Giving used bikes at Christmas

Here are a couple of stories of people collecting and repairing bikes for others this holiday season.

Parker Smith, a co-host on 96.5 FM (The Mountain) in Chattanooga, recently put out the word over his morning show that his friend, Carliss Dempsey, was seeking used bicycles to be fixed up and given as gifts to needy kids at Christmas.

Apparently Dempsey has been doing this on his own for 20 some years, and Smith thought soliciting donations over the radio would bring in more bikes.

He writes in Chattanooga.com:

I told some people about my plan, and some met it with scepticism, saying such things as, “Rock and Rollers are not givers. Most of them don't care about anything but themselves.”

I knew they were wrong. They were, indeed.

As of Saturday morning, they had more than 100 bicycles to pick up and repair.

In the Sand Hills of North Carolina, Moses Mathis expects to hand out more than 700 bicycles on Dec. 23.  He's been collecting used bikes and repairing them for 14 years, ever since he helped a little boy fix a bike.

Known as The Bicycle Man, Mathis also fixes up old computers. He formed the Community Outreach Center in Tiffany Pines in 1991 to help kids in the area and had given away 8,000 bikes before this year. Check out the website to learn where to donate bikes or help him do the repairs.

(About that picture. It comes from pidge at flickr.com, who wrote: