o What: Community Bike Safety Fair. Free bike safety inspections and maintenance; safety instruction; skills obstacle course; helmet fitting and sales ($5 each); tax-deductible bike donations, no matter how used, accepted.
o When: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. June 14.
o Where: Hough Elementary School, 1900 Daniels St., Vancouver.
o Information: Bike Clark County’s website; info@bikeclarkcounty.org
Bicycles may seem to be all about youthful fun and games, but there’s a serious reason why Vancouver firefighter-paramedic Eric Giacchino has become a major cycling activist: safety.
“In my line of work, I’m the guy who sometimes picks kids up off the street,” he said. “Kids don’t know how to tangle with traffic. I can’t live with that. I’ve seen the most horrible things.”
o What: Community Bike Safety Fair. Free bike safety inspections and maintenance; safety instruction; skills obstacle course; helmet fitting and sales ($5 each); tax-deductible bike donations, no matter how used, accepted.
o When: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. June 14.
o Where: Hough Elementary School, 1900 Daniels St., Vancouver.
o Information: Bike Clark County's website; info@bikeclarkcounty.org
Giacchino grew up “a total bike guy” in Wisconsin; he joined the military and traveled in Europe where cycling is a more common lifestyle, and is supported by more public infrastructure, than in your typical American city. Eventually he retired and brought that experience back to the U.S., where he lived first in Portland and then in Vancouver.
As a new dad, Giacchino’s concern about child safety drove him to connect with volunteer Joe Gruelich, who was already doing some informal safe-cycling outreach in local schools. Inspired by Portland’s Bicycle Transportation Alliance, which contracts to provide cycling education throughout Portland Public Schools, Giacchino pushed to bump up Gruelich’s effort into a bona fide nonprofit agency that could undertake bigger projects and qualify for grants.
Now, Bike Clark County has an official board of directors and a budget of approximately $5,000 a year, Giacchino said — with a chuckle. That’s not much, he said, but it pays for insurance, a small selection of tools and the ability to provide free helmets for kids. The money also helps maintain the group’s “educational fleet” of bikes, which it brings along to safety rodeos and other events.
Here’s what Bike Clark County hasn’t had to pay for: its home turf. For the past few years, the group has been sheltering, you might say, in what used to be the Hough Pool. It has stored many dozens of bikes and related equipment, and welcomed many kids and adults to periodic bike-maintenance workshops, under what would have been the blue waterline of the pool — if there was still any water in there.
The Hough Pool — a 1997 gift to the city, Hough Elementary School and the children of the Hough neighborhood from local businessman and philanthropist Paul Christensen — turned out to be a money loser that faltered a few times until it closed for good in 2010. It is the property of the Hough Foundation, a nonprofit that’s focused on social services and support for students and families connected with Hough Elementary and its neighborhood.
Now, Bike Clark County has been asked by the Hough Foundation to climb back out of the pool. Giacchino said he’s got nothing but gratitude for the past few years of rent-free space — “It was fun while it lasted,” he wrote in the latest Bike Clark County newsletter — and the search for an affordable new storefront is underway.
The Hough Foundation is staying tight-lipped about any plans for the building. The foundation “continues to follow our mission and vision, but at this time we have nothing to report,” Executive Director Barbara Hammon said via email.
Targeting Fourth Plain
What Bike Clark County really needs, Giacchino said, is a 3,000-square-foot site that’s easily accessible to its target audience: Vancouver’s neediest kids. In a perfect world, he said, the group would accept a generous gift of deeply discounted storefront space someplace along the Fourth Plain corridor.
“We don’t need such a large space (as the Hough Pool), but we want to keep growing in terms of what we can provide the community,” Giacchino said. “My dream is to have a self-sustaining shop.” That means getting into used-bike sales, he said, which is something Bike Clark County has been reluctant to do.
The last thing Giacchino wants to do is compete with local bike stores, which have all been friendly and supportive of Bike Clark County’s mission. It’s a slightly sensitive matter, he said. He figures a shop like that would require one paid staffer.
The rest of Bike Clark County is volunteers and board members. Giacchino is always on the lookout for dedicated, community-minded cyclists who are interested in stepping onto the board. “We need to find the right, smart people who’ll help us be a community bicycle hub,” he said.
Low-income kids usually have low-quality bikes that don’t get much maintenance, he said.
“They start off with a cheap bike, and they aren’t taught how to keep it safe,” Giacchino said. “Bikes don’t need to be expensive, but they all need basic maintenance.”
That’s a service Bike Clark County offers for free — along with lessons in how to do it yourself. Earlier this month, Giacchino finished attending a two-week, full-time bike mechanic course — offered in Portland by the United Bicycle Institute with funding from the Oregon Department of Education.
One of Giacchino’s joys, he said, is when a kid wheels in for salvation some badly neglected bike “that’s just destroyed.” Rather than devote lots of time and energy to a lost cause — and having doubts about that bike after it’s hit the road again — Giacchino enjoys letting that kid trade up, donating what’s devolved into a collection of maybe-usable parts in exchange for something more reliable and roadworthy.
That’s in keeping with Bike Clark County’s basic rate of exchange: high-quality bike donations are generally given away to needy kids via nonprofits like the YWCA Clark County and the juvenile justice system; low-quality donations are scavenged for parts.
‘Bike champions’
Giacchino’s other dream is to enlist more schools that want Bike Clark County’s education and safety offerings. The key to making that happen typically is a motivated physical education teacher who’s willing to take on some additional short-term headaches in exchange for a lifetime of safe enjoyment for the kids. It’s P.E. classes that usually turn into one- or two-week cycling-safety seminars, Giacchino said, with P.E. teachers (assisted by committed volunteers from Bike Clark County) dealing with the planning, the permission slips, the equipment, the herding kids along on group rides.
Giacchino calls teachers like that “bike champions.” Too many kids need such champions, he said — both on the biking level and the personal level.
There’s another, underlying reason why kids’ demand for bikes, and bike education, “really tugs at my heartstrings,” Giacchino said. What many of them are really lacking is adult attention and mentorship, he said.
“Some kids like to fish, some kids like to play sports,” Giacchino said. “Whatever they’re into, the thing is, you empower a kid to be proud and to take ownership and to stay out of trouble, that’s really what it’s all about. It doesn’t matter what you’re into — some kid needs you. I just happen to be into bikes.”
Eleven-year-old Carissa La Brant had a sad tale to tell while learning to make basic repairs during a Fruit Valley Boys & Girls Club visit to Bike Clark County on Friday: her back tire tube went flat earlier this year and she had no replacement. Her chain was in sorry shape. Basically, she couldn’t ride for three whole months.
“I love my bike, and I was very unhappy about that,” she said. “When I heard about this, I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve got to go!’?”
