The tangled mass of bikes in the garage behind Aurora Warms the Night sit in a few loosely organized rows. Toward the front, a few tiny rides with training wheels lie on the cold concrete floor, waiting for Ernie Clark or one of his volunteers to get them back in working order. The small closet-like room on the side is piled from floor to ceiling with old bike rims, some silver and shiny, others rusty and bent.
The bikes run the gamut from high-end Trek mountain bikes with pricey components to battered old Schwinns with rusty fenders and weathered seats. In a back corner, a yellow Montgomery Ward-brand cruiser sits by a red Schwinn Traveler 10-speed. Both are in rough shape. The yellow one has big curved handle bars and rusty chrome fenders over both tires. It looks like it hasn’t been ridden since Reagan was president, and likely won’t be anytime soon. Even if the old yellow bike can’t be fixed up and ridden away, Clark and his guys will find some use for it. Maybe they can strip a few components and slap them on another bike. And even if they strip all the parts, they can still take the frame to a scrap yard and score a few bucks for the metal.
Amid the hum of a small red air compressor and a boombox blasting a local classic rock station, a handful of local homeless men spend their days wrenching on the mass of bikes.
Most of the bikes will be donated to local kids who otherwise wouldn’t have a bike. The thought of a kid without a bike just doesn’t sit well with Clark, who runs the program. “Kids gotta have a bike,” the retired cop says. And he makes sure they do. At Christmas, Clark and his guys donated about 150 bikes.
Not all the bikes are for kids. The homeless men who put in enough hours fixing bicycles can earn a bike of their own. And for the regulars, they can always find the replacement parts they might need amid those piles of bikes.
The project started with an Aurora firefighter a few years ago who wanted to provide bikes for kids who couldn’t otherwise afford them, Clark said. When the firefighter stepped aside, Clark took over, rebuilding bikes in a friend’s garage before moving the operation to the garage behind Aurora Warms the Night. Most of the bikes come from the Aurora police impound, but others come from generous donors or people who just don’t have any use for the bikes anymore.
For volunteers like Howard Jarrett, wrenching on the bikes isn’t just about scoring a bike so they don’t have to walk everywhere. And it’s not just about doing a good deed for needy kids, either. Working on the bikes gives them a purpose, something to look forward to and a way to stay off the streets and away from the booze and drama that are always present along Colfax.
“We’re not out there screwing around with the rest of the jerk offs, sitting on a library bench drinking beer or some kind of crap like that,” Jarrett said.
Jarrett has been coming to the garage for about a year now. He volunteered enough to earn a bike and could have pedaled away after that. But he didn’t. Instead, he keeps coming back. And it’s a good thing he does, because keeping a bike in working order when your home is the streets is tough. Someone is always looking to snatch it, and that has left Jarrett and his bike battered more than once.
Clark said Jarrett has become his right-hand man, always willing to fix a bike or teach another volunteer how it’s done. “I can’t get rid of him,” Clark said with a laugh. “He’s here before I get here in the morning. But I love him, he’s great.”