The donate porch

I am something of a pack rat which has become abundantly clear while cleaning up a couple of unused rooms on the second floor. I just can't ever seem to toss anything out since it might come in handy some day (if I could find it when the need actually arose). And I think everyone has tossed something out and find a use for it the very next week! So anyway, we had collected bikes for a local club and helped them fix them up four or five years ago. One year, they got a trucking company to haul a truckload up to NYC for distribution at Christmas time. For the next couple of years, we distributed them locally. Well, we still get people drop off old bikes or decide not to get a bike repaired so we accumulate stray bikes. We have a good sized shop but it's not big enough to store a bunch of random semi-usable bikes. On the other hand, I hate to see usable stuff get buried in a landfill.........enter the donate porch.

On the back of the building, there is a concrete cap over what used to be the coal chute which was used to deliver coal to feed the boiler in the basement. We decided it would be a good place to set a bike and allow it to find a new owner. Sometimes a bike lasts out there a couple of days and sometimes it leaves immediately. A couple months back, we rolled out a 24" wheeled girls mountain bike and one of the cooks form the restaurant next door was out back on his cancer break (I swear people start smoking just so they can take 15 minute breaks twice a day). He started asking what we were doing and we explained the concept. He kept asking how much we wanted for the bike and we told him it was on the donate porch to be taken by the first person who could use it. We must have finally gotten through to him since he rolled it into the storage room of the restaurant.

What I would really like to do is set a camera out and capture the "taking" on film. Do they just stroll up ,pick one out and head home? Like they were shopping at teh local ****-Mart? Or, do they stand there looking over their shoulder waiting for the non-existent law enforcement agents to jump out from behind the fence and yell "gotcha"? Maybe someday.

A pretty rusty 1960's era bike has continued to rust out on the porch for about a week now and seemed lonely so we added to the pile yesterday. A gigantic black Schwinn 10 speed World Sport, a cool gold Miyata mixte bike and a red Raleigh 10 speed were added after a fit of cleaning out the upstairs. Everybody was still hangin' on the porch this morning but around lunch time the black Schwinn had made a break for it. We'll watch and see how everybody else makes out but I am worried about the old rusty Western Flyer.