Last week I got another bike.  It used to belong to another volunteer up in Karmiel at the food bank facility I work in every so many months.  This chap has left now, but the bike was abandoned after something broke on it and he couldn’t afford to fix it.

After it was brought down in a van, I got the local bike store to take a look at it, the gear controls on the right hand side don’t work and the chain had come off.   After some components in the gears were replaced and this slightly odd bodge, as the man in the shop said the original twist operated gear parts would be much more expensive, hence I have a thumb operated control ontop instead.

On thursday I managed to get a puncture, so back to the shop again, there is a Jewish owner of the shop and young Arab chap in the workshop and he is super quick and efficient in changing over the inner tube and has me up and running in 3 minutes.  I asked him to remove and discard the kickstand which doesn’t work properly and is more of a nuisance as a sharp bit of metal that could cause an injury.

This writing suggests the bike may actually be made by a company in Israel.  Interesting as cycling is not that popular here.

Its heavier than my old one so its a little tricky carrying down from my 2nd floor flat steps, but it was free and a huge blessing to not have to just rely on buses.

I also got asked to fix a Toshiba laptop with a dead screen from a friend of a friend, so after procuring a new 13″ LCD panel off ebay for UK£67.50, a financial gift for the repair work I did in form of the exact fee it took to get my new bike servicable.