The garage bike workshop

Text 1: Wednesday wheels, by Callum Ashdown

An original contemporary article.

Every Wednesday evening, a converted garage behind the youth centre opens as a bike workshop. Most of the bicycles that arrive have been left in sheds for years, with flat tyres and chains stiff with rust. Teenagers can use the stands and tools free of charge, and spare parts come from donated bikes too damaged to ride, which are stripped and sorted into labelled crates. Anyone who volunteers for four sessions earns a refurbished bike of their own. Kofi, who runs the workshop, says the most common repair is also the cheapest: a chain that only needed cleaning and oil. ‘People assume a bike is finished,’ he says, ‘when it has simply been forgotten.’

Explain two ways the workshop keeps the cost of cycling low for young people.