Christmas Bike Build is Saturday December 5th

Hello everybody! The Christmas season is almost upon us and that means Ride for Bikes is busy preparing for our premier event, the assembly and delivery of Christmas bikes for children. This year marks our ten year anniversary. That’s right we have been raising money to buy bikes, then assembling bikes and delivering them all in one day for nine years. This year will make it our tenth year. In those years we have made a lot of children happy. The organizations we have helped with bikes are various such as; all the kindergartners in Artesia, CASA, Grammy’s House, Head Start in Roswell, Carlsbad and Artesia, Heart’s Desire in Lovington and Big Brothers and Big Sisters in South Eastern New Mexico.

We have put a lot of smiles on children’s faces and it is all thanks to you. Ride for Bikes is grateful to all of the people who have donated money and to those volunteers who have come out on a winter day to assemble and deliver bikes. A few things are obviously needed to make this program work and they are simply money and people. Without them these children don’t get a bike.

So we are again asking you for help. Please donate if you can. Click on the Donate button and pay securely by credit card or by Pay Pal. Checks should be made out to; “Ride for Bikes GAF” and mailed to Ride for Bikes, 501 East Main Street, Artesia, New Mexico 88210. We encourage you to buy a bike, they are $50 apiece. That donation enables us to pay for those bikes we ordered in October. If you can’t buy a bike then donate what you feel you can, all is appreciated.

We also need your help assembling and delivering bikes. Bike assembly this year will be in the same place as last year; the Artesia Community Center on North 8th street. Assembly starts at 8 AM and please invite your family and friends to join you, it really is a lot of fun. You will need metric wrenches, a Phillips screw driver and a smile. Don’t worry if you don’t know how to build a bike. We have lots of jobs for everyone, Bike Wranglers, the children who help move the bikes along the assembly process; the Air Force, those airing up tires; Packers who tag the bikes for their destinations; Loaders, who load the bikes in the trailers and finally the drivers who will drive the loaded trailers to the destinations for delivery.

This year we are awarding 313 Artesian kindergartners with brand new 20″ bikes. I say award because these children will be making Christmas cards for the wounded soldiers at the VA Hospital in Albuquerque voluntarily. They have no idea they will be getting a bike a few weeks later.

So please join us and help us put 313 smiles on children’s faces.
Thank you.