Though it’s never advisable to leave your unwanted belongings behind when your camping trip is over, a pile of discarded goods, left behind at one of the biggest camping trips of them all, is at least being repurposed for a good cause.
Those goods are about 5,000 bikes, left to wither in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, the BBC reports. And that camping trip? Burning Man.
The 2017 edition of the annual festival of desert revelry came to an end on Sept. 4, but when its 70,000 attendees packed up and left, their bikes—thousands of them; everything from cruisers to mountain whips—were abandoned in the Nevada sun. One of Burning Man’s central principles is an exhortation to “leave no trace,” but the bikes, sadly, are evidence that those principles aren’t always followed.
Worse, many of the bikes left behind were in fine, rideable condition, crews noticed. So many were left, though, that their numbers were too great for even the charities with which Burning Man routinely partners to handle. Burning Man and Nevada locals, then, were left with a dilemma: what to do with a carelessly-discarded heap of bikes in good working order?
The answer was to donate them to those who lost everything in Houston and the Caribbean, after the hurricanes of September swept through.
The bikes, too, would be useful in the recovery effort, noticed Meg Kihne, a Nevada local and one-time bike repair shop owner who once lived in Turks and Caicos—recently devastated by Hurricane Irma. Knowing how bikes could help, she arranged a GoFundMe, rescued hundreds of bikes from the Nevada sand, and proceeded to restore them. Clearing off the various affectations of Burning Man—faux fur, lights, squeaky toys—she found that the bikes, in many cases, were more or less brand new. With many of them restored, the challenge is now to get them to the Caribbean and Houston, helping hurricane victims. And there’s a lot of them.
According to Carter Stern, though, director of Houston’s bike share programme, finding homes for those rides won’t be an issue.
“A lot of people who lost a vehicle all of the sudden can’t get to work, can’t afford to get a new car,” Stern said. “Long after the TV cameras have left Houston, there’s going to be a lingering need for transportation options. I think we can give away 1,000-2,000 bikes, no question.”
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