Some people find winter depressing due to icy weather, decreased sunlight, or the need to drag your beater bike out of storage to ride on salty, sandy roads. Here at Freewheel, winter makes us sad for a different reason: people stop dropping by the shop so much, and we start to scale back our off-site events.
Here’s what you need to know:
Effective immediately, our off-site events are tabled until spring. We’ve learned a lot about how to organize, advertise, and execute our off-site events, and we’re excited to take everything we learned and put it to good use in a few months.
As of October 10th, we’re stripping back our class schedule. We’ll have our Women, Trans, and Femme classes on Thursdays from 6-8 PM. Our Build-a-Bike classes will be capped at eight attendees, and they’ll take place every other Sunday from 12-5 PM (alternating with our volunteer days). Everything else is postponed until springtime comes.
So Fresh and So Clean Clean
With our events stripped back, we’ve freed up a lot of our attention and energy, and we’re putting it into organizing the shop. When you drop by this winter to get a gift for the bike-lover in your life, we promise you’ll be downright shocked at how easy it is to find stuff!
Gearing Up for JDS …
We’re still prepping for the Madison Bike Center to open up in the new Judge Doyle Square project this fall. You might remember we placed platinum in the eBay Shine awards this year (with your help!), and the prize money is going toward outfitting the new digs.
But we still need help. If you’re feeling generous, here’s a shopping list of items we’ll need to pick up. And, of course, we are always grateful for donations via our GoFundMe page.
Off to BikeBike!
In the second week of October, several of our employees are heading off to Tijuana, Mexico (!) for BikeBike 2019. BikeBike is a conference that brings together people from bike co-ops and community groups all around North America, for several days of panels, workshops, bike rides, and fellowship.
We’re going to be presenting three panels — two on how ecommerce can transform bike shops’ fundraising strategies, and one on the Madison Bike Center. If you’re attending BikeBike please come attend our panels and say hi. Otherwise, stay tuned for pictures from our trip!