Happy Monday. Procrastinators, it's time. 48 hours to go.
William Young didn't hesitate to give up several hours of a recent lazy Sunday afternoon.
Some friends were planning to help refurbish a small mountain of kid's bicycles - they volunteer with a nonprofit called the Twin City Bike Collective run out of an old house on the campus of Summit School -- and they could use another pair of hands.
Young, 19, knows a few things about tools and isn't intimidated by simple repair work. Which stands to reason because he's majoring in mechanical engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Any doubt vanished once he found out where the bikes were heading -- up U.S. 421 to Avery County -- and who would be getting them, kids whose families had lost everything in flooding caused by Hurricane Helene.
And the kicker was that bikes would be distributed just in time for Christmas.
"It was easy," Young said, "especially once I heard who'd be getting them and why."
Nearly 100 bikes suitable for boys and girls, kids just learning to ride and middle-school students unafraid to launch themselves from makeshift ramps, headed up the mountain.
It's the latest project cooked up by the Summit School teachers who run the bike collective nonprofit.
For more than three years, the Twin City Bike Collective has been busy putting new tires, chains and brake pads on bicycles that have made their way to Summit School either through individuals cleaning out garages or redirected from Ken's Bike Shop, which has become a drop-off point.
And once the repairs are finished, Summit director of technology Chris Culp makes sure the bikes get to the right places.
"We're just labor," Culp said. "We count on our partners for distribution."
Sometimes they go to adults who need reliable transportation to get to work or school. People such as Fraidon Sultani, a refugee from Afghanistan who started on two wheels to begin building a new life here for his family.
Sometimes the bikes go en masse to organizations such as Love Out Loud, World Relief and the Southeast Neighborhood Association, which makes sure they get in the hands of grateful kids.
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More than 1,000 bikes have been fixed and gone back into the community - most of them repaired by students learning about community service.
So following the devastation caused by Helene, it was natural for Culp and members of the bike collective to want to find a way to help.
The only issue was finding a reliable partner in mountain communities they don't usually serve.
And as odd as it sounds, that connection was made through a shared love of ... fishing.
Ken Putnam, the founder and namesake of Ken's Bike Shop, belonged to the Elk River Fishing Club, a group that fishes the river on land it has owned in Avery County for decades.
"We needed a way to make sure the bikes wouldn't just sit in a government-run warehouse," Putnam said.
Club president Buck McLean didn't need to hear the entire pitch before he was sold. He and his son stored them in their homes and at the club, then reached out to school teachers and counselors. Few people know family needs as well as they do.
"It was really bad around here," McLean said. "Unbelievable."
Merry Christmas from an unlikely source
RALEIGH -- As quietly as a church mouse, the last agency you'd consider festive delivered a gift to taxpayers that will keep on giving.
The N.C. Division of Motor Vehicles, a frequent butt of jokes about government inefficiency, announced last week that 69 new driver license examiners had graduated from a five-week training program and would soon be assigned to full-time jobs.
"In the last three years, we have hired over 400 driver license examiners to fill vacancies in offices across our great state," said DMV commissioner Wayne Goodwin in a statement. "We continue working to attract, hire, train and retain our employees while also introducing both more online technology options and seeking new examiner positions as we try to keep up with our state's explosive population growth."
To be fair, Goodwin is quite right.
Some of the DMV's core responsibilities -- renewing driver licenses and license tags to name two that used to be the most time-consuming -- have been moved online.
And that's made dealing with the DMV almost pleasant.
336-727-7481
@scottsextonwsj
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