Blog

In the bleak midwinter

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List of suggested food bank donations

It feels like – with nowhere else to go – we’ve all been physically present in our communities
more than ever this year, and yet it’s still so easy to miss what’s right on our doorstep. Far
from being the most wonderful time of the year, many people in our community are finding
it hard just to feed themselves or their families, never mind buy Christmas presents or
decorations.

This month, we wanted to help lift up two amazing local charities and bring them to your
attention. Firstly, the wonderful people behind the Tenants and Residents Association of
Nunhead’s Rye Hill Park Estate, who have been running a food bank throughout lockdown.
Demand for it has only increased as the months have passed, and as volunteers they have
struggled to keep up. When we asked how we could best help them, it turned out that they
were in need of somewhere that was open longer hours where people could drop off
donations, as currently they’ve only been able to collect for a few hours a week.

So, starting right away, whenever the shop is open, you can drop donations in with us.
We’ve got a poster on our window showing the kind of things they most need, and you can
get more details on their insta too – @ryehilltra.

But if you find it hard to get here or just want to help in a different way, they also need
financial support. If you’d like to support them in this way you too can do so via their
JustGiving page at https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/ryehilltra.

We’ll be giving them 5% of all our takings this December.

If neither of these things are within your means, but you’ve got something else to give
(time, skills) and want to help, you can find them online or on socials at @RyeHillTRA.

We’ll also be giving 5% to another local charity; watch this space for more details.

We’re staying open this time round too!

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Snapshot of the November 2020 Public Health England legal document

As England enters a second lockdown, we’re very thankful that once again bike shops have been recognised as providing an essential service. We’ve been honoured to keep so many people riding during the summer, and to help get new some new riders up and running too. We love making people’s bikes run as reliably as possible so we’re very happy we can continue to do so.

We’re going to keep our current opening hours for now, although we’d appreciate hearing from you if you’d like us to change. That means we’re open:

  • Monday: 08:00 – 18:00
  • Tuesday: 08:00 – 18:00
  • Wednesday: 10:00 – 18:00
  • Thursday: 08:00 – 18:00
  • Friday: 08:00 – 18:00
  • Saturday: 09:00 – 17:00
  • Sunday: closed

…and we’ll still be encouraging people with small jobs like punctures and replacing brake pads to come down first thing any morning except Wednesday to take advantage of our unbooked walk-in service. It’s first-come first-served so it’s often a good idea to get here as early as you can. We focus on doing the more major pre-booked services later in the day but will still try and fit in small jobs if we can.

And we’re still not allowing customers into the shop, sorry. This is to make sure we can keep you and ourselves safe and maintain social distancing – we’ve got a big awning out the front so you should be able to find shelter if you need to!

We’re really grateful to our customers for their patience and understanding and we hope to keep as many of you running smoothly and enjoyably as we can through the winter!

£50 of free money?

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Header image of EST voucher page

On Friday the Government rolled out the “Fix Your Bike Voucher Scheme” and its website promptly crashed several times over the following day(s) under the demand.

Full details are via https://www.gov.uk/guidance/fix-your-bike-voucher-scheme-apply-for-a-voucher and / or https://fixyourbikevoucherscheme.est.org.uk/ but, in short, the scheme is aimed at helping people afford to get a bike back in working order and it grants a voucher worth £50 towards getting this done at a local bike shop.

We’re happy to be part of this scheme, and voucher-based enquiries are coming in thick and fast, so this post aims to answer a few questions:

Vouchers are valid for repairs to get a bike back on the road only. Vouchers can’t be spent upgrading parts that don’t need replacing, and they’re only for jobs involving labour to replace the parts.

Vouchers are valid for adult and children’s bikes; electric-assist bikes are eligible but only if they’re road legal (i.e. not home-built or modified).

Vouchers can’t be claimed on work that’s been carried out in the past.

Vouchers can’t be part-refunded or exchanged if the job costs less than the full amount of the voucher.

Vouchers are valid for 60 days from the date they’re issued.

We can’t give other discounts on jobs with vouchers allocated.

When we take the bike in, we need to see:

– a valid voucher code

– a photo ID: driving licence, passport or residence permit

– a recent (last months) proof of address: utility or council tax bill, mortgage statement, benefit book or council / housing association rent card

The voucher is valid for a specific bike; we have to submit a photo to prove that’s the bike we’ve worked on when we redeem the voucher.

Only one voucher per job.

Only a maximum of two vouchers per household.

We need to collect, and keep, details of the customer’s name, phone number, email address and address. The customer needs to approve this, because GDPR.

