Brakes, chains, tires, gears, spokes, doodads and family issues; University of Wisconsin’ Bicycle Resource Center at Helen C. White can fix just about everything. One of the most valuable — and least known — secrets of Madison’s two-wheeled warrior community hides behind a pair of unadorned metal doors in a corner of the Helen C. White Parking Garage. UW’s Bicycle Resource Center operates much like UHS but with fewer needles, fewer tears and many more bikes. Plain and simple, the Bike Resource Center is free health care for your wheeled companion.
Funded through UW’s Transportation Department, the well-stocked, single-room workshop provides various tools and equipment to address any of your bicycle’s bumps and bruises. All of the tools and equipment are at the disposal of students, and if you’re unable to mend the problem yourself, the staff will walk you through step-by-step so that in the future you’re able to do it all on your own. Most importantly, every service the center provides is completely free of charge.
The goal of the university-funded service is to make the biking community of Madison and the students more self-sustainable so that they can perform their own repairs, help those around them and create a more fiscally conscious and knowledgeable two-wheeled community.
Being free, the Bike Resource Center helps struggling college students circumvent expensive labor charges tacked on at bike repair shops around Madison. That means any hipster riding their abominable fixed-gear creation can purchase a part at an outside vendor, come to the Bike Resource Center and install it for free. The center doesn’t have specific repair parts on-hand but all tools, lube, grease, air pumps and any other resource your bike problem would need are readily available for students.
Given Madison’s devoted biking community, and their tendency to pedal hard regardless of the season, students can drop by Bike Resource Center for a pre-polar-vortex tune-up. I’ve visited the shop multiple times myself to patch a tire, tighten my brakes, straighten a wheel, reset my gears, etc. Instead of treating me like a chowder-headed bike virgin, the staff answered my questions and addressed my bike’s problems in a way that left me feeling much more inclined to return to fix future bicycle issues. It’s clear that the staff are not only knowledgeable, but they’re also very invested in what they do and passionate about spreading their knowhow.
The Bicycle Resource Center is open from Monday to Friday, 4 to 8 p.m. If you love deals or are in need of a quick repair, attend one of the many free-of-charge biking community events or a center located at Kronshage, 21 N. Park, Eagle Heights Community Center and WARF.
