Up-to-date information:

Volunteers are usually needed!

How the event works:

The event is structured to encourage both experienced and inexperienced, but motivated, volunteers to sign up!

Typically there will be two signups on SignupGenius.Com.   One is an appointment to get your bike fixed, and a separate signup is for bike-fixing volunteers at the event.   Occasionally there is a bike mechanic training class.

The SignupGenius pages have an introduction with a good description of the tasks, but these pages are only available when an event is scheduled.  Typical task descriptions:

Volunteers: novice and experienced bike mechanics. Lead mechanic available for consult and instruction. You do not have to figure it out yourself. Bring a tool kit: adjustable wrench, plier, flat and cross screw drivers, 4-5-6 mm Allen/hex wrenches will do. FFBC tool pouch provided along with spare parts, lube, and some specialty tools.

Entry level volunteers can do quick fix service, tuning, brake adjustment, shifting, fix flats, seat post lube, saddle adjustment. Is my bike safe to ride? “Bicycle Mechanical Check”, single-speed bike chain tension, chain lube, brake cable slack, some on the bike flat fixes. Twenty (20) minute jobs to get the cyclist on the road. Will train the right person. We provide the chain lube and grease and basic tools.

A tire patch volunteers needed. We train and provide tools and supplies.

Likely problems: shifting, derailleurs, frozen shifters, brake calipers, brake pads, cables & housing, brake levers, headsets, handlebars, grips, seatposts, hubs, axles, bearings, saddles, wheel truing, looseness, missing parts, broken parts, crashes, interference, worn parts, stuck parts, leaking tubes, temporary field repairs, and reviving stored bikes, installing missing parts and hardware.

And optionally there might be a separate Bike Mechanics class.

Volunteer Bike Repairer training. Become qualified as an entry level bike mechanic.   Four hour entry level class learning professional methods.

Topics include tire remove/install, tube repair, brakes, cables, shifter, chains, lubrication, bearings.

Three hours of OJT from a bike mechanic.

Bring basic hand tools if you have them.

More information

This and related activity can be found linked to the Bike Fremont Meetup group page 

Typical Locations

Fremont/Irvington

Bay Street & Trimboli Way

Newark

From Barry Saeed

Whether road bike, mountain bike or e-bike, real-world or virtual, FFBC’s Strava and Ride with GPS (RWGPS) groups offer us ways to stay connected and celebrate our members’ accomplishments.

Strava:  Many members (and non-members) have joined Strava’s open, unmoderated FFBC club (https://www.strava.com/clubs/ffbc).  Strava’s FFBC club has weekly leaderboards showing distance, elevation gain, number of rides, etc.  (Unfortunately, Strava limits its Challenges to corporate sponsors so FFBC cannot have its own challenges.)

Ride with GPS:  RWGPS has a members-only FFBC Club, and it is our main repository of club routes.   RWGPS allows FFBC to create its own “Goals” for distance, elevation and moving time, similar to Strava’s Challenges.  They aren’t really goals in the sense of having numerical targets, but they do have leaderboards to see how club members  (and some lapsed members) are doing.

If you’re not quite sure how to set up and load rides into Strava and Ride with GPS, see the tips below.

Happy, safe riding!

Barry

Join Strava’s FFBC Club: https://www.strava.com/clubs/ffbc.  After joining the club, on your Strava dashboard, you will see “Your Clubs” on the right with an image.  Hover over that image and it says “FFBC.”  Click on the image to see the club leaderboard.

Join Ride with GPS FFBC Club:  You must be an FFBC member in good standing to join.  To do so, click this link.  After registering, you will find our club logo on top-right of your RWGPS home page.  Click on it to access the club site.

Load your rides into Strava:  https://support.strava.com/hc/en-us/articles/223297187-How-to-get-your-Activities-to-Strava.

Load your rides into RWGPS:  https://ridewithgps.com/help/connected-services.  (RWGPS does not easily import virtual rides so you’re better off loading them to Strava and following the exporting/importing instructions below.)

Automatically import rides from RWGPS into Strava:  https://ridewithgps.com/help/connect-with-strava.

Manually export a ride from Strava and import into RWGPS:  Strava does not enable automatic imports into RWGPS so you must do each ride manually.

1. In your Strava activity feed, click on your ride.
2. On the left side, click on “…” and select Export GPX or Original, whichever works best for your platform (GPX is usually the best).  Save to your hard drive.
3. In RWGPS, click on the RWGPS bike logo at the top-left, then click on Upload, click on Select Files, select the GPX file, click Choose and complete the dialog.  Your ride should now be in RWGPS.

WARNINGS:  Do NOT use Strava’s bulk download option as this will export ALL your Strava activity.  If you use RWGPS’s “Connect with Strava” feature, you’ll end up with duplicate ride on Strava that you’ll need to delete.