This week’s Readers’ Rides comes from our friends at Two Bikes in Knoxville, Tennessee! It belongs to a customer named Pharris and we were stoked to see it roll through out inbox. Let’s check it out below!
Two Bikes is a nonprofit bike shop in Knoxville, Tennessee, and we run a youth workforce development program called The Bike School. Local high school students are paid to learn about bike mechanics, customer service, and e-commerce, all while getting hands-on experience working a real job.
We have a wide range of young people that come through the program, and some high schoolers love the mechanical aspect of the job while others love the e-commerce, but none of our interns have simply loved being in a bike shop as much as Pharris. Long after his internship finished, he still helps us lead rides, volunteers to help build bikes, and just hangs around the shop and works on his Voodoo commuter.
It does not take a wild imagination for me to draw a comparison between Pharris and myself. When I was in high school, I spent most afternoons at Halcyon Bike Shop in Nashville, trying to convince the staff to help me fix something I had broken on my Kogswell. As a reference, I have attached a photo of myself at 17 and a picture of Pharris (also 17) from his internship at Two Bikes.
With that said, I would like to humbly nominate Pharris’ Voodoo commuter bike as a Reader’s Ride, and I recommend you look closely. Many of the parts on the bike were recovered from the trash can, and very few things on the bike are designed to work together.
I think most of us had a bike like this. Something thrown together before we started to worry about axle-to-crown distance or cable-pull-ratios, and I think Pharris has something to teach us about worrying less and riding more.
We’d like to thank all of you who submitted Readers Rides builds to be shared here at The Radavist. The response has been incredible and we have so many to share over the next few months. Feel free to submit your bike, listing details, components, and other information. You can also include a portrait of yourself with your bike and your Instagram account! Please, shoot landscape-orientation photos, not portrait. Thanks!
