At high school, enthusiasm for two-wheel traffic

Columbia Falls High School has a metal and wood shop. Now it has a bicycle shop as well.

Last week a half-dozen students along with volunteer mechanics Vincent Erickson and Jack Minnich were busy working on a host of different bikes, most which needed one type of repair or another.

Erickson, a gifted bike fabricator, graduated from Columbia Falls a couple of years ago and is now a mechanic with Glacier Cyclery in Whitefish. Minnich ran the Free Cycles program in Missoula a few years ago and now lives in the Flathead.

The Free Cycles program in that city recycles old bikes that would normally go to the landfill and puts them back on the streets in working order — free for people to use. It also provides a community shop where people can work on bikes.

The program is similar in Columbia Falls, though students are doing most of the work on bikes that someday they’ll take home as their own, said Chris Lewis, a school-based mental health worker with Kalispell Regional Medical Center who works at the high school.

Lewis, volunteer Katy Kelly and teacher Carrie O’Reilly got together and started the program at the school a few weeks ago. They received grants and help from Whitefish Credit Union, Plum Creek, True Value Hardware, the Missoula Free Cycle program, Grace and Orville Ritzman, Great Northern Cyclery in Whitefish and Glacier Cyclery in Whitefish. In addition, a lot of folks donated their old bikes to the program.

“The idea is to get kids excited about fixing bikes and using tools,” Lewis said last week.

“You’ve got a bunch of boys who like to get dirty,” said sophomore Chris Windsor.

The shop is housed in a classroom and classes run every Thursday after school from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Each week they work on a different facet of bike repair — on this particular day, they’re learning how to fix wheels and tune brakes.

The program will run for 10 weeks and Lewis said the hope is to continue next year as well.

The boys don’t have much money for new parts, so they salvage parts from other bikes.

“Instead of throwing stuff away, they’re learning to recycle,” Lewis said.