About 150 volunteers put together 417 bikes for local foster children Thursday as part of Waste Connections’ 15th annual Christmas Promise Bike Build. The build took place at the Columbia Machine warehouse and was completed in a little less than three hours. The volunteers — community members, Waste Connection employees and social workers — created an assembly line to build the bikes. About 20 volunteer mechanics from Bike Clark County then performed quality control on the bikes, making sure they were built correctly and safely.
“It’s a really fun, fast-paced event,” said Peter Van Tilburg, a board member with Bike Clark County. “Essentially, all those workers are building the bikes as fast as they can churn through them. Then, we, as mechanics, will have backups of about 50 bikes while we thoroughly inspect each bike.”
Van Tilburg added that members of local bike teams The Spokesmen and Swift Racing team also volunteered at the event.
The bikes were purchased by Waste Connections, and range in size from children’s bikes with training wheels up to bicycles for teens.
