Mark Blum
People With MS and the Courage to Give
Chapter 13: I Wasn't About to Just Stop Living
I'M JUST A REGULAR GUY doing something for others. Everybody has something to give, within themselves, something they can share.
I’ve got the worst form of MS, chronic progressive. I was diagnosed in 1993 and worked until March of 1994 in my job as vice president of an insurance company. At that point I couldn’t handle the daily routine of work because of the fatigue. But I was forty-two years old and needed something to do. I had a very strong work ethic and wasn’t about to just stop living. I had worked on bikes as a child, so I decided to try a bit of bike repair. I certainly had the time.
I found a few adult three-wheelers to work on and found that I really enjoyed it. So, sitting there in my garage, tinkering with the bikes, I came up with the idea for Mission With Bikes. I’d get people to donate broken bikes, fix them up, and give them away for free. I converted my garage into a bike shop and the idea just took off from there.
I fixed the first seventy-five or eighty bikes myself, but because of the MS I lost manual dexterity, and I became legally blind due to nystagmus. But I didn’t let this stop me. I began to teach bike repair on a volunteer basis to the local school district. While I can’t do that anymore, at the time it kept my mission alive.
Almost ten years later Mission With Bikes is still going strong. So far we’ve given away 1,447 bikes—all for free. I open up around 6 A.M. and don’t close
until after 9 P.M., seven days a week. All the bikes are fixed by volunteers. I’ve got people coming from all over Southern California to work on the bikes. A guy in the Jay Leno Band even comes to help. I’ve also received many donations of bikes; right now I have about 250 piled up on the side of my house ready to be fixed and given away. The only thing we don’t do here is paint them because I don’t want that kind of facility in my garage.
I’ve had volunteers from the Scouts, the Big Brothers, and the police. I’ve even had the captain of the sheriffs working on bikes in my garage. He helped us last June when we gave thirty bikes to a very poor, inner-city school. The bikes were given out as rewards for perfect attendance to fifteen boys and fifteen girls. I was sent their sizes and ages, and we sent a bike to each child. But this year we hope to have a lot more kids because when they got their bikes the kids were overheard saying, “I’m going to get a bike even if I gotta go to school every day.”
I gave one bike to a little girl from Russia who had been brought to the United States for medical treatment. She took that one back to Russia with her. I’ve given sixty bikes to the Navaho and Hopi Indians. That was quite an experience. An eighteen-wheeler owned by the Airforce National Guard pulled up to my house and four guys in fatigues just jumped out, loaded them up, thanked me, and drove off. Part of my mission is to get bikes to kids who don’t have the money to buy them. I occasionally get letters from the kids, which is really rewarding. One time I got a letter of thanks from a kid who explained that when he was five years old his father promised to get him a bike, but he was murdered. Now he finally had a bike.
I’ve given well over 300 bikes to the homeless in this valley as well as Feme Valley through Lutheran Social Service. Having the bikes makes it possible for them to go to job interviews and get the services they need.
I have raffle bikes and give-away bikes. Of course I never sell them, so I work very well with the local bike shop—Newbury Park Bicycle Shop—which gives me a big price break on parts. They also refer people to me who have bicycles they want to donate.
I’ve given away 310 individual bikes, including one to a ninety-one-year-old man! What a great feeling to watch that man climb on the bike and take off riding.
I was sitting here in the garage about a year ago when the phone rang. I answered it and some guy said he had read an article about me in a magazine and wanted to donate a case of bike lubricant. I said, “Oh that’s great, thank you very much,” and we talked for a few minutes. At the end of the conversation I asked where he was calling from and he said Michigan! I’ve gotten donated parts from Jacksonville, Florida; helmets from all sorts of individuals and churches; tools and other needed items from the Thousand Oaks Do It Center; large trash bins from G. I. Industries; approximately $20,000 worth of bicycle parts from Klockers Bicycle Shop in Bell, California; and the list goes on.
Having MS has been a life-changing experience for me. I feel so blessed to have such good people around me. We take care of each other, and that’s what life is all about. I wasn’t always a very open person, but now I tell anyone who wants to listen that my garage is an open door. It’s a wonderful thing. I started Mission With Bikes for selfish reasons—because I needed a job—but it has turned out to be so much more than that. It’s my life.
To donate a bike, parts, or volunteer contact Mark at 818-991-5805.
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