The Metal Cowboy’s Next Ride: Reborn Bikes

On this episode of Fit For Radio, we sit down with legendary cyclist, acclaimed author, and humanitarian Joe Kurmaskie — a man who has pedaled more than 250,000 miles across North America, Europe, and beyond, earning his nickname “The Metal Cowboy” through decades of unforgettable two-wheeled adventures.

Joe is the bestselling author of 10 books, including Metal Cowboy, Riding Outside the Lines, and Mud, Sweat, and Gears, and his storytelling has been featured in major publications including Outside, Rolling Stone, and Bicycling. Known for blending wild adventure, humor, and hard-earned wisdom, Joe has spent a lifetime proving that the bicycle can be far more than transportation — it can be a vehicle for transformation.

But Joe’s story goes far deeper than epic rides and bestselling books. After battling through a life-threatening illness that forced him to confront his own mortality, he shifted his focus toward purpose-driven service, dedicating the second half of his life to giving back. As Executive Director of Reborn Bikes, Joe has helped grow one of the largest free bike distribution nonprofits in the country, now putting more than 10,000 refurbished bikes annually into the hands of children and underserved families throughout the Pacific Northwest.

In this conversation, Joe shares stories from the road, lessons from surviving adversity, the healing power of movement, and why he believes a bicycle can change not just a life — but an entire community.

This is an episode about resilience, reinvention, and what it means to keep moving forward no matter what life throws your way.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I traveled the world on a bike, misspent my youth, and in Pocatella, Idaho, I had a blind old rancher uh tap a cane across me early morning at a at a a red green light, you know, and and he couldn't see me, so he felt me. And he said, Ah, metal cowboy. And he said, uh, you know, keep the wind at your back and and find where the innocents sleep. And I was like, dude, that's heavy at 5 30 in the morning. But uh, I took it to mean uh through all my adventures. You look for the best in people out there, and it's really what I found.

SPEAKER_01 0:48

It is the Fit for Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Drew Tiedeman, and we are where we always are, right here at the Stafford Hills Club. And if you haven't been here, this place is amazing, pristine. It also has that saltwater pool, which have talked about this. It keeps my 10-year-old daughter from going nuts about tangled hair. I guess it's chlorine. Chlorine's the thing, so if you want to skip that, get in the salt water. And remember, family memberships do fill up during the summer. The music's already popping out there. I wanted to go and just kind of marinate in the pool, but got work to do. Go to staffordhills.com to get yourself on board before you get wait listed and have to watch from the sideline. Super excited right now, though. Uh, a guest that I've been waiting to talk to. His name is Joe Kermanski. Uh Kermaski. Let me get it correct. That's right. And there's no N in that. Now you know so manly. Yeah. Well, it's hard when you're looking at those guns, not to throw the N in there. Uh, he's also known as the Metal Cowboys. He's one of America's most legendary bicycle adventurers, authors, and cycling advocates. The guy has traveled via bike, and it's probably quite a bit more now, uh, over a quarter million miles, 250,000 miles when I saw a speech that you had done, Joe. Now, not just that, though, it's not just riding a bike. He's also a best-selling author and columnist. Uh, he's been in publications like Bicycling, Men's Journal, Outside, Parenting, and Rolling Stone. So much more to add to that, but we can't sit here with uh acknowledging all the greatness all day long. He's an incredible guy on two wheels, but really what we're here to talk about today is his next adventure, which is Reborn Bikes, where they have gone to the next level, a nonprofit helping to refurbish and distribute bikes to people across Oregon who need transportation, freedom, and opportunity. Now, this is a very cool thing. Uh great to have you in studio, Joe. Wonderful to be here, Drew. Uh, and it's a great mission you guys have, but I kind of want to just take it back for a second for the people who don't follow you and your story. Sure. Now, they call you the metal cowboy. I know.

SPEAKER_00 3:00

I look more like an aging surfer. There's no there's no belt, there's no boots, there's no cat uh hat.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

I absolutely love uh the title, and I had read up about it a little bit, but I I would like you to kind of explain where that where that came from.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

Well, uh, you know, I I traveled the world on a bike, misspent my youth, and in Pocatella, Idaho, I had a blind old rancher uh tap a cane across me early morning at a at a a red green light, you know, and and he couldn't see me, so he felt me. And he said, Ah, metal cowboy. And he said, uh, you know, keep the wind at your back and and uh the uh sun on your face? Yeah, it was uh and find where the innocents sleep. And I was like, dude, that's heavy at 5 30 in the morning. But uh I took it to mean uh through all my adventures, you look for the best in people out there, and it's really what I found. And uh so I had these memoirs, I had all kinds of um I studied journalism and English and uh popped as a as a writer. Um and the rest is history, 25 years of uh of writing for Rolling Stone and Men's Journal and Outside and columnists uh across the nation and speaking gigs. All that's great and and had a lovely time with it and still do. But uh I got ill somewhere in my um mid-40s with uh hemochromatosis. Tried to kill me, but I'm a Florida cockroach. I came bouncing back. So for people who don't know what that is, what what is that? Iron overload, it's a Viking disorder. Um they call it the Irish curse because it seeded all of Europe. And what it does is at a certain point it it mutates in your it's all there and it mutates in your 40s and turns on the gene and uh starts storing iron um beyond your daily allowance. And killed Patrick Swayze, Steve Jobs, um, Ernest Hemingway. It doesn't kill you. The end case presenting illnesses, liver cirrhosis, liver disease. Where the body can't fight it. It's it's iron stiffening all your organs and tissues. And so if you remember Patrick Swayze had that dark tan, he said he never really went um into tanning booths or something. That was bronze diabetes, that one of the end case presenting illnesses. Okay. And so I got caught early enough, um, not early enough, but in time. And they fixed me, and I just get blood every three or four months.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

So you you get a little oil change?

