tools

Jane's Dad: Jane's dad poses with donated tools

Jane Tooley is well-known among the cycling community. Her bright smile, her energetic personality and her all around nice attitude has won her many friends.

Friends of Jane also know that she is a person who likes to help out with causes, lots of them. This summer Jane went to Namibia in southern Africa to volunteer in a bicycle store with an organization called D.E.E.P., Disability Economic Empowerment Project. Here is how Jane explains it.

"The project was stared with a shipping container sent over from Canada full of bikes, tools and a work bench. basically, they emptied out the container and turned it into a successful bike store in just three years. The catch is that they didn't have the best tools to start out with and after three years of wrenching, the tools they do have are extremely worn down.

It is honestly a wonder how everyone continues to stay positive and fix bicycles. Where wrenches are concerned, all they have is a barely functioning 15 wrench, an 8 a 10 an 111 and a socket 9 and 15. One Phillips screw driver. The freewheel remover, chainbreaker pin, cone wrenches and allen keys are essentially useless. No pedal wrench, vice grips, cable cutters, truing stands or headset wrenches. I gave them my two spoke wrenches since they only had the multi-size kind. In short DEEP is in dire need of tools."

Blogging at I Bike T.O. may be our bread and butter, but once in a while we like to experiment: be it peanut butter and banana or a fine foie gras (actually no, scratch the stuffed goose liver). That's why we've started up a "Lost and Found" section on this site.

We like to think of ourselves as a proving ground. Once a tool gets popular or useful it'll eventually graduate up to the Toronto Cyclists Union. So let us know how you like the feature - is it useful, easy to use?

The Lost and Found is a listing of bikes that can be categorized as "stolen", "found" and "lost". It's a simple idea: just enter the details of the bike: image, location where it was stolen, lost or found, your contact info, serial number (or if you want people to provide proof then don't enter the s/n).

This isn't so much an original feature (other sites have done similar things such as people listing their stolen bikes on craigslist.org; bikeportland.org provides a forum listing) but it does try to provide a more usable listing that people can search and even get a news feed.