A rainy evening looks like poor weather for a bike ride, but great conditions for tuning up a bicycle in the Iowa City Bike Library’s garage. Folk music plays overhead as a Bike Library staff member offers boxed wine to attendees of Women/Trans/Femme Tuesday — a night dedicated to creating a welcoming environment for that community to roll up to a bench and work on their steed.
Emily Janio is replacing the cables on a bike she found for free online. She's planning to upgrade all the parts before taking the bike on RAGBRAI.
The library has a hands off wrenching policy: the library staff will show patrons how to fix their own bike, rather than doing it for them.
“Our culture is ... to empower you to know how to do it yourself and just expect that anyone can learn the skills you need to maintain your bike,” said Clarity Guerra, a board member with the Iowa City Bike Library. “... Changing that dynamic that, ‘Oh, we're gonna have to go take it to a dude mechanic who's the only person who can fix this,’ and putting that knowledge in your own hands.”
The Iowa City Bike Library was founded in 2004 with the mission of making cycling a primary form of transportation in the community. The nonprofit's main service is allowing patrons to “check out” bikes for up to six months, but over the years has added more programs aimed at welcoming cyclists of all identities to the bike library.
Mujeres en Bicis, which translates to Women on Bikes, connects with Spanish-speaking women in Iowa City for meetings once a week during the spring and summer months.
“We want to have a space where particularly Latina women, who spend so much of their time caretaking — they're working, they're taking care of their children and their homes and their partners — we want them to have a space just for themselves,” said Aliese Gingerich, a volunteer with the program.
The library provides bikes and lessons to learn how to ride or do a social ride. Those who participate for six weeks earn their own bike from the library.
Mayte Flores, a Mujeres En Bicis participant, had never ridden a bike before she learned about the program. She said it was helpful to be alongside other women when trying something new. Child care and snacks are provided at the meet-ups as well.
“We will kind of get together at our meeting point, and then go with our children over to the park, which is honestly also really beautiful — having our kids with us and that they can bear witness to us kind of showing how if you set your mind to something, you can achieve it,” Flores said, speaking through a translator. “And there's not an age limit to being able to learn new things.”
The bike library also started its own chapter of Cycling Without Age last year. The worldwide organization was founded to make cycling accessible to people with limited mobility.
The library has been using a trishaw owned by Legacy Senior Living in Iowa City to take seniors on rides since August 2024 and just purchased its own, which the library will use for community rides starting in June.
The trishaw is an E-bike with a bench in the front that two passengers can sit in while the “pilot” pedals the bike behind them. The set-up encourages passengers to observe nature and spark curiosity about their surroundings.
Michelle Voss is a volunteer at the library and the co-founder of Iowa City’s Cycling Without Age chapter. In her professional life she's a neuroscience researcher. She said the shared cycling experience combats social isolation and promotes positive brain function for aging adults.
When Voss pilots the trishaw, she notices seniors make comments about the road they are on and share memories of what used to be there, which exercises their memory.
"I can just feel the hippocampus lighting up,” Voss said.
Some people have made the bike library their social hub.
Lee Thomas brought his bike into the garage a year ago and kept coming back for the company. He provided sneakers for the library staff, using shoes from his business.
Cindy Wilson doesn’t ride, but she started spending time at the library after her granddaughter died in a biking accident. She said she’s always liked fixing stuff, as she tinkered with the brakes on a child’s Schwinn bike.
Another woman got her bike from the library after a life-altering mental health episode. The Domestic Violence Intervention Program (DVIP) connected her with the library to provide a mode of transportation, which has changed her life.
“The bike library is a rare, intergenerational, bilingual third space that collapses class boundaries,” said Kate Wiley, fundraising coordinator at the bike library. “And it just feels really rare that you're in community with everyone that's living around you.”
To hear more about Cycling Without Age and Mujeres En Bici, listen to Talk of Iowa, hosted by Charity Nebbe. Samantha McIntosh produced this episode.
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Iowa City Bike Library is a sponsor of Iowa Public Radio.