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Is that how they do it? I get um uh what it is is it it uh draws down, you get blood starved, and it um you create new um new blood and it drain it it sucks the iron out of the tissues and organs to oxygenate that blood. So it's real medieval, true. Yeah, it's kind of cool, it's Viking. That is very Vikings had their their blood sports to actually it was they knew that's incredible all that time ago. And leeches, those were actually good for something. Um I mean, they don't leech me now. Yeah, at any rate, um, all that's to say that when I when I didn't die, um I came back stronger and I said, you know, what are we gonna do with the second half of our life? We've got all the books and the career and all that, but why don't we devote a strong amount of time to really seeing if we can make an impact? How many bikes can we flood the streets with safely? How much impact can we have? And we grew about eight years ago at Washco Bikes that I took over from giving about 250 bikes away in Washington County to uh we gave 12,976 bikes away in 2025 across um state of Oregon.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

And doesn't that statistic, and we're gonna back up a little in a second, but doesn't that statistic put you above uh at the top of those distributing bikes in that fashion?

SPEAKER_00 6:47

We are the uh I didn't realize it, but we're the largest um low and free income distribution of um refurbished bikes in the United States. That right there is impressive. And uh working bike Chicago, uh, I wanted to make sure we the founder actually lives out here half the year and works with us. In fact, I was just with him an hour ago. And he's like, no, no, you guys give away more bikes than us. And he's with us giving them away. And he found us. You know, our tribes find each other. That is cool. Um and so if you want to back up and give any more context.

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Well, just a little bit like you know, the metal cowboy thing, you know, I when I heard that, it it was funny to me because when you see somebody who travels on a bicycle, you know, you you kind of do look like a cowboy on a horse, but it is a bike. You know, you've got the little saddlebag.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

That's it. It's and that's what the blind old rancher was feeling. He he felt that you know, the dusty, the asphalt was my dusty trail and the bike was my um metal steed. And uh and I took it for that. I really um and I embraced that that name, and it's been all over the world, you know, it's it's had lots of it's been bad. The bike's been betty, betty good to me.

SPEAKER_01 8:00

And I think that there's context there too, because you know, the reason I wanted to touch on just a bit of your backstory is some to get to 250,000 miles is wild. Like, so I to keep myself uh afloat, I I ha bare minimum 150 miles a month on my bike. It's really only six miles a day.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

Right. Now I had no car for 11 years raising my kids. Okay. My wife had a car, but I exclusively rode everywhere on a tandem um with a trailer bike. I took my kids to school, grocery store, everywhere. So my days were spent, I did 30, 40 miles a day.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Mm-hmm. Which that that'll get you going real quick.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

That'll get you going real quick. And then because I was speaking all over the country, everywhere I went, there was a bike ride that I was associated with. So I'd ride that ride. You know, and so it was a crazy amount. I mean, when you've done seven different trips across the United States, all the way down through South America, across Australia, New Zealand, the miles add up.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Oh, yeah. And you're not just doing this by yourself. At the beginning, yeah, but you you do this with your children.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

Well, I did. Now they're they're um grown up. But you they were not grown when you did. Oh, I have a 16-year-old uh now, and he wants to go on another ride. And what's really cool is my my boys that are grown now, um, all neither of them own a car. Uh they take mass transit in New York City. One's a famous skateboarder and Thrasher Magazine and all that. And he said the wheels, all the travel and all the wheels really got him started that way. And um one of my other sons, uh, the oldest one who speaks a bunch of languages and he's here for the summer and he comes back uh periodically and just works for me. Loves the bicycle, um, and none of it was like forced on them.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Well, maybe it was a little, but when you're on a massive ride and there's no other option, I guess that's a butt about they're enjoying it along the way. Turn it away. It wasn't it wasn't something they were soured by or that you were pushing in like a poison.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

No, and when we rode across Canada on a triple tandem trailer bike trailer, and we rode three boys and you know, the whole deal, they were it wasn't a batan death march, true. It was stopping and panning for gold and playgrounds and you know, all the fun stuff. It was more of a vision quest for them and just And not a chore. Not a chore. You know, I mean there was hail and there was rain and there was moments.

SPEAKER_01 10:34

But those moments are the moments you remember. And the moment you're like, oh God, what am I doing? We're all gonna freeze.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Exactly. But those are the moments, right? And you know, you open up the tra uh the the burley trailer and he's got a uh a garter snake and a bunch of rocks and a terrarium going on in there.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Um, you know, yeah, he's living his life inside his life.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Yeah, and you know, I got some advice which I've heard before, but was reiterated to me just yesterday from a friend of mine whose kids are all grown, and he's like, and you know, I maybe I was whining about something like you know, there's always something to do. Of course. And I've got three kids, and they're all girls, and so it's just me and my wife and the three girls, so it's a lot of action. And he's like, You gotta slow up and just enjoy this because this is these are the golden moments, these are the best days of your life.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Well, I saw a statistic that said that once your children are out of the house and and grown, you're gonna only see them for the rest of their lives, you're gonna see them for about a year, year and a half of time.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

Where this time right now, Drew, is all the time.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

It's all of it all the time.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

And I think uh I'm very European in the sense that I don't need my kids to be away as adults. I mean, they're they're functioning and and productive in society, but we go bowling, we have fun, we come the it we we spend time, and I think it's because you can't invest the time later. You have to invest the time while they're young. And um biking across continents with my dad's ashes and my two boys and then my three boys and then my four boys. That's awesome. Um that tends to be quality time.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Absolutely. And I come from four boys myself. My parents had four boys, and and we're the same way. My dad's also European, he's from England, and we all live except for one of us, we all live within two miles. We all have different careers, and there's from wildly successful to me, there's all kinds of stuff. And then but we are a tight-knit unit, and it's not like you need to go away from here. Like, and just like you say, that's we're stronger together.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Well, I think it's uh not to get critical about our current society, but I think uh at least in America, we tend to to disperse ourselves at 18 or 20 with our family, and we we we uh live somewhat estrained from each other. Um, and I um I don't subscribe to that. I think it's um look, uh you you got a couple questions in life, and the big one for me is um are we gonna love each other as a community, as individuals, as families, through and through, not when it's convenient, not when it's comfortable, not when it it feels good or it's at a wedding or a or a family reunion, but um the ordinary perfect days.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

Yeah, exactly. And I'm I'm all about um making the best of the ordinary day.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

It's all we really have. You get to the end of your life. Um if you haven't uh made the ordinary extraordinary, you're you were waiting for something else. And you missed out on a lot.

