No, nothing about bikes or anything strenuous. I discovered the joy of freecycling, giving away stuff to anyone who can use it, with no expenses and no hassle.
I read about it in Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools newsletter last week and someone mentioned it while we were watching our kids at swimming lessons. When I got home, I looked into it, dug into the Tomb of Obsolete Electronics and put an old but still good 35mm Point and Shoot camera up for grabs. Not 10 minutes later, it was gone.
What’s cool about this is the buzz you get, not unlike making a purchasing score . . . . you’re hooking someone up with something they want and you don’t. In the case of the camera, the lucky winner told me she had never had a camera before: it’s so much better to let her have it than to try and make a couple of bucks on eBay.
I’ve got more stuff to clean out (an old camcorder and an old digital camera, some old laptop accessories, maybe an outgrown kids bike), and I’ll look for stuff I might want as well (I just missed a couple of strawberry pots yesterday).
It’s fun to just read through the listings and see what people are interested in putting up: someone mentioned today he had gotten a 74 VW bus from FreeCycle, and I saw an old International TravelAll provoke a flurry of email this week. Interestingly, you can’t bid. You get there first or if the donor wants, you make your case.
If you want to play, the understood rule is to put something up as OFFERED before posting a WANTED losting, kind of a karmic thing.
Good luck.