THE KIDS LOVE THEIR BIKES, GROVER!

Here's the story..

Grover has been rehabbing bikes, which several Nomads are bringing to Punta Banda (like Bajacat, Fishbuck, and us) a few at a time. Today we brought a bunch of them to a "colonia" and made many kids and several adults very, very happy (it's the same place where we delivered 'Rotilio's Bike' earlier this year). Hose A provided several helmets. A neighbor gave us two bikes and a about a dozen wooden toys, so before handing out the bikes, we stopped at the Children's Home to drop off the toys. Then we went out to the colonia (really, campo) with a staff member from Agua Viva.

Here are some pictures:

We started out by stopping at Agua Viva Children's Home to deliver toys made by woodshop students at Anaheim High



One happy kid..



The imagination at work



We head out to the campo with an Agua Viva staff member, and word gets out to man and beast



Even the adults get pretty excited



Everybody's happy for this kid



He's bewildered



Rotilio's sister finally gets a bike! Rotilio is on the right. Search "Rotilio's Bike" for more of the story.



Little Alicia is quite overwhelmed-her first bike!



Let me show you how it's done



Couldn't be happier!



He won't let it go



Now he won't have to walk an hour-and-a-half to his $12-a-day job



And they're off!



...and off



Thanks to Grover, Bajacat, Fishbuck, our neighbor Butch and every Nomad who's making or will make this possible. Remeber: DON'T CROSS THE BORDER EMPTY-HANDED! Check with Grover about how you can make a lot of dreams come true.

I'll make sure that I bring a couple of bikes down next winter when I take my annual trip. For a while I was the supplier of bicycle fun in my own neighborhood for children about my son's age. I was able to get some pretty decent bikes for about 5 bucks apiece at the thrift stores (with a little bargaining). There was one bike in particular that was a lot of fun (the first of the bikes by the way). I bought a purple girl's bike for super cheap and got the tires to hold air and stuff like that. I gave it to my son's friend who never had a bike before - none of them have actually. He rode it down the driveway and stopped riding and just stood there. I asked his brother what was wrong, and he said that the bike might be too girlie. At that instant I got the bike back, and we stripped it down to the frame. We sanded it and spray-painted it shiny black and put it back together after the paint dried in the sun. He was the envy of the neighborhood with his bike after that. It actually looked pretty darned cool. Even my son asked if he could do the same thing to his bike which was virtually brand new with shiny blue paint from the factory. The kids learned that you can make something special via your own efforts and ingenuity. They all got to mess around with the cheap Chinese made socket wrenches. Perhaps it would be good to send down some tools as well as bikes. They're super cheap from Harbor Freight Tools and places such as that.