About a year ago Madison got a new bike shop. Dream Bikes is a non-profit organization that sells used bikes, provides repair services, helps teenagers prepare for professional work, and promotes bicycling. The cost of the repair services is usually about half of what I think it should be. The customer service is much better than the shop I used to use, which appeared to cater to occasional non-commuting cyclists. One amazing thing is that Dream Bikes goes to great effort to fix the parts on my bike rather than replacing them. They don’t want to run up the bill. They want to avoid waste.
It’s amazing to me that one organization does so many things. There is a map on the wall showing a two-mile radius around the store, showing how places that seem too far to reach by bike actually aren’t that far. They help needy people in the neighborhood get bicycles. I happened to be in the store once as the manager went over strategies to balance part-time work and college with a young man who may have been the first in his family to go to college.
The store is located off Verona road, a few blocks from Allied Drive. It’s tempting to call that a rough area, but that would be ignoring all the kind people at Dream Bikes who are doing good deeds every day promoting cycling and helping the community.
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