Revolutions Memphis

The Hampline construction is beginning! Please join Mayor A C Wharton, Livable Memphis, Broad Avenue Arts District and other supporters for the groundbreaking event to be held on Monday, February 24 at 12:00pm. Construction of the pathway portion of The Hampline begins next week. This section will link Overton Park to Broad Avenue, allowing easy and safe bicycle and pedestrian traffic to move from Overton Park to Broad Avenue. The on-street portion of The Hampline will begin construction later this year.

The Hampline Groundbreaking
Monday, February 24
12:00pm (noon)
Green space near intersection of Sam Cooper and E. Parkway

If you are off work on Monday, February 17 in honor of Presidents’ Day, please consider joining us at Revolutions Memphis for a Day of Service. Revolutions staff will be on hand from 10:00am-2:00pm leading volunteers through activities that complement the ongoing renovations taking place at the shop. Like all volunteer activities at Revolutions, no experience is needed to participate. If you can’t make it for the entire four hour period, please feel free to stop by during anytime on the 17th and lend your help for as long as you have. Any hours spent volunteering tomorrow will count towards your membership or renewal.

Because of this activity, all volunteer activities at Revolutions on Sunday, February 16 have been canceled.

We hope to see you on Presidents’ Day!

If you are off work tomorrow in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, please consider joining us at Revolutions Memphis for a Day of Service. Revolutions staff will be on hand from 10:00am-2:00pm leading volunteers through activities that complement the ongoing renovations taking place at the shop. Like all volunteer activities at Revolutions, no experience is needed to participate. If you can’t make it for the entire four hour period, please feel free to stop by during anytime tomorrow and lend your help for as long as you have. Any hours spent volunteering tomorrow will count towards your membership or renewal.

Because of tomorrow’s planned activities, all volunteer activities at Revolutions today have been canceled.

We hope to see you tomorrow!

Our friends at Saris Bike Parking Solutions have teamed up with Revolutions to offer discounted indoor bike parking systems to any Memphis company that places an order by the end of this month. Anybody that is thinking about making their workplace more bicycle friendly should take a look at what Saris is offering and consider making an order.

And if making your workplace more bike friendly isn’t enough, 10% of all orders will go directly to Revolutions Memphis to support the ongoing work we’re already doing. It doesn’t get any better than that!

Download a PDF of the flyer here.

As we move towards some exciting new programming planned in 2014, we’ve modified our winter schedule to leave time for some much needed renovations and repairs around the shop. A few highlights of the updated schedule are below, but you can find all details about when you can volunteer, work on your bike, or get oriented at the shop by viewing our calendar here.

New Member Orientation
New dates for January, February, and March are posted and we are now accepting RSVP’s for the first orientation classes of 2014! Visit the orientation page to sign-up online and reserve your seat.

Volunteering
We’ve got some special activities planned for those of you that want to volunteer during the winter. All activities will be coordinated in cooperation with the ongoing renovations. Right now, we’ve kept Sunday afternoons available for volunteering (2:00pm-5:00pm), but may add more days as we progress with the renovations.

There are two special volunteer days planned – Jan. 20 (MLK Jr. Day) and Feb. 17 (Presidents Day) where we will hold Days of Volunteer Service at special times 10:00am-2:00pm. If you are off work either of those days, please plan to join us at Revolutions and earn some volunteer hours. On the weeks of these special service days, the Sunday volunteer hours will be canceled.

Open Shop Hours
We’ve moved open shop hours to Thursday nights at 6:30pm and will have a mechanic on duty to assist with your repairs and maintenance. If your membership is up to date, feel free to drop by the shop and work on your bike.

Mechanics Classes
Classes will resume in April 2014 with a new format. Stay connected to our communications and website to learn more about these new way to learn more about bikes.

Revolutions Memphis will be closed Sunday, December 22 through Saturday, January 4 for the Christmas/New Year’s holiday. All programs normally scheduled for those days are canceled.

Revolutions will reopen again on Sunday, January 5, 2013.

For the seventh year, Revolutions has partnered with Shelby Farms Park Conservancy, YMCA of Greater Memphis, Peddler Bike Shop, and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee to provide 30 children with bicycles and immerse them in a unique bicycle safety education and activity curriculum. Children from the YMCA’s Y-CAP and Multicultural Achievers program first met with Revolutions staff in late October to learn that they would be a part of this program and for measurements to be taken of their height (for bike sizing) and their head circumference (for helmet sizing). For the next two months, Revolutions volunteers worked on refurbishing bicycles from our inventory for each of the children.

There are two parts to the safety curriculum: an indoor activity that goes through basic rules of the road and bike handling techniques complete with workbook activities, and an outdoor activity that puts their newly fond knowledge to test in real world applications. Obviously, the outdoor activity is the most popular with the kids since they will be riding their new bikes for the first time at this event.

At the outdoor activity, kids first participate in a series of activities meant to help hone their bike handling skills, using real-world situations as the basis for their design.

Station 1 is a Bike Safety Check. Each child learns what they should check each time before they begin riding their bikes. Things like how to check air pressure and how to make sure your brakes are working are covered here.

Station 2 is a simulation of stopping at a stop sign, signaling a turn, and then making the turn when the way is clear. Skills like stopping are watched closely her. Also, because signaling isn’t always a part of a child’s experience when learning to ride a bike, signaling isn’t always intuitive. After going through this station about 5 times, a child picks it up pretty easily.

Station 3 is the hardest to master, but really important in a real-world application. This station is designed to simulate what skills are needed to look behind you when riding, while maintaining a straight riding line. Trust us, it’s harder than is sounds and we’ve seen many adults fail to master this skill. When looking back, the children must watch to see how many fingers our Station Master is holding up and shout out the correct number before turning around. By doing this, children demonstrate not just how to look around, but also how to correctly identify and assess any dangers that might be coming from behind them while riding.

Station 4 is the Slow Bike Race – One of our favorites. What are the rules? Simply put, you start at the start line and proceed forward to the finish line. Last one across the line without putting their foot down or running into a competitor wins. The kids learn a few skills from this – balance, braking,  and precision handling, but also the knowledge that riding a bike isn’t all about being the fastest.

Station 5 is our Master Handling Course design to teach bike handling skills while children weave in and out of cones of progressively decreasing frequency. Trust us, the last three to four weaves are pretty tight. After a couple times down and back, the kids master this essential skill.

After these activities, the children are taken in small groups on a bike ride along neighborhood streets to put their new skills to the test. Stopping, signaling, and riding in the correct position on the street are watched and corrected during the ride. Additionally, the kids also get the opportunity to ride in one of the city’s new bike lanes for a short distance.

At the end of the day, the children get to take home their bikes, along with helmets, lights, and locks donated by Peddler Bike Shop, and their newly learned skills for endless hours of riding bikes.