SPEAKER_01 13:47

You missed. And here's a perfect example before we move on about that whole strength of family community. When I first moved back to Portland, I lived in Eugene, Oregon for 16 years, hosted a radio show there, got an opportunity up here, but moving from there to where I live now is a bit of a financial shift, as in like a landslide. You need a lot more money to live where I live now. So we made the decision to move in with my parents when I was 35 years old with a newborn, and my first kid, I hadn't lived at home since I was 18, and I'm thinking, oh my God, this is gonna be hell.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

But you know what in Europe that wouldn't have been thought of strange at all. A second thought of it.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

And you know what it led to? My firstborn child was potty trained in 18 months. She talked first, she were all of her functions were flying off the chart because she had four parents.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

You had a you had a uh support system there, yeah. And also uh I think the other part of we ask ourselves in life is most people don't stick around if they don't have a purpose. Um we gotta have community, we gotta have a purpose. And a family is a purpose, you know, and and as as the next generation, as grandparents and all, if they're just uh relegated to some sort of off-to-the side margin, uh they're not gonna live as healthy either. So I I I wouldn't say, you know, you're doing them a favor too. Yes. Um having them have be active um grandparents.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

It's funny you say that because I really do think it helped them in that fashion. The only downside is when we mentioned the potty training, they like to raise their hand and take a lot of credit there. Say, we're a community. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

It's it's it's not just you. Listen, I'm I'm a fallen away Catholic with a lot of Buddhist tendencies. I I you know, uh and that ties into reborn bikes and and Washko and and our whole thing is I don't I don't give a hoot about um ego at this point or credit or what have you. Um I'm doing this to see how much how much I can complete the motion on the way out here the last 40 years. You know, I'm I'm not interested in photo ops or or you know, I have to raise money and do this. Uh and and we you know, it takes something other than rainbows and unicorns, but uh I'm here for the right reasons.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

And I will I will attest to that because when you and I talked on the phone, and only a couple of my guests have been very clear about this when we got on the phone is that yeah, my accomplishments are great, and that'll lead that'll lead a horse to water, but you said straight up that I don't care about all that. I wanna I wanna deliver the message about reborn bikes and what we're doing and the change that we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Right. And and thanks for our segue here. We're we're you know ready to uh talk any questions you have about you know reborn bikes and and the larger idea of um you know shifting our society. Look, the car won a long time ago. And so my attitude was yeah, we can build and work on and and try and get the infrastructure. But if we don't flood the streets with bikes, if we don't have the next generation of kids getting off that Xbox carpal tunnel, setting the damn phone down and uh looking around from the saddle of a bike and having a childhood and having an adulthood, because we don't give bikes just to kids, we give bikes to the entire family. If a child is in need, a family is in need. Nobody lives in a vacuum. So when I started this, we we were giving a few bikes away to schools and kids, and I realized pretty quickly on that we needed to be giving uh a whole lot more uh uh complete packages and to the whole family.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Yeah, and that's what I noticed straight away because when I first uh spoke with another one of your board members, Mark, and he gave me your guys' card, I just immediately thought that it's bikes for kids, right? And so the more research that I did, I was like, wait, this is bikes for people in need.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

It's bikes for we give bikes to the Ukrainian Foundation, the Catholic charities, Urco, Self-Enhancement, Inc., Easter Seals. I mean, it's 75 to 80 Title I schools now. Uh, we're doing a June uh teenth event down in Salem for the uh ASF uh CME union. Um we give bikes to churches, synagogues, uh exchange programs, uh veterans. Uh, you know, I'll give a bike to the devil if he's behaving himself, um, if he has somebody that needs it. Yeah. Um, so we're we're apolitical in that sense, and we're we're all about it's not goodwill, uh, Drew. It's not, hey, here's a bike that maybe works or maybe doesn't. We do a 16-point safety check on that bike. I have mechanics, I have an army of volunteers that get the bikes ready for the mechanics to go through the final steps. We clean those bikes, and I tell people, I used to tell people clean it like um you were giving it to your brother and sister, and then I had somebody say, I don't want to clean a bike for my sister. I was like, Yeah, I will give it to you. They're the only ones who get the dirty bike and tell you to deal. I said, Why don't you clean it like for somebody that you care about?

SPEAKER_01 19:10

Well, let's just say my brother is also my dentist, and the care for others is different than the care for your brother. You know, you watch the fish hook when it's your own brother. So it's in love. Right. But I think they I think, yeah, changing it to clean it like you'd clean for someone else.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

Yeah, you you care about so they get a bike, but they don't just get a bike. They get a helmet, a lock, a light, a vest, um safety training and skills at our big bike festivals. It's a nine-station festival.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Mm-hmm. And I want to walk through a little bit about how this came about and and kind of like where the idea started and where it's headed. Sure. The Fit for Radio podcast is brought to you by Motorsport Hillsboro, where they have the best selection for everything off-road in your life. And one thing I'd love to showcase right now is the electric mountain bikes down there. The gas-gas G Light Trail 2.0 is the one that I've had my eyes on. I actually went down there and rode it around a little bit. And it's like a kid in a candy store, and they bought up the inventory to make sure they could pass those savings right on to you. A over $5,000 value for just $21.99, up to 60% off of these bikes, $3,000 off MSRP, no slouch there, as you can get on one while supplies last. So head into Motorsport Hillsboro today. You don't want to miss out because the sunnier it gets, the nicer it gets, the less inventory that's gonna be there. So get there today. Check out the full supply at Motosporthillsboro.com, the hardest place you'll love to find. Because it's it's one of those things where, you know, it's it's terrible that you got sick and that you had to go through all that stuff, but it's almost like a, I don't know if you call it a wake-up call or if it's just kind of like a little shake that you d that time is not forever.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Well, you know, you you have your second birthday in life, if you're lucky, when you realize that um the Buddha statement, the the problem is uh you think you have time. And uh it was the best thing. I was already uh altruistic and on boards, and but I needed the reset was really beautiful. Yeah because it was a country music song. I I I lost everything basically. I uh my marriage ended. Um, you know, I almost lost my life, and it was a really uh opportune time to uh reboot.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

