The Star: July 06, 2017

24
Latest Christchurch news at www. .kiwi
Thursday July 6 2017
Our People
The Star
Steve Muir
SMOOTH: ICEcycles co-founder
Steve Muir shows off one of
his many inventions: His latest
cycle-powered blender.
Inventor’s pursuit
ICEcycles volunteers have given away more than 1100 bikes and repaired hundreds
more. Steve Muir, one of its founders, spoke to Gabrielle Stuart about his bicycle
inventions, the cycling church and the car park v cycleway debate
PHOTO: MARTIN HUNTER
So tell me how ICEcycles
works?
We started in 2009 and the
aim is to help people to access
bikes. Often they’ll need a
repair but have been to a bike
shop and couldn’t afford the
price quoted to fix it, but we’ll
do it for free or for a donation,
whatever they can afford. We
hold about five workshops a
year helping to fix people’s
bikes, and a couple of meetings
a month, where we restore
donated bikes to give away. We
have a good group of about 60
or 70 volunteers, and a really
good sense of community. It’s
really fun to be involved with,
because people are so appreciative.
After eight years, are you
starting to run out of people
needing bikes?
No – it’s the opposite.
Demand has gone up exponentially,
so we’ve had to restrict
the area we work in to just the
east of the city, otherwise we
would have had an 18-month
waiting list for bikes – we try
to keep it to a month at the
most.
Who do the bikes go to?
All sorts. We do a lot of kids
bikes, lots of them donated
through the community trusts
and schools around Phillipstown
and Aranui. But we
have the most demand for
large men’s bikes, because lots
of men want bikes but not a lot
are donated. At the workshops,
it’s a real variety, too. We get a
lot of people on low incomes,
but we also get people on high
wages who just don’t know
how to fix their bikes or don’t
have the tools for it.
You must have bikes of all
shapes and sizes donated – is
it difficult to find the right
person for a bike?
Not usually, but we do get
the odd one. One which was
quite weird was a unicycle with
a sort of skateboard outrigger.
We sold that on Trade Me, in
the end. But we’re trying to
help as many people as possible
get on bikes, so we always
try to help. We’ve had a lot of
people who want to ride but
have balancing problems on
a standard bike. You can buy
adult tricycles, but most of
them are more than $1000,
and a lot of people can’t afford
that. So I’ve invented an adult
tricycle prototype for them.
I saw you’ve invested all
kinds of things in the past,
too – like snow chains for
bicycles?
Yes. That was a few years
ago, and the weather’s been
so warm lately, I haven’t had
much opportunity to use
them. My bike trailers are my
most popular creation, but
one of my more recent was a
bike with a blender jug, which
makes a nice fruit smoothie as
you cycle.
That’s amazing – so you
can cycle to work and have a
smoothie ready once you get
there?
Well, the latest is more of a
stationary one.
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