BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Winooski resident Katie Lukes in on the hunt to find a bike for her partner.
She saw bike swap signs throughout town and decided to stop by Skirack to see what it’s all about.
“I love riding bikes especially now that the weather’s better,” Lukes said.
Lukes says she tries to ride to work as much as she can.
“It’s about a four-and-a-half-mile commute so not too bad. You just get to decompress like before and after it’s really nice and you get to skip all the roadwork, traffic,” Lukes said.
One of the co-owners of ski rack said they beat their goal this year when they received over 800 bikes.
“It’s an opportunity for people to outsource bikes they’ve had in their garage for a while that had been collecting dust but also even more importantly an opportunity for people to get onto a bike,” John George-Wheeler of Skirack said.
For decades, the outdoor sports store has been hosting this bike swap in the Queen City to inspire the community to get outside to pursue a lifetime of outdoor activities.
“I know the state has been incentivizing people to lose a car and gain a bike and it’s something we believe in passionately and it’s an opportunity for people to stay active, healthy and of course keep it another set of four wheels off the road exchanging it for two,” he said.
But not everyone can afford to make the switch, so George-Wheeler says the store tries to use the swap as an opportunity to sell bikes at a more affordable rate. Bike prices ranged from 100-300 dollars, when on average a new bike could cost somewhere in the thousands.
As for Katie Lukes — she says she is excited for events like this to help the environment.
“You get to immediate exercise and access to the outdoors, and less carbon footprint overall,” Lukes said.