And I and I gotta say, before we go into it, is I understand that on such a level. So, like when I was in my 20s, I got like a mystery illness and I was sick for three years. I I joke with people, I call it the thousand days of sadness because nobody knew what was wrong with me. And so every day I'd go to a different doctor's appointment and then I'd come home all bummed and you'd be like, we lived a mirrored life.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

I had that for about a year.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

And so she would, my wife would be like, Why are you so bummed? I'm like, I just got back, I just got my test results and I don't have Crohn's.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Like I wanted a disease. You I called it the phantom menace. You you I uh it wasn't the hemochromatosis that um took me down. I did great with that. I would ride my bike, I was coaching volleyball during all that. It was it made me um immune suppressed, and a meningitis of sorts got in, closed up my throat, oh no, uh, made me have to eat. Um, I mean, I lost 40 pounds, I was in and out of the hospital, and they couldn't figure it out. And there's nothing worse than you want to know who you're fighting.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

So that you have a fighting chance. You know, it's like me swinging my arms in the dark is what it felt like.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Amen, brother. I know. And once I was able to come out the other side, it's like uh an awakening. Well, the rest of it, true, is just a I'm playing with um the house money. Yep. I uh this is all a game to me. The reason I've been able to build up um reborn bikes with, and I say I, we, I have an army of amazing people that have gotten behind what I've I've believe in and try to do. And um, but the reason I'm able to just uh hang fire is because you're dead either way, brother.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Yeah, and you were, I mean, you're kind of you were dead. You know, like in your mind, you're like, I'm done. And then you're not. And so there's this new thing. And when I came out of mine, and mine ended up being simpler than yours, but just as hard to find, there was a hernia inside the sphincter that closes your stomach, not on the wall. Yeah. But what it did is it ruined the ecosystem and it kept dumping acid into me.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

A hiatal hernia.

SPEAKER_01 23:50

Hiatal hernia. And so I have a surgery now that uh tied that off, and there's a whole story about a miracle doctor. And basically, it gave me a second lease on life, and I chose then that I wasn't gonna waste it.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Amen. Um, and you know, it's not like dodging a car accident or some, you know, that little, oh, uh it'll make me awake for two weeks. I was changed on a molecular level. Yep. Um, I it's all bonus time for me, and I'm having a blast, and I don't um, you know, my one of my sons said to me, we walked into one of our seven warehouses, and there was just an airplane hanger worth of bikes, and they're J said, Oh, I understand why you're so chill. You got all the bikes. And I said, They're not my bikes. He goes, Yeah, but you get to touch each one, they pass through you. And I said, Well, maybe that's a little, but it also is that um that I'm carrying the water and I'm chopping the wood, and I'm the gift in life. I never was materialist. All I needed was a bike and a and some journals and and open road and some tasty waves, as as uh Sean Penn uh said in um Past Times Ridgemont High. Yes. But uh uh, you know, you have a family, you get barreled down in a lot of stuff. Um, and it was a real nice reset. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:11

Um and then you really kind of took off. What made you decide that this was your calling out of I mean, you were already the bike guy.

SPEAKER_00 25:19

I was the bike guy, and I had that national platform. And so uh I decided, you know, let's see how we can take one thing and go as wide and deep as possible with that thing. Um and and also just I don't lead with how much money can we raise to build an infrastructure that is just gonna need to prepare. It's all about the end game. How what are we what are we delivering? Maximizing the output. Maximizing the output and maximizing the impact and real impact. Not when cameras are rolling, not when I'm doing a podcast, but um putting myself out there and uh convincing other people to do the same. And we've been able to build from uh you know a shop and and and a program out in Washington County to which continues to grow. I want to point that out. I'm the director of Washco Bikes as well. It's part of the larger ecosystem. And we have programs at the German International School now. We have seven different warehouses. We we have summer camps uh for kids on bikes, we uh teach classes and clinics, and you know, I can name so many groups. We have the Rotarians and the Kowanians and the National League of Young Men and the Rotoracs and the School Groups and the Boys' Clubs and the LDS, and it just goes on and on of people that and the way we do it, I I really maximize efficiency. We'll come out to an event, and maybe I'm getting ahead of us. No, no, no, this is all interesting. Um, we we come out and we schedule a bike festival, and the school we bring out 50 or 80 bikes, depending on the side of the festival. We bring out helmets, bring out locks, bring out lights. That truck gets unloaded, and then the truck's parked and it has a sign on it that says station two. That's where you donate. Everybody brings in the bikes that they've outused and outgrown. Okay. And those get paid forward to the next event. So at the very same event that we're giving out 80 bikes, sometimes we get 65 bikes back in. So you're recycling the whole system at the event. At the event, you're getting bikes, and then other members in the communities that don't need bikes but have bikes sitting. There's 106 million bikes sitting in garages, and only 53 million of them are being ridden on a regular basis. See, I got to come to one of these events and just get some eyes on this. You really do. You got to, because it's amazing. We've got the pump tracks and the bubble pop and the slow races and all the skills obstacle course setup. You come through the tables, you're getting your helmets, your locks, your lights, your swag, you're spitting the wheels, you're you're doing all of that. Then you go over to the fitting station where the bikes are all laid out by size, and you're getting fit. We want to make sure you're on the balls of your feet, you're handing. You know, it's not, hey, here's a bike, good luck. Um, we're really doing we teach them hand signals, we put uh proper helmet fittings, we've worked with the hospitals, so they're safe and ready to go. All safe and ready to go. And we don't, and we have a repair station, station three. We call it the magic carpets. We lay the carpets out, we have the the bike repair with my mechanics.

