Wear it in, wear it out...

In this photo, you see David Peckham of the Village Bicycle Project talking with John and Mike up at the garage. We invited David to look over our inventory and see how much of our junk would be worth sending to Ghana.

Almost all of it, it turns out. 

In David's right hand (resting on the seat of John's craptacular new trike) is a rusty old single-piece crank. We had dumped it into a box with some other junk that was destined for recycling. After all, we're up to our necks in single-piece cranks, why on earth would we keep a rusty one?

But David said these parts are very valuable in Africa, that they will use and reuse parts until they're worn down to practically nothing. He told us of chunks of rubber flip-flops being used in place of bottom bracket bearings, of pieces of tire tube being spliced together with needle and thread, of a man cutting a tin can with a machete to fashion a washer to hold a spoke nipple in place.

I've always been a hardware packrat. The bottom of my toolbox is filled with nuts, bolts and other odds and ends - even an old broken derailleur that I've been carrying around for over a decade because, well, You Never Know When You Might Need It.

I was always a little embarrased by my own compulsive hoarding. But now, as I'm stripping down wrecked bikes or prepping good ones for shipment to Africa, every last piece, no matter how rusty or battered, simply glows with potential. I was seriously debating whether to trash a twisted suspension fork from a Wal-Mart bike, knowing full well that someone would figure out a way to straighten it and make it work. 

So in addition to piles of bikes, we'll no doubt be sending over some boxes of parts as well. I might even use the opportunity to part with that old broken derailleur.