Last weekend I hosted a bike maintenance workshop at our church to help encourage people to get their bikes out of the shed and get them ready for summer. While just a few showed up, it was still a great event. We invited local bike advocate Tim Beaney to share his repair expertise. It was the first time I had met Tim and he left a lasting impression. It was nice to meet someone who is so passionate about biking. His passion has led him to open a self-help bike shop. The Bike Peoria Coop is a place where you can bring your bike and rent space to use a bike stand and all the tools you would need to do repairs. Used parts are available for purchase on site and volunteers are on staff to offer assistance. To my knowledge, this is unique in our area. 
Tim's love for biking doesn't stop at the shop. His plan was to create a place where the biking community can come to tinker around, visit and talk biking. While the shop is fairly new and just getting going, Tim shared that there have been many times where he saw that vision of people of many different lives coming together to work on bikes, share experiences and talk biking. This also meets his third goal of the shop. And that is to not only build a biking community, but to just bring community together through biking. According to the flier that Tim gave me, the mission of the shop is "a cooperative organization of bicycle users whose mission is to educate and empower the community by providing a welcoming space to learn about bicycle repair, maintenance, practices and road safety through outreach and advocacy activities."
Congratulations to Tim for getting this vision into practice and continue to build and strengthen the biking community in Peoria. I can't wait to visit the shop. Jump on this link to the Bike Peoria Coop to visit their Facebook page.
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