SPEAKER_01 28:37

So if somebody has a bike but it's not working at that time. Exactly, Drew. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

They bring their bikes in from their garages that may have light repair that needs to be done that day. Now, at station two, I've taught all of my volunteers and and staff to ask if someone's bringing a bike up, we say, Are you giving us this? Is you outgrown or out use this, or do you need it repaired? Because I don't want to take someone's bike that they might still want. We want we the whole idea is to get as many people on bikes riding safely and we're gonna be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Not take this from you and give it to them. Somebody else. Yeah, that doesn't change the number.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

Exactly. So we have that and we get people like, oh yeah, if I could get this fixed, I'd keep riding it. Yeah. So we move them to that station.

SPEAKER_01 29:20

So by the time so is that the last station then?

SPEAKER_00 29:24

And no, the last station is after they do the optional courses and the safety gardens and the games and what have you. And there's a you sometimes there's an art demo where they're putting cards in their spokes and drawing pictures and doing bat uh bike games, uh bike art. Um the last station, which uh sometimes we have the capacity for it, and and sometimes we don't because of the community. Um, we do a group ride. And what we do is we leave it every half an hour or so. And what we've done is we've set it up with the local school people, and we found the routes from the school to the library, to their grocery stores, to wherever that keep them off the busier roads. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

So it's safe, but it's a fun community route.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Right. We're trying to teach them it's a short ride, 10 or 15 minutes, but it just shows them these are the best routes from your school. Because I testified down in Salem at one time and they asked me, how far should infrastructure go from a school or a hospital into the community? I said, You're asking me the wrong question. The question is, how do you find the money to have infrastructure go the entire way? Yeah. Because you don't ride 1,500 yards away from a school or a thousand yards away from a school, and then some alien picks you up and carries you safely home. Yeah. So if you don't have infrastructure all the way, you're you're throwing everybody the wolves.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

Yeah, we don't park it and walk the rest of the way. I mean, it's get you gotta get me from A to B.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

It's not aboriginals in the in the outback, just toss the bike aside and start walking.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

So in the beginning, because you now you have you have this all set up where you have a great little ecosystem where it's kind of feeding itself. In the beginning, how did you get the bikes? Because now asking for donations or whatever is one thing, but you know, I put I put it all to work.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

I I asked the public, I'd talked to bike shops, I'd talk to um the police, I'd talk to um the big breakthrough was with Ridwell that um they worked with us to get bikes out of people's garages that weren't being used and bike parts. And the other big one was Metro. Uh I I put together, it took about three years, but I put together a deal where we get bikes from the transfer station, Drew. That's the dump. Okay. And they pull them out before they ever go in to the stream. So they they have an eye out. Well, I've taught their their staff, and we work together, that they pull out the bikes, they put them in a tent on site, and we come around every two weeks with trucks. And on location, we strip bikes. My volunteers and staff will strip bikes right at the location. So I don't want to take bikes away that we're just gonna have to bring back the frames.

SPEAKER_01 32:13

So you can assess it on scene.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

We we have, and they've assessed it for us too, because one of the other things we don't want to do is over 20-inch bikes when they start getting geared and and whatnot, if we're taking bikes that are, I call them structures that are um very entry-level department store bikes with fake shocks and they weigh more than all of your regrets, and we give a 65-pound bike to a 55-pound kid, it's not gonna be a good deal. It's they're gonna think they're not a good ride. They don't know how to cycle. So, what we do is we strip those bikes for all the parts, you know, the wheels, the kickstand, the grip shifters, the whatever we can take, and we we um put them on better bikes.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

So you're maximizing what you can get from that bike without putting somebody in a situation where they have a 900-pound bike.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

That's right. And we're trying to make cyclists, not um people that like give me a car now. Um and uh so we have that, and we also have deals with um Trek is a huge and great um uh partner of ours. They have a program where people donate, um, drop off their previously sometimes very lightly used bikes, and um Trek gives them a deal uh percentage for the next bike. Um, and they're not in the used bike business. So they get the tax write-off giving the bikes to us, and we turn around and give those bikes to the program. Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_01 33:41

And what I love about this so much is uh, well, I'm I love a lot about it, but you know, like my girls, they they have bikes, but when they were younger, you know, I kind of like had them loitering in the in the little bike longer than they should have, you know. And now that once I saw them on a mountain bike, I was like, ugh, they probably should have got that going a little earlier. But the reason I bring it up is, you know, even though they were on like some ET rider, they when they got those bikes, it was like Santa Claus was good pure joy.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

There is so much joy in my job at these um, you know, and at these events, and I can't always be at all of them, but I I'm I'm very hands-on. I don't have an office. I have offices in all my warehouses. I do not want I didn't create this thing to create another entity that's not gonna have impact. If if it doesn't have impact, I don't uh what are we doing? Yeah. I don't want there were and this is not to criticize any specific nonprofits or any specific social service organizations, but if you're perpetuating yourself to perpetuate yourself and five or ten percent of your energies is are going to the the chopping the wood and carrying the water, uh yeah, then you I don't want anything to do with that. Uh I want uh us to do the good work while we're here. And speaking of Santa Claus, we were out in Hillsborough at a event at Minter Bridge, and a lot of times the families come in and they think we're just getting bikes for the kids. And when they find out that there's a bike for them and there's helmets for them, they get I had one woman say, I haven't felt like this since I was a kid on Christmas. And that for me is just pure pure Vita. That's why I'm doing this. Yeah. Um, my wife and I were out uh uh on a um trail ride out at Bangs Pernonia, and we saw a whole family, and she had been at the event, Kate had been at the event where we gave this family their helmets and their locks and their lights. And um she's oh, you want to talk to them? I said, No. I want them to just feel it. Feel it, enjoy it. It's enough for me to know that that we played a role.

