This will be my 4th year participating in Bikes Not Bombs Bike-A-Thon! For the past few years, I've had ChatGPT help me out with the text. This year, Claude has my back. I'll leave it to them!

I volunteer one afternoon a week at Bikes Not Bombs as a wrench-wielding, derailleur-wrangling shop mechanic. I take sad, neglected bikes and return them to their former glory — or at least get them rolling again without making any alarming sounds. Those refurbished bikes go into the BNB store, where they're sold to fund youth programs that are, frankly, wheelie important.

Bikes Not Bombs helps young people build real skills, earn real income, and find real community — all orbiting around the humble, transformative bicycle. A bike is freedom on two wheels, and BNB has been handing that freedom out in Boston for decades.

So when the Bike-A-Thon comes around, I'm not donating to some abstract cause. I'm riding for the place where I spend my Tuesday afternoons covered in chain grease, genuinely happy about it. Jason isn't riding this year, but will be volunteering at the start/finish because he married me and this is his life now.

50 miles. One rider. One volunteer. Please donate so my suffering has a point. ?