Park Tool Grants To Community Organizations

I am very happy that United Bicycle Institute and other organizations are offering scholarships and making other efforts to train women, transgenders and non-binary people to work in the bicycle industry.  While some might argue that such programs lead to low-paying dead-end jobs as bike shop employees, I think the training is valuable in other ways.  For one, some bike shop employees go on to open their own shops or work in other facets of the bicycle industry.  For another, I think training programs can help to raise the quality and consistency of services bike shops and companies offer.

Another benefit is one that training and volunteer programs of bicycle recycleries and co-ops also offer.  Knowing how to fix a bike, whether one's own or someone else's, makes for more self-sufficient cyclists.  That, I think, makes people more likely to use their bikes for more than twiddling around the park.  If you can at least fix a flat, you're less likely to worry about being late for work or school or getting stranded in an unfamiliar neighborhood or foreign country.  

Sometimes knowing how to fix a bike isn't enough, though.  Some people and communities don't have the tools necessary, whether because there isn't a shop in the neighborhood or because they don't have the money to spare for even a pair of tire levers.  Many low-wage workers. immigrants and unhoused people (who are sometimes the same people) are riding bikes that were purchased for very little, gifted to them or rescued from a dumpster or curbside.  

From Recycle-A-Bicycle

That is where Park Tool's Community Tool Grants come in.  Every year since 2015, Park has been giving grants that include tools and repair stands to nonprofit organizations and community groups.  The application period for 2022 grants is now open. In addition to ten grants that include bike-repair items, one organization will receive an additional $1000 grant to spend on tools and equipment.

Now I have one more reason to be happy that I have a number of Park tools in my box.

If A Bike Is Too Big And Nobody Is There To Ride It

Could it be that Mark Zuckerberg changed the name of Facebook to Meta because his goal is to rule the Meta-verse?

All right, that query isn't even serious enough to qualify as a rhetorical question.  Or is it?  There's a part of me that believes every multi-billionaire's ambition is to rule the world, whether physical or virtual.  After all, every billion you make isn't as satisfying as the previous billion--or your first.  

How would I know?  All right, I admit, I'm speculating.  (I don't mean that in the way a billionaire might.) But I would hazard to guess, to paraphrase someone who never should be quoted , that one billion dollars is a fortune, a hundred billion is a statistic. 

Anyway, I have to wonder what life is like in the metaverse? (Or is "life in the metaverse" an oxymoron?)  I mean, do people's bodies change when they enter the Meta-verse?  Specifically, I am now wondering how Maxima Chan Zuckerberg and her sister August were conceived.

Here is what led my mind down those dark metaphysical alleys:

I mean, if Mark Zuckerberg rides that bike (Does anybody ride in the Meta-verse?), what is the condition--or, indeed, what about the presence--of his, uh, apparatus?

But the real question--which follows from the title of this post--is:  Does bike fit matter in the Meta-verse?

Hues Of Exposure

 On the return leg of a North Shore ride, I saw the kind of blue, if a little darker, one normally doesn't see in the waters around New York City, except in postcards--or this:

We haven't had very many days of crystal-clear skies lately.  During the past few days, intervals of non-rain have punctuated downpours accompanied, at times, by wind gusts.  I couldn't keep a cap on when I was walking to the store; it's no wonder the branches can't keep their leaves

and their nudity seems even more stark against dark clouds.

Even the tall steel towers across the bay and river seem to need something to shield them against the impending winter, the way even a big, strong, young person needs a shawl, a cloak or something to cover his or her shoulders and frame against the coming cold.