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Because the fact that you hook up the adults on two levels, it's got me. The first is the parent. You know, the parent is if they can't afford bikes, we'll just put it there first. If you can't afford bikes, you're going to, as a if you're a great parent, the first bike you're gonna get, you're gonna buy is for your kid long before yourself.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

100%. And but the thing is, if you have a bike, the buy-in is just so much better.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Then you go together.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

They go together and they can ride. There's quality time. There's, hey, let's take our bikes out to the library, let's take our bikes to the Sun program, let's take our bikes to wherever karate or whatever you need to do. Um, or let's just take our bikes on the Springwater Corridor for a ride or the Banks Renonian. Yeah. And I see that, and it's lovely. We'll give trailer bikes out so that the if they the other thing we do, true, is we make sure that um we're very uh anti-kickstand. I'm not kickstand, anti-um training wheels. Okay. I was gonna say no kickstand. No, we love the trade kickstand. I I'm I misspoke. Anti-training wheel. Um it's not that they're the devil, but they are a crutch.

SPEAKER_01 37:09

They slow you down. It's like a binky in your mouth. Like you don't know.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

It's time to let that go. We we tell everybody at our events take them out on the grass, momentum balance, um uh a little speed on it, you'll be all right.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

And you know, that's that's the key right there. And the other thing I was thinking about is with the with the parent, not the parent, the adult, is of course the parents not going to want the bike before their kids, so they might never even buy it. So you kind of bridge that gap. There's also the person who can't afford a car. And so they have to commute.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

Yes, we are third um shift folks. We are we are car replacement and reduction. Because a person can still get to work, they can still function, they can get to the store. We we um that's one of the things we push when we're at our events to say, hey, do you need a bike to get to work? Do you need a bike to get to um school? Uh you need a bike just to be with your family. And we give so many more bikes away like that. And so what we do with these events is we bring out a percentage of we know what the school makeup is. And sometimes we know that we're gonna bring out more kids' bikes, but at our community event, school events, we always bring out 25% of adult bikes or 30% of adult bikes, 30% of the medium-sized bikes, and you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

So, and now granted, you guys give away a ton of bikes, so maybe you've passed this now. So let me know if I'm if I'm barking up the wrong tree. But you know, there's that situation where you have one of these events and there's a bunch of people who show up and you don't necessarily have the bikes to service all the people.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

We don't a lot of times. It's it's it's the demand is amazing. Um, but what we do is we we pay them on to the next event. So you got to do that. You used to have them come to our warehouses, but it was just a lot. It was too much logistics to figure out. And because we're doing two events a week, um, is what it averages out to. Um, there's always another event for folks to come out to. So you guys are doing like a hundred events a year? 105 last year. That's impressive. Um, some of them are on the same day. Uh, some of them are at the same location. We did uh down at we did six rotary clubs in Wilsonville, came out and we were doing two events in the same parking lot. We had a big old parking lot um set up with on one side of the parking lot was the bike festival. People are coming and getting their eight, we gave 84 bikes away that day. Again, their helmets, their locks, and all that. And the other side of the parking lot, we had brought a truck full of dirty bikes from Metro. So we don't even have to unload them more than once. The volunteers, all the Rotarians clean the bikes. We set up the cleaning stations right there in the parking lot.

SPEAKER_01 40:02

Oh, and you just had a little assembly line, a pop-pop bike. They they cleaned 90 bikes.

SPEAKER_00 40:08

And we do this with um corporations ASML, Genitech, Home Depot, uh, that you name it. We do these, we bring them to you, or they come to our warehouses and they'll um it's an in-service for them. It's a volunteer and a group activity. That's impressive. And so that you're asking me how we've built it up. We built it up by uh, you know, force of personality. I go out and just hit the streets and talk with folks, and if they get behind what we do, the other part we try and do, Drew, is deliver. We underpromise and over-deliver.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

And that's the key right there. If you're like, we got all this, and then you don't, it's more of a like a want, wont wont. But if you're like, hey, we we can do this much, and then all of a sudden you come over the top, there's a little of that Santa Claus.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

That's right. And when you see it out there, it's just impressive to pull up to a school that has all this going on and just the number of bikes in the parking lot at each of these events. Some organizations give 300 bikes away a year. We give 300 bikes away in in two weeks.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

Yeah, and you can see why it's contagious, the the volunteering and the helping part. It's like I'm sitting here talking to you, and I'm like, I gotta get out there.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

I gotta get out there. 100% because it's a lot of times when you you do community service, you don't know, you don't get to see the end result. If you come in and clean these bikes and then you come to one of our events, you're like, oh, this is the circle. This closes it. Yeah, it's like building a well in Africa and then seeing the people getting the water.

SPEAKER_01 41:44

Yeah. The Fit for Radio podcast brought to you by Motosport Hillsborough. And I've been talking about their electric mountain bikes that are so legit. If you want to get on one today, there's never gonna be a better price. It's right now $2,199. That's $3,000 off of the gas-gased G Light Trail 2.0, and it's for the person who wants to get out and actually hit the trails. You'll go places you never thought you could get to. And if you're like me, where you're getting a little bit older and you still want to go shred it up, uh, that electric assist is exactly what you need. Lightweight frame, powerful motor, and built for the trails. They bought up the inventory to bring the savings to you. Motorsporthillsboro.com, the hardest place you'll love to find. Also brought to you by the Stafford Hills Club. I talk about it all the time, and it's one of the easiest things for me to speak on. They've got an amazing saltwater pool, the grill opening shortly here. The classes. My wife loves the classes, and it gives her a little bit of a break and a reprieve from her duties as a mother. Let's be honest, we all get a little burnout, we get a little tired from time to time. So the kids' club, a chance to work on yourself and maybe just relax and have a coffee over by the fireplace in the cafe. It's all got something for everyone. Also a premier tennis facility. Check them out today, staffordhills.com and tell them that Drew sent you for half off of your initiation. So I guess my question for a guy who's done so well at this, you've been very successful in all the things you've done throughout your life. How do we keep the ball rolling here? And what's next for reborn bikes?

