more comfortable and would accept the risk of dropping a tool or a bike on his foot in the heat. Within a few hours I found myself desperately jealous for some sandals myself, even trying to find a cheap pair at the convenience store in the neighborhood with no luck.
We had set up as usual, and had a small crowd throughout the morning, giving me an opportunity to strip some bikes for parts in the bus that we had been toting around while Ward worked on repairs. Ward spent most of the afternoon with DeShawn, or “DeDe,” who hung out the entire time, talked non-stop for hours, and had about 9 bikes that he needed fixed.
A guy came by for a tune-up on a really nice bike and gave us 30 bucks, a great donation to help with gas. Another guy in a car at the stop light at the intersection asked Ward, “Where did you find a girl that can work on bikes?” Later in the day a guy showed up in need of a new inner tube, and then told Ward aggressively that it was Ward’s problem that his bike was messed up, which just led to confusion. Ward tried to question, “How can it be my problem? I don’t have to ride this bike,” to which the man didn’t reply, just kept talking and talking. Then Ward asked him if he was related to DeShawn, and the guy actually tuned in, “Why? ‘Cause he talks a lot?” It defused the weird situation, changing it from confrontational to humorous. We packed up shortly after this interaction and headed back to the house to enjoy the evening on the roof.

June 26th
Philadelphia, David’s House

On Thursday morning we had an early start to drop off books at a summer camp hosted by Heavenly Hall and then headed over to the Bike Church to restock on supplies for the afternoon. Neighborhood Bike Works runs the Bike Church, a bike project full of spare parts that they let us sort through, which is important since we have no means of restocking on the road besides other’s generosity. We arrived to our event at 2 o’clock outside of David’s house, another great guy with NBW that does summer programs teaching kids how to work on bikes. He anticipated a lot of kids showing up, since his house was located outside of a local rec center. Our friend Steve was along for the after-