and what’s been happening?

Well it’s been business as usual for the last couple of months.

Sunday Sessions have been happening, we’ve just been busy on the tools rather than taking photos.

We enjoyed having special guest chef, Phillipe from Whitehorse, Canada to one of our Sunday Sessions.

Liam and Pete have made a big start to reorganising the Bike Kitchen yard – all the branches are cleared and we can access the fences.

Cleanup day fire

There is plenty to do in making the best use of the space so it’s easier to store the bikes and frames and for you to find what you need. So if you have the time and no bike chores to do you can still come along to a Sunday Session and give us a hand with the reorg.

We also had a go at valet bike parking for Kidsfest held at the Botanical Gardens on 21st March. Unfortunately, the rain get the cyclists away (well it kept lots of people away) so we didn’t get to spread the good news about HBK as we hoped.

We hope you enjoy Easter as we have a kitchen free weekend, but we’re already making plans for a big session on the 11th.

Bikes are for play too.

It was great to see a few friends of HBK getting out and putting their bikes to good use.

Summer Survival saw Ant of Third Place Communities putting in the hard yards as an individual competitor.

Liam and Galen of Healthy Transport Hobart teamed together for the 2 person teams, and Liam loved the kayaking.

For HBK Mark got on the road bike for the Matthews Mob and followed team rules “stay on the bike, don’t come last”.

No times are being posted here as we wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone, it just good to see bikes out on a summers day and these hard workers for our community having some fun.

We’ll see if we can get some photos of the day.

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

Well he’s not dead, he’s not even badly injured but Gus, the King of Bike Kitchen (he’d hate that term), is off to do some more great bike things on the mainland.

Gus has been accepted into Architecture at the University of Newcastle, or more properly the School of Architecture and the Built Environment in the Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment. There Gus will be able to take his engineering knowledge and his bike love to become Australia;s answer to Jan Gehl.

Reading this article from Jan Gehl you could replace Sydney with Hobart and it would be a great start for the new government.

Anyway Gus has promised he’ll be keeping an eye of HBK and will be dropping in when he can.

But that doesn’t mean we’re going away. Pete and Mark will be keeping the Kitchen on the boil, it just makes room for another bike chef or two. So if you’re interested in taking part just drop us a line.

Little post with Big news!

It is a great pleasure to be able to say that Hobart Bike Kitchen has had our Community Capacity Building Grant approved. You’ll be hearing more from us as things progress.

We’ll be working to have a mobile presence so that we can work with a number of community groups.

You’ll have seen in the Whats been happening post that we’ve been working with Migrant Resource Centre and we’re looking to increase our engagement with them, Colony 47 and others.

Cheers, from a very pumped Bike Kitchen Team

Active Bike 2010

While we’re the Hobart Bike Kitchen we hope that we’re connecting with a broad range of Tasmanian cyclists, and here is a Launceston initiative that we wholly support. So if your in Launnie and can help them grow their cycling culture here is a great opportunity (and if your in Launnie and want to talk Bike Kitchens we’d love to hear from you).

Active Launceston are seeking expressions of interest for providing services for their Active Bike 2010 program.

Service Required: 2 suitably qualified and experienced persons to coordinate 1 hour cycle and education program.

Focus: ACTIVE BIKE is a program aimed to encourage more community members to use bikes as a form of transport and for physical activity. The program will run over a 10 week period during spring and autumn encompassing cycling education and both on and off‐road cycling sessions.
The program will familiarise participations with safe cycling routes within the city of Launceston and help them to discover recreational trails across the municipality.

For more info. see this pdf.

Whats been happening

Okay I’ve finally got my laptop back, so I can fill you in with what Hobart Bike Kitchen has been up to over the Festive Season.

Firstly the Sunday Sessions have still been in full swing (with a one week gap due to Christmas.)

Last session before Christmas saw a few gifts being ‘cooked up.’

This lovely step through bike is waiting to be claimed as a project bike by someone. It already has had its chain cleaned!

Anybody can come along and find a bike for themselves, its free! Usually we have all the parts you need.

Though sometimes it takes some effort to find them.

Over New Years I was helping out CoolPool Tas Promote Carpooling at the Falls Festival. This is the CoolPool walking car which attracted a lot of attention from the punters.

This turned out to be heaps of fun. Everyone should go register at Coolpool as even us bike riders sometimes need a lift and of course some of us drive.

HBK has teamed up with the Migrant Resource Center to set up some bike-related activities in their school holiday activities program. Over the first two weeks of January we had a bike maintenance session at Youth ARC, a group bike ride to Cornelian Bay and two mini Bike Kitchen sessions at Pulse youth center in Glenorchy.These actives proved popular and it was great to see many of the participants already had good bike spannering skills, all that was needed was some tools and they were right into it.

Some built up a bike kitchen bike for themselves.

The last session ran a few hours over time, as more and more bikes appeared. In the end there had to be a cut off point. As usual the few photos I snapped off don’t show the number of participants we had drop by over the two sessions.

By popular demand, we have an encore session Friday(22/1) from 2-4:30 If anybody is interested in helping out, get in contact. Beyond the scope of the summer holiday activities we are hoping to organise a portable Bike Kitchen happening possibly once a month in this location.

Okay thats enough for one post, consider yourself updated.

Gus