SPEAKER_00 43:31

Well, anybody who wants to do this around the country, please come and talk to us. But we're not going around the country. We're associated and affiliated with uh Free Bikes for Kids as one of our coalition partners, and we give away the most bikes within that network. But there are other places that can do it. We're not, I'm not a 25 years old. You know, I may still look at it. But um we want to make this the best organization. In the Pacific Northwest and Oregon specifically, maybe southern Washington. And so what we need is time and treasure from people. We need more groups that want to volunteer if your business wants to come out. We've had environmental uh studies organizations and consultants and uh wealth advisors and anybody else that wants to bring their corporation or their business out to one of our cleanings and one of our events. We've got opportunities in all our warehouses for for events and things like that. What we gotta keep doing is just um uh bringing the bikes in and putting the bikes back out, uh creating the advocacy and education and and the programs. But um you know, we I I want to level it off. You know, I don't want you to come to me in two years and say, Oh, you're doing 30,000 bikes now. You know, at a certain point, we don't want to we want to do it as well as we are doing it now.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Yeah, and not make it big, but not what it is.

SPEAKER_00 44:59

That's right. Because that defeats the whole um my personal um outlook is how do we have the largest impact uh while still being meaningful?

SPEAKER_01 45:13

Doing it the right way. Now I saw that people who want to get on board, because I'm all motivated now, uh, if they go to rebornbikes.org, I saw you have a thing you can click right there to volunteer and join the team here. Um I mentioned it a little bit, but when I met one of your colleagues, uh Mark, it's funny because I was talking about the podcast and he just overheard us and he handed me the card and he had like the passion in his face about it, you know, and I was like, huh.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

And so let me just say briefly about I want to say a few words about Mark. Mark and I are kindred spirits, and we have a number of folks on our board now like that. But Mark and I took it to the next level. He was working with free bikes for kids, I was working with Washco. We we Marvel Twins. Yeah, we went Captain Planet a little bit. Right. We went Captain Planet, and the next thing you know, we had built this up to reborn bikes, given five, six thousand bikes away a year, and it's just grown since because uh we both have the passion, we're both Buddhists, we're both um go-getters, and we we between his network of folks and my network of folks, it was just um release the hounds, man.

SPEAKER_01 46:24

Yeah, I mean, you definitely are making a difference. I'm super impressed with it. I stressed that people should get out there and get themselves uh into the volunteer situation here, and so you can see it firsthand yourself.

SPEAKER_00 46:35

Yes, and you can go right to our website. You don't have to even sign up, you can come to the days that our warehouses are open. There's an open drop-in volunteering, and then you get all your, you know, we have a warehouse on Oregon Street in right down near Benson. Okay. Um at the Bakery Block buildings. We have one in West Lynn, we have a one out in Forest Grove and and in Hillsboro. Uh, we have one in Wilsonville that's not operational for cleaning yet, but um, it's storage. But uh we're growing these warehouses and um and just so everybody doesn't think that I'm a warehouse tycoon, we work the we work with the commercial real estate market that's had seen better days. We work with them to get them some property tax abatement and some uh tax abatement on their their fair market rent.

SPEAKER_01 47:25

So you've found a creative way to get it done.

SPEAKER_00 47:27

You're not just dropping billions on the No, we couldn't do we are the little engine that could. We are not um we don't own all these warehouses. We're working with the so if you have a warehouse out there, come talk to me. Yeah, we can help you with those two. We can help you with some of that.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Now that's that is so great. Now I'm just trying to think about other people in other states. And I think if they get a chance to listen to this podcast or they get past your organization, they should use now, granted, you're scaled here in the Oregon area.

SPEAKER_00 48:00

It will work in in many ways in a lot of places.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

I just think they need to take the blueprint and because really your goal is to get the most people on bikes possible safely and and the right way constantly. And so you're do it, you're in charge of that here. You can't you don't have the infrastructure or the time and energy to do the entire country, but I just would urge people who have the drive to put it in other places because call me up and call me up and kick your brain about it.

SPEAKER_00 48:30

Um, I my phone number is everywhere, it's all over the website, it's everywhere. Call me directly and we'll have a chat. Um, I'm happy to have I've had people come out and tour our facilities from Detroit, from Chicago, from North Carolina, because um, you know, we've kind of found a a formula that that works, and um, and it doesn't have to be one size fits all, but you can pick and choose some ideas from it.

SPEAKER_01 48:59

It seems like and the the way that you kind of recycle the bikes and people kind of they take them when they need them and bring them back when they don't, and because we do the schools over and over year in and year out and different programs, they know to bring the other ones back in.

SPEAKER_00 49:14

We we're keeping 96,000 tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

SPEAKER_01 49:20

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 49:21

Annually. Um, we are upcycling and green cycling. I'm not interested, and I'm sure there's other groups out there that would say, well, why aren't we giving these kids brand new bikes? Well, A, because we have all this stuff. America's just a throwaway disposable society, and I'm I'm pushing against that. A refurbished bike is just as good. Oh, you will not believe when you come out some of these bikes that you know, they'll they'll say, Is this the test bike? Because we're giving them specialized in treks and marins and and um giants and diamondbacks and and so I want to disperse the idea that um it's a new to them bike, but it's also ready to go.

SPEAKER_01 50:06

Yeah, and um you even put a nice little bit of chain oil on there and the whole deal.

SPEAKER_00 50:11

And they're they're flying. They're they're good to go. And um, and any bike that uh the other thing we do is if a bike gets uh sent out and it has a problem, they can bring them back to our warehouse. See, that's awesome. Um, because we do repairs, we do, we do um, and full transparency, we take about 10% of the 14,000 bikes we get a year, and we sell them at a deep discount at our warehouse retails. Just like uh St. Vincent de Paul or Habitat has the resell e-restores. We we do that. It does not pay for our program. It helps subsidize.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

Alleviate some of the costs. Because there is costs associated.

