My working life was pretty time consuming, 50 and 60 hour weeks were common, so by the time I took care of 2 kids, hubby, and house there was nothing left. One of my goals when I retired was to find something I could do as a volunteer to give back for all those years of just working. I had considered both MassHort and New England Wildflower Society, but then after I built my first bike and realized how empowering that was, and what a sense of accomplishment it gave me, I knew I wanted to do something with kids and cycling. For me Bikes-not-Bombs was the answer. I'm about to start my second session as an adult volunteer in the earn-a-bike program for 12 to 18 year old boys and girls from inner-city Boston. I get a tremendous kick out of it, seeing the kids doing something they didn't think they could do, playing ice-breaker games with them, having them ask me if it would be OK to call me "Miss Jean", going on rides with them, even nagging them to check their bike before riding. I feel like I'm helping the individual kids as well as the biking community. In addition to the earn-a-bike program I've been going in one night a week to help get bikes ready to ship to Central America or Africa to the international programs. Some will be turned into water-pumps, corn mills, or power blenders used to process other crops. Others become transportation for kids to go to school or people to get to jobs. This feels so good I think I ought to pay them for the privilege of doing it.