The first wave of vouchers have all been granted, so if you already have a voucher you’ve got 60 days from the date of voucher issue to book a bike in. As I type, our workshop diary’s pretty much full up to the second week in September, but that still gives plenty of time to book in. Or, of course, we’ll accept vouchers if you’re using our walk-in service first thing in the morning for smaller jobs (a new pair of tyres can easily cost over £50!).

Keep an eye out on the website(s) at the top of this post for announcements about further waves of vouchers being released if you were unlucky this time.

Time for a meeting

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These are exciting and busy times at Rat Race Cycles – we’re doing all we can to keep as many people rolling as possible, and it’s been great to see so many new cyclists as well as many familiar faces.

We’ve taken on a couple of new team members – hi Alex and Joe! – in the last month too, and as our team grows it’s getting all the more important to make sure we’re working well together and keeping the shop standards high.

Busy workshops get grubbier and more disorganised quicker, and we all need some time to learn and to make sure we keep improving. So we’re going to be changing our opening hours again: we’ll open at 10am on Wednesdays instead of the current 8, to give us time to have a team meeting, to do some training and also to have a bit of a deeper clean.

We’ll be in the shop, but we’ll be closed, so we won’t be running the walk-in service on Wednesday mornings. We’re sorry for any inconvenience this causes – we chose Wednesday because it’s been our quietest day on average for walk-ins so we hope this will affect the fewest people.

For people who have bikes booked in on Wednesdays we’ll be encouraging them to drop bikes off the night before or after 10am; we’ll try and notify everyone who’s already booked in over the next few weeks and make things work for them.

One of the things we’ve been discussing is extending our opening hours, now we have more staff to cover this, so watch this space for a further update! Thanks for your understanding.

Stocktaking

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We’re going to be closed on Thursday 11th June, for a much-needed (and slightly overdue) stock take. This means we won’t be able to answer any enquiries at the door or on the phone, though you can still email us with enquiries or to book bikes in.

Sorry for any inconvenience this causes! Business will continue as normal from 8am on Friday 12th.

Consolidating

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Our opening hours on weekdays for the last couple of years have been 7 til 7. 7am, bright and early so people can drop off bikes on their way to work and catch trains or buses; 7pm, late enough that people can finish work and pick up their bike on the way home. We had a flurry of visitors at the start and end of the day and we spent most of the middle of the day servicing those bikes.

At the moment, we’re experiencing very different traffic to the shop. Probably because so many people are staying at home and staying local, we’ve been busy with shop visitors throughout the middle of the day, but quiet at the start and end of the day.

So, for now, we’re reducing our hours to 8am to 6pm on weekdays. It means that there’ll be more of us in the shop during those times, so some of us can be working on bikes and someone else booking them in and out at the same time – basically so we can get more done!

To keep as many people as possible riding their bikes we’ll still be working on small jobs as walk-ins between 8 and 10am, and prioritising booked-in bikes after 10. As with all of our recent announcements, please watch this space for any further changes we’ll need to make!

Time out

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What a weekend for a bank holiday. Especially one on lockdown. On any normal May Day bank holiday weekend with weather like this, we’d be planning rides, adventures, social events or visits to family. There’d be group rides, races, audaxes and sportives to join, and parks and pubs would be full of families and friends meeting up.

But not this year. We’re still in lockdown, still required to keep our distance from each other and still being asked to do whatever we can to minimise transmission of the coronavirus.

So many of us have been finding these last few weeks tough. And we’re no exception.

It’s been unbelievably busy at the shop. It’s a lovely problem to have – we’re proud of keeping so many returning, new and regular cyclists rolling – and first and foremost we want to thank you all for your continued support and understanding as we try to make things as safe as we can for ourselves and for you all. But, if we’re honest, it has been pretty full-on juggling the increased demand with the new ways of working.

So, this weekend, we’re closing the shop. The team have also been incredibly supportive of Rat Race these last few weeks, working hard and long hours, (and we’ve all managed most of it in brilliant good humour, amazingly!) and frankly we all need some time out.

So, we’ll be closed on Friday 08, and Saturday 09 May.

Thanks again to all of you. We’ll see you bright and early on Monday. With our brand new opening hours… (watch this space for details of those coming right up!)

And remember – even if you haven’t got a turbo, you are still allowed to ride. We’re going to be trying to get out into the real world, for sure – just look at this weather! Please remember, though, if you do decide to head out, make sure you go solo and follow British Cycling’s guidance for riding during lockdown: https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/about/article/20200319-about-bc-news-Coronavirus-Covid-19-FAQs-0

Stay safe.

