During the pandemic, some people have taken up new hobbies and other activities: They've become novice cooks and bakers, with varying results. Others have spent their time gaining new knowledge or skills, or pursuing in depth what they already know. Still others, like Ric Jackson, are helping their neighbors.
The Potomac, Maryland resident is a retired mathematician and avid cyclist. Back in April, a neighbor was looking for someone to fix the brakes on his daughter's bike. "I fixed it up," Jackson recalls. "He took it back. And she was thrilled and he was thrilled."
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| Ric Jackson. Photo from CBS News |
So was Jackson. "It's just mushroomed," he says of the bike-repair practice that developed. To date, he's fixed about 650 bikes for friends, neighbors, even strangers.
And he hasn't charged any of them a cent. For him, rewards come in the looks on children's faces when their bikes are transformed. When he looks at a bike, he sees "a thing of beauty," he says. "If you clean off the dirt from the tires, put new handgrips," he explains, "before you know it, it will be...something that will just delight the heart of some little girl someplace."
That is just the sort of thing that "makes my day," he says. Or, to put it another way, it all adds up for retired mathematician and current cyclist Ric Jackson.