SPEAKER_00 50:50

You have to keep the lights on, you have to have gas in the trucks. I have staff, I have insurances, I have all matter of cost.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

Nothing is free, you know, unless you're hooking up a bike. That's right. Um, which, you know, and I think that makes total sense. And it also is a luxury for people who don't feel like they're in a situation where they need where they are they can step in front of someone else and get a free bike, but maybe they're financially hard up, and it'd be better to go buy a bike from the Well, when you're buying a bike from us, you're getting five hundred dollar bikes for $100.

SPEAKER_00 51:23

That's amazing. And so a lot of times we'll have people at our festivals that say, I don't need a free bike, but I I would love to get a bike affordably. And we're like, here's our locations, here's our hours of operation.

SPEAKER_01 51:36

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 51:36

And I want to say to everybody within the the state of Oregon, you can donate your bikes to us. You can bring it to any truck store, you can bring it to any of our warehouses, and you can also call us and we come out and pick up bikes.

SPEAKER_01 51:51

Nice. Well, so that's cool to know the trek uh stores pick will take the bikes as well because you can find those all over.

SPEAKER_00 51:58

We come around and swoop them up and pick them up every week or two.

SPEAKER_01 52:02

That is awesome. Well, I I cannot stress uh how much I've enjoyed this conversation, Joe. Um and and a little cool side note, you know, we just kind of brushed over all your accomplishments as you asked. Um, but you know, you are uh a a great writer, highly acclaimed. And now uh one of your books is getting a cool thing. Are they making a movie out of one of your books?

SPEAKER_00 52:25

Well, they're optioned. It's it's you know, nothing's done in Hollywood till it's done. But yeah, yes, um, I've had a couple of my books optioned, but this one, Lightning in a Saddle, is not about me in any way. It's not one of my memoirs, it's about this cool 1920s, 30s British uh femme fatel. I call her female Jackie Robinson of the bike world. So it's real sea biscuit. She's racing against the men, and they're not allowing her to race in her times to to matter. Oh, that's cool. And she she ends up fighting for a country that won't let her race in the Tour de France. She ends up, it goes from Sea Biscuit to Inglorious Bastard. She becomes a a um spy for the French resistance. Okay. And um, she you know, lives and loves and rides on her own terms during a time when it was dangerous to do so. She also fights actual Nazis. And this is all true, Drew. I did all the research, and what was amazing was if I had not um lived, I was in the middle of all the research when I got sick. Oh man, it would have never come out. Evelyn Hamilton would have died twice. Oh man. Um, but I was able to um, you know, pace her across the finish line of history. And the book's called Lightning in a Saddle, The Long Untamed Life of Evelyn Hamilton. And what's really cool if and when the movie gets finished is that there's plish newsreels and there's all kinds of stuff with her that it was gonna fall into the sands of time. And we've pulled it all out, we've archived it. At the end credits of the movie, you're gonna go, this is all BS. There's no way that she did all of this, and you know, and then you're gonna actually see the reading in addition to the actress. I love those kind of end credits where they have actual film.

SPEAKER_01 54:10

You can see next to so if uh now it really sometimes a project like this are better with like a no-name actress, but do you have somebody in mind?

SPEAKER_00 54:20

Well, the woman from Orphan Black, if anybody saw that, she played seven different clones and she's Romanian, but she grew up in England.

SPEAKER_01 54:29

So she'd have to do the accent.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

She can do the accent, she has the athleticism. Because whoever plays Evelyn Hamilton will have to be, you know, it can't be somebody that doesn't look the that isn't an athlete. Yeah, you gotta look the part. This isn't like uh uh cycling is an afterthought in this movie. It's going down. Exactly. So you have to look the part, you know.

SPEAKER_01 54:54

Well, I'm excited for it. I'm excited. I I want to read the book now.

SPEAKER_00 54:58

Yeah, you can get it. We're it's about to we're actually uh gonna put it out because it was supposed to come out during COVID with my traditional publisher. We're gonna put it out under Reborn Bikes Press and make it a fundraiser for our organization. Okay, then I'm buying the book. And so it's in um galleys right now and getting ready to head to press.

SPEAKER_01 55:18

I'm excited. That's gonna be great. Um, and just a couple of things to run back for people. If you want to volunteer uh with Reborn Bikes, rebornbikes.org, you can click to volunteer, or you can look at the events, show up, uh, or you can show up at the warehouse. There are volunteer hours there as well.

SPEAKER_00 55:35

Phone numbers on the website. You can call if it's any of it's confusing, or just want to volunteer in a different way or a different with a group or what have you, just call me.

SPEAKER_01 55:44

Yeah, and you know they say uh some people hate the saying everything happens for a reason, but there's a reason that you survived that sickness, and maybe even a reason it happened in the first place because it uh it gave you a little reset button that has put so many bikes in so many people's hands that have uh made happiness happen. And uh cheers to you for doing that.

SPEAKER_00 56:03

Well, thank you, my friend. Um, I think you know, everything happens, and it's how you uh go forward with it uh that makes a difference. Also, if you've got I hope to in the end run out of time before I run out of passion and projects. Ursula Gwynn once told me that. The writer Ursula Gwynn said it's best not to have time left over without things to do.

SPEAKER_01 56:32

Well, one thing that I can say for sure, Joe, uh just in our short time here, is you do have the passion, and we never know how much time we have. You and I both understand that, but uh, I think your passion will outlast the time. Let's just hope it's a long time.

SPEAKER_00 56:47

Well, I plan on being the last werewolf, and I'm gonna be here as long as I can to um to as long as it's joyful and as long as I'm um loving my community and my folks through and through.

SPEAKER_01 57:00

I love it. His name is Joe Kermaski, and he is the guy when it comes to reborn bikes and the rest of his team. Thank you to them, and thank you to the Stafford Hills Club for having us today. Uh, hit him up at staffordhills.com if you want to get a membership. Tell him Drew sent you for half off your initiation. Thanks, Joe. We'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_00 57:19

Thank you so much, Drew. Cheers.