Books By Bike reborn

What seemed like a good idea in the depths of last winter quickly turned, well not sour, but not exactly all sweetness and light.

I was under a 'hernia' cloud for the first few months of the year as my op kept getting postponed for a variety of reasons and then in March / April my garage was broken into and both my trusty Boardman commute (and 'books by bike(BBB)') bike and my Specialized road bike got nicked ... I contributed to this a little I guess in not making the garage more safe than it was and not securing the bikes inside that well , but still ... dirty rotten scumbags ....

Books by foot / Tram / Car just didn't have the same appeal .... and although an extended family member (who was now hooked on expensive road cycling) came to my rescue by letting me have the bike above from his garage, new wheels, tyres and other bits still set me back a bit.

Before I had chance to get it ship-shape however I finally had my hernia op in May, which really knocked me for six physically. It took a lot longer to get back into the swing of things exercise-wise than I'd anticipated. Having lost about 9 lbs over the first couple of BBB months I ended up putting 11 lbs back on - this including a week where I lost half a stone being sick as a dog.... I'm glad to say most of that has come back off:

I've actually managed to get rid of quite a lot of books via the local Altrincham charity shops (and BTW - make sure you gift aid - SCOPE and BHF both provide updates on how much money your items have fetched ..) I still have box loads I can get be giving away. I established some RULES back when I started which pretty much hold true but I'll be changing them slightly  - I also want to link contributions to local foodbank, but more on that in future posts.

First books to be added when I've updated the various linked accounts!

One Month in ... January Summary

• Books Delivered: 10
• Bike miles travelled: 159
• Weight Lost: 2lbs
• Charitable Contribution: ~£25

Before I review / remind you where I am, I have some book catching up to do:

Six Of Swords (12miles) – slight diversion, in that this was posted to a colleague in our US office but I did cycle into work with it.

Lawrence Dallaglio: It’s in the Blood (12 miles) – a handover in the Kings Ransom car park, occasioned by difficulties in matching schedules... a lady requested it for her husband who used to play rugby (injury i think) and she hadn’t told him what it was when I handed it over, which was kind of sweet

Picasso

Gray’s Anatomy (12 miles) – I considered keeping this but it would have sat on my shelf gathering dust so go it must. A 200yd diversion on my way into work (Note to self: I must do a post on Sale)

Picasso (12 miles) – another diversion... chap lives in Bolton but we tried to hook up in Altrincham as he was in town – we got snowed off. So i’m dropping it off on my way up to a meeting in Preston as it’s just a short hop from the Motorway

There’s one more to share but that’s a separate post.

So, the overview. I resolved at the start of the year to give away a huge pile of books (and I mean huge) using the range of social media at my disposal. I wanted to get off to a good start so used Freecycle which is where the bulk of Januarys books have gone. It has the benefit of people who want free stuff go on there and they’re all local!

Next Social Media. Twitter first, recently joined by a FB page and more esoterically Pinterest and Librarything (click on all links for my accounts). The last two being a repository for cover pictures and available book details respectively.

As a reminder, for every book I deliver by bike I add £1 plus 5p per mile travelled on the round trip to a charity pot which I’m pushing through to Justgiving once a month. In addition I also forgot that I also committed to £5 per lb of weight lost... the Justgiving page is: http://www.justgiving.com/booksbybike and I’m also happy to take donations in addition to what I’m putting in there myself.

A number of things I have learned already:

• I don’t know the hidden depths of the wider area I live very well – I’m discovering all sorts of wonderful things and sharing as many of them as I can
• Investment in a new winter hi-vis jacket with additional inbuilt rear light was a sound one
• I need to be more curious without being nosey – it’s a fine balance but people love to talk
• I need to keep re-explaining what I’m doing otherwise some posts just won’t make any sense

Raison D'Etre

This may be a dull post to get things going but it by way of an explanatory note to put some context in place.

We’ve been in our current house for about 4 years – moved back up north from the Southlands mainly due to a decent job offer (made when ‘between jobs’). The missus gave up her job and didn’t want to try and get into the local office up here, partly because it was a bit of a trek and partly because she’d been doing the same thing since leaving school.

A combination of some crappy temp jobs and our attempts to create life (a baby not  Frankenstein) was leaving her stressed so I researched ‘home business opportunities’ and an online Amazon / ebay type thing seemed the most doable… and it worked for a while, we made some good purchases to set the business going and things went well but then ‘big’ players moved into the Amazon marketplace, hovering up stock and selling it dirt cheap using automated low pricing software with the advantage of being able to secure average weight postage pricing through Royal Mail by selling in bulk… so something that would cost us 4 or 5 pound to post would cost them a quid, hence they could still make money from a penny sale (with that £2.80 Amazon add on for postage). So sales started to dry up a little and then along came Matthew to put a stop to any hopes of putting time and effort into making this thing work.

We’re still hanging on with Amazon and I get stuff listed on ebay when I get the chance but I have a stack of stock in the garage and in the loft, much of it would only fit the 1p bracket so not even worth listing. I’ve been donating to charity shops, selling some via car boot and small lots on local free ads but it’s a slow process and I’m loathe to sell to someone who’ll be able to do the bulk thing, which is where ‘Books by Bike’ comes into play.

I got back into cycling last year when we moved office to one about 4 miles as the crow flies from my house and I started commuting by bike. I’m back cycling fairly regularly but using a lot of the same routes. I had the idea of cycling books to people a while ago (I don’t claim it’s unique – I’ve since found others who’ve tried it) and this seems to be a win – win: I get to cycle some new routes, my book pile goes down and some folk get free books.

So the goal is I’ll list some free books on G+ , Twitter and wherever else. People who live locally will want them and I’ll take them there when I get the chance (hopefully sooner rather than later). I’m hoping I might get some stories, meet some interesting people and get to know the area better and if all else fails I’ll get some fresh air.

Rules to follow… because if we didn’t have rules, where would we be? France (with apologies to Al Murray)

UPDATE - I'll be doing a charity thing on this that I haven't quite finalised - want to link into Key103 toy appeal for next Xmas if they're doing it again