Community Cycles Volunteers are key to ensure that this Boulder nonprofit achieves its mission. Whether it is getting affordable used bikes out to the community or making Boulder Better for Bicycling, Volunteers help make the Community Cycles mission achievable and help build community! Below are just a few of the many volunteers that make it happen.
Jeff Whitaker
Jeff is a native New Yorker and self-professed weather nerd who moved to Boulder from Tallahassee in 1991 for a postdoc at NCAR and has been biking to work at NOAA since 1992. He loves tinkering with bikes (especially old, neglected ones) almost as much as riding them. A Community Cycles volunteer since 2014, he can be found working at the wheel station trying to bring abused wheels back into a state of roundness or teaching people how to build new ones. He enjoys talking about weather, baseball and, of course, bikes.
Tom Campbell
Tom started his new career as a volunteer mechanic at Community Cycles in 2015 after retiring from nearly 40 years as a biologist/project manager in environmental consulting. He has been riding seriously since the mid 1990s doing several centuries each summer. Tom will do whatever ‘quick job’ Dax asks of him, but he is usually rebuilding donated bicycles or helping members fix their bikes. He also helps Jennifer with proposals as needed.
Eric Smith
Eric has been a tremendous help at Community Cycles for several years. He works weekly with our Development Director, Jennifer Shriver, writing grants for our organization. He has helped us raise money for many programs. These grants, such as extension of the City of Boulder Community Culture Safety ballot measure, are also a huge part of getting us into our new building. He often scans craigslist and curbsides for free bikes that he brings in to donate. We all appreciate Eric’s kind and caring personality and great sense of humor. He likes to come in the shop and work on his own bikes occasionally too, and he is a frequent flyer in Jeff’s Wheel Building class.
Rick Mueller
I have been riding bikes since I can remember. I had a purple banana seat at eight years old. When I was in high school, I rode an old 10 speed to school and back which was 10 miles one way. That’s when I found out I really enjoyed riding. Because the bike was my main source of transportation, I had to learn how to fix my bikes. I bought my first ”real” bike after watching Greg LeMond win his first Tour de France. I was hooked. I started getting involved with Community Cycles in 2015. I mostly work on the donated bikes and sort parts and sometimes help the mechanic on duty anyway I can. At the same time, I learn a lot about wrenching from some of the best mechanics I have ever met. For me, it’s a lot of fun.
Theo Takeda
Theo likes having fun on pedals (particularly when he has someone to help drag him out of his non-pedaling lazy-stasis). For him, this means casually dabbling in trials, street, and BMX. As a result, he’s had to fix quite a lot on his bikes – especially the wheels. Coincidentally, this is what he’s been helping out with at Community Cycles since 2015. Without a doubt, he has more experience truing wheels than writing about himself in the third-person.
John Kelin
John began cycling in earnest in San Francisco some years back, on a rigid-frame mountain bike. Since then he has added a road bike to the collection, on which he has done a few centuries and Rocky Mountain passes. Usually, though, he sticks to the back roads of Boulder County. A writer and editor by day, he feels privileged to volunteer at Community Cycles, where he has learned a lot about bike mechanics since starting in 2014. He considers CC an incredible resource, one of Boulder’s sparkling gems.
Will Clausen
I was first introduced to Community Cycles through the transitions program for the Boulder County Jail. I qualified for JBBS (Jail-Based Behavioral Services) and they informed me that I could receive a bike through them upon reentry to the community. However, my friend informed me that he also needed a bike and did not have the means to get one, so I gave him my bike and came to Community Cycles to do the Earn-A-Bike program. After I got my bike, I was so thankful that I kept volunteering my time every Saturday. I currently volunteer every Saturday and Sunday fixing up bikes for JBBS and the shop. I built about 40 kids bikes for the 2016 KHBG and have gotten a $1,000 grant to fix bikes for JBBS.
Hilary Traut
Hilary has been loitering at Community Cycles since 2016. Starting out flattening bikes in the pile behind the shop (with little experience cycling or wrenching), she’s rapidly become a hopeless bike addict. Moving from the bike pile to the main workshop, Hilary now helps members work on their bikes during shop hours, teaches classes for Community Cycles’s Complete Mechanic Series (CMS), and enjoys spending her volunteer time doing whatever needs to get done that day. As a Ph.D. student in Cognitive Psychology, she constantly pesters cyclists to remember to always wear their helmet no matter how short the ride!
Brett Schager
Brett is a former staff member and current volunteer at Community Cycles. He likes building bikes more than riding bikes and can be found fixing up 70’s/80’s road bikes and turning French bikes into fixies. His interests include building lots and lots of wheels, teaching volunteers, and sorting small parts. His favorite groups include 600 Arabesque, 105 Golden Arrow, the first generation Deore, the Deerhead first generation Deore XT, Deore DX, and STX Special Edition.
Sandee Cirian
Being part of the Community Cycles Board is not enough for Sandee. Sandee also plays a key role in CC’s marketing and social media work to improve the organization’s communication. Sandee helps CC create safer streets for walkers and bicyclists throughout Boulder.
Rob Fremgen
Rob found out about Community Cycles through a ‘community volunteers day’ about 8 yrs ago. He was intrigued by the ‘help anyone fix their bike’ friendly shop attitude and the earn-a-bike program, and began volunteering to help people, and himself, learn more about bikes. Soon he was helping with: The New Belgium Film Festival, Christmas Kids Bike Giveaway, installing bike racks, and marking the B-360/180 course. These services and events, and the staff, help make CC a truly valuable community resource.
Ken Fowler
Thanks to an Intrepid and Long-Time Community Cycles Volunteer Ken Fowler!
Ken was born and grew up in Boulder, before there were bike paths! Like many other brave elementary, middle school, high school, and CU Students, he biked wearing t-shirts bearing neon triangles that read: “Allowed Full Use of Right Lane.” We would actually ride our bikes and take up the whole right lane. So, likely the “whole right-lane riders” protest contributed to the funding and right of way approvals for the first bike paths.
Arriving at Community Cycles in 2009, received valuable rear derailleur repair coaching and began volunteering then: with the Kid’s Holiday Bike Giveaways since 2009. Now this event is a favorite holiday activity.
Ken’s helped out with CC’s rolling bike clinics, bike rodeos, and B360’s over the last 7 years, and has even gone door to door asking local businesses to kick in some in-kind member party donations. Most recently he volunteered at the New Belgium Tour de Fat benefit concert, where he was astounded by the improvisational beauty of deaf signing concert interpreters.
As a dedicated year round all weather bike commuter on his ‘Earned Bike’, Ken has a sincere appreciation and gratitude for our AMAZING bike paths and Evolving Boulder Bike Culture. Appreciating how Community Cycles is helping shape, influence, and grow bike culture in Boulder, Ken says Alexey and Sue have been my CC rocks to roll with on Bike to Work Days and Pastries on the Path, over and under and up and down and round and round.
