June 27th
Baltimore, CSAFE

We left Philly early on Friday morning to make it to Baltimore for a noon event. The minute Ward and I arrived and unloaded we were swamped with people waiting outside of CSAFE, the community organization which hosted our event. They had a free cookout for the neighborhood while we worked on bikes and people browsed the books. At one point, the line that had formed got a little tense when two people argued over who was next, but the situation was quickly resolved when we promised to at least get to everyone that was present at that time. By the last hour, we could tell it was going to be difficult to finish with everyone, so the president of CSAFE helped us out by asking the crowd if anyone knew how to fix their own bike. We would provide tools and parts if they would just start working and helping others. Local teens stepped up to the task taking off wheels and changing tubes, an awesome sight to see everyone working together given the means. We had to retire in the mid-afternoon, facing a five-hour drive ahead of us to Harrisonburg, VA.

June 28th
Harrisonburg, Our Community Place

We woke up on Saturday morning in Harrisonburg and drove over to Our Community Place (OCP), a space hosting a summer Lawn Jam. The whole day was filled with music, a free burrito bar, tea and lemonade, volleyball, a horseshoe tournament, slip and slide, a yard sale, as well as a whole lot of other wackiness. We fixed a few bikes, got a chance to talk to the people running the local bike project located in the yard of the OCP, which was this really nice shed were bikes were fixed, stored and sold for super cheap to get people riding who really needed bikes. After a few hours we loaded up, and I headed back to Richmond, leaving Ward to visit with some friends for another night. We had a long week, and it was sad that I was returning to Richmond alone, but as I drove through the mountains, I came to a point where I was barreling down this hill, coasting at 65 miles per hour with the clutch in and the gear in neutral, and for three minutes the engine wasn’t roaring. It was a pretty perfect ending for a successful tour.