Changing how we do things, again!

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Hello from the workstand once again! I feel like I’ve written more blog posts in the last few weeks than I have in all the years of the shop being open.

We’re still here, still open, working as hard as we can to keep everyone riding. I have to be candid though, it hasn’t been easy; there are two big challenges and we’ve had to change the way we work to adapt to them. If you’re short on time, please scroll to the break for what it means for you. If not, here’s a longer explanation:

The first problem is, of course, COVID-19. We’re keeping the door locked most of the time so that we and you can keep our distance, and when dropping a bike off or picking it up we’ll be setting it in the stand outside the front door and disinfecting contact points like the saddle, grips and levers. We’re wearing gloves practically all the time and disinfecting those gloves, our tools, work surfaces, the phone, the card machine, the iPad… that’s all to protect both you and ourselves and minimise transmission as much as we can.

The second struggle, however, has been coping with how busy we’ve become! Obviously, it’s a great problem to have; we’re very glad to see so many people getting on their bikes (and we’re especially grateful for all the messages of support and encouragement we’ve been getting, thank you!). But this busy-ness, combined with the new ways of working we’ve had to adopt for COVID-19, means that at times we’ve been so busy answering enquiries at the door, answering the phone and trying to reply to emails and messages in a timely manner that we’ve had very little time to actually work on people’s bikes! It’s a perfect storm.

Although we’re all experienced and methodical mechanics, there’s a certain lag that comes from breaking off in the middle of a service to answer the door or the phone, and then coming back to the bike and getting back to whatever you were working on before. It’s not a lot, but it starts adding up when it happens many times over and a 20-minute job stays in the workstand for two hours because there have been so many interruptions. It also means the bikes that customers have booked in aren’t getting our undivided attention, which doesn’t seem very fair.

We’ve always had a policy of trying to fix people’s bikes on the spot if it’s a minor task – you’d usually only have to wait a few minutes if you have a puncture, for example, and we try and do most small jobs as quickly as possible to avoid booking bikes in and filling up the shop. But unfortunately, we have to change that, at least for now.

From Monday 20th April we’ll only work on walk-in jobs before 10am. If you’ve got a puncture, if your wheel needs truing, if your brake pads need replacing, that sort of thing, please get down to us as early as possible and we’ll try and fit you in that morning.

Otherwise, our workshop will be appointment only. From 10am onwards, to make sure we can give booked-in bikes our full attention, we won’t be taking in any un-booked jobs. Not even punctures – sorry! To minimise interruptions, we’ll also be letting the phone go to voicemail, and calling people back regularly throughout the day.

We’re very sorry for any hassle this might cause you, but we hope you understand that we’re trying to be fair to as many people as possible, and making sure we can focus on getting as many bikes properly serviced as we can.

A very Good Friday

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In the past, we’ve always closed over bank holidays. Partly because Nunhead is often quiet on a bank holiday weekend, but mainly because everyone deserves a break, including our awesome staff.

This time, however, we want to give something back to our wonderful community, and in particular the people putting their lives at risk every day to protect ours.*

So, if you’re an NHS or emergency worker who relies on your bike, on Good Friday (10 April) we’ll service it free of charge. We’ll need to charge for any parts fitted, but we’ll discount these as much as we can. We won’t charge for labour.

We’ll be accepting walk-ups (although we’ll still have the door shut and be practicing safe social distancing) but if you want to book in, call us on 020 7732 1933.

And if you’re not a key worker but want to help, we’ll be taking donations to put towards parts for key workers’ services between now and then. Just call by the shop or give us a call to work out how to get money to us. Anything not used on Friday will be put towards key workers’ services in the coming weeks.

*I want to emphasise that this is a joint decision; my staff suggested working on Good Friday; we collectively came up with this idea, everyone volunteered and we’ve worked out the details together. I’m utterly proud of them all.

Thank you, NHS and key workers

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NHS and emergency service workers are currently having an even tougher time than normal.

We’re honoured to keep so many of their bikes running reliably for them; for most, this means they’re not dependent on public transport. For some it also means a safe ride home and some vital decompression time after long difficult shifts.

We’ve always given a blue light discount, but for now we’re increasing that to at least 20% off, plus discounting labour wherever possible. And we’re giving NHS and emergency workers priority booking space in our (currently busy!) workshop diary, to get them up and running as soon as possible.

Please tell us if we can this do for you, but please don’t be offended if we ask for ID as confirmation.