, we will take any usable parts from them. And then we rehab the bikes and make them available to the general public.”
Since its inception in 2013, the Falmouth Bike Lab has operated on donated bikes and has given away 1,000 bicycles to the community, completely free of charge. Just last year, almost 100 bicycles were returned to the community. In 2019, it was nearly 200. Many bikes go to J1 visa students and summer workers looking for an easy means of transportation, while others go to residents looking to dabble in bicycling as a means of exercise.
The bike lab has also done school and Christmas giveaways, giving away up to 30 bikes at a time.
“We got about 25 bicycles for kids on one Saturday morning [around Christmas] and said ‘Come get them’ and people did,” Mr. Weaver recalled. “There was one woman—and this still gets to me—she came in and she picked up four bicycles for her kids and she said, ‘My kids were getting nothing for Christmas. Now they're getting bicycles.’”
The Falmouth Bike Lab is run strictly by volunteers, all of whom are passionate about both biking and helping the community.
“If you have a bicycle that needs repairing, you can bring it in and we will show you how to repair it,” Mr. Weaver said. “We will assist you but you’ll repair it, that way next time you can do it yourself. That’s what we like to do. We get bikes out, we give them to the community.”
The bike lab does weekly giveaways at the church on Thursdays between 7 and 8:30 PM for any community member in need of a bike, but now that the lab’s days operating out of the church are numbered, Mr. Weaver is spearheading the hunt for a new location.
“We need a new space where we can work and continue this work, so that’s what we’re looking for, if anybody has space,” he said. “The ideal space would be the downtown area, where it’s easy for people who don’t have transportation to get to.”
The lab’s current space at the church, Mr. Weaver said, is a little bit bigger than the size of a two-car garage, which is likely what the lab would need. A three-car garage, though, would be great, he said.
“It’s not only parts and workspace but storage,” he said. “If we have 50 bicycles and we’ve been working all winter on bicycles, we need room for them. We’re having to consolidate some space that we had, so we’re moving stuff around and trying to figure out what to do with everything. We’d love to continue, but if we can’t, we can’t.”
The Falmouth Bike Lab can be contacted at falmouthbikelab@gmail.com or 774-481-1522.