Bone’s bike was already parked. He must have heard mine and came out to greet me. “Hey, you made it.” Bones smiled.
“You too.”
Bones saw the look on my face. “Bring back memories?”
“Yeah, sure does. I wished for a program like this when I was younger. I would have taken better care of my first bikes. I was more interested in chasing tail and getting more tattoos.”
Bones chuckled in recognition. “I know what you mean.”
I untied the crate and carried the items from my garage into the workshop. “I’m pretty happy with how I ended up today.”
“I hear you. We end up where we’re supposed to in the end,” Bones reflected. “I think we have a pretty good age range today. Some of the kids are about 14 and up to 18.”
“Funny, how wisdom comes later in life. If I could go back and do things again, I would probably pick a few things I would do differently,” I reminisced.
Bones tapped me on the shoulder. “We all would, but then we wouldn’t have the character we have today. Sometimes you have to go through things in order to realize what’s best.”
“Look at all the wisdom we have to teach these youngsters. We are Yoda,” I replied with a wry laugh.
Bones and I chuckled as we entered the rarely-used back warehouse of Wheelz.
A few boys were already waiting for us, as our instructions were to walk along to the side gate and wait for us there. I moved towards the gate to open it. I watched the young men for a minute, trying to see if there was a leader. He made himself known pretty quickly with a wave. His hair a bit reddish and a bridge of freckles across his nose. His energy felt like that of a potentially good leader from what I could glean from him.
I walked over to the group followed by Bones. I felt shocked to learn I was as nervous to meet them as they were to meet me. “Hey guys, what are y’all looking at?”
“The bikes out front. I want one just like that,” he replied defiantly.
I extended my hand to the boy.
He shook it firmly and looked me in the eye. “I’m Duncan, but people call me Dunks. Like the basketball.”
I grinned at him. Nice kid, a little rough around the edges, but decent. “Hi Dunks, nice to meet you. I’m Ink and this is Bones, the president of the Rebel Saints club.”
One of the other boys called out, “Whoa! That’s so freaking cool!”
Bones agreed with him. “Yep, it is cool. We are here today to teach you about bike care and maintenance. I can see a few of you are here. We’re waiting on another four and then we can start.”
“Do you catch bad guys or are you the bad guys?” The inquisitive one asked.
I could see where this was headed. We might not get any bike maintenance in at all.
“What’s your name?” Bones asked the kid who had floppy brown hair and a wide smile.
“Richy. My name’s Richy.”
“Good question, Richy. The answer is we sometimes catch bad guys, but we are a community club, and we ride bikes,” Bones added that to the end of his sentence pretty quickly so Richy didn’t get the wrong idea and started to think we were some sort of cop vigilantes.
A few minutes later and the usual jostling and goofing around that young men participated in flared up. Bones raised his voice. “Talk amongst yourselves for a few minutes while we get set up.”
Bones and I let the kids into our large shed, which was filled with old machinery and bike parts. We stood near a long wooden workbench with some scattered blocks of wood on it. Hanging behind it was a large assortment of all kinds of tools, a really good setup. The workshop had good lighting, a number of hoists, and the materials we needed. I didn’t even have to bring mine.
Bone’s whispered to me as he moved the block around nervously on the workbench, “I think we can show them our bikes first and ask them what they know to gauge their knowledge. Just start talking I guess. We can get to know them.”
I nodded. “Good idea. Kind of like an informal class.”
“Exactly,” he agreed.
Bones called the boys out to his bike and that’s when the magic started to happen. The boys started to hang off Bones’ every word as he traveled over the bike and described the parts in detail and what he did to keep everything running smoothly.