On June 22, 2012 a call came to the mission office from a member named Bonnie in Pleasant Hill. Her neighbor, Roger Phillips, had a brother who was a hoarder and had died about 2 years ago. For the past two years Roger had been disposing of his brother's stuff among which were 25 road bikes and 5 road bike frames. Roger was trying to get rid of the bikes but didn't know who might take all of them. Bonnie asked if the mission would be interested and gave me Roger's name and phone number. I talked with President David Wade and it was decided that we would be interested even if we just tooktraded them, to bike shops, for more conducive bikes that our missionaries could use.
We made arrangements with Roger and on June 25th Elder Kent McIntire and I took a mission pickup with a trailer and a mission van with a trailer and drove to Sonoma, Ca. We met Roger and a friend at an airplane hanger where the bikes were stored. They turned out to be rather expensive high end road bikes purchased in the 1990's most of which had never been ridden plus about 30 extra tires, tubes, gloves, shoes, pedals, seats and other misc. items. We found a couple of receipts indicating the cost at $900 for one bike and $1100 for another and another bike was about $3000 when it was new. Thehoarder brother would purchase items that he never used. We loaded the trailers, the back of the pickup and the back of the van and returned to the mission office.
Our original thought was to call some of the local bike shops and see if they would trade new bikes for these. But while we were unloading the bikes and had them sitting in the parking lot Shane Larson, a temple engineer staying temporarily in the Todd House next to the mission office, came to make our acquaintance and see what we were doing. He turned out to play a key role in our being able to get the hoarder bikes sold and new missionary bikes purchased. Shane knew about bikes and was interested in what our plan was. As it turned out bike shops would not take the older bikes without proof of ownership or a receipt of purchase. So I indicated to Shane that if he would help us with our project he could have any bike he wanted. This was the smartest decision of the whole project.
Through his contacts and listings on Craig's list we sold or traded, as of this date Oct. 15, 2012, all but 4 of the bikes. We currently have 16 new Trek bikes and 4 really good bikes that were traded so we have 20 new bikes to be used in our mission fleet for missionaries from non-equalized countries.
As it turned out, when Shane was on his mission, in Chahalis, Washington a few years ago, he baptized a lady and her daughter but not the husband, Gary Klein, who owned a bike shop, Klein Bikes, which he eventually sold to Trek, a large bike manufacturing company. Because of this connection with Trek Shane and Gary could purchase, with the money made from selling the road bikes, 15 new Trek Dual Sport bikes for dealer cost and had them shipped to the mission office. Shane ordered 4 different sizes to give us some variety in meeting our missionaries' needs.
On October 11, 2012 we finished putting together the 15 new bikes. The other new bike had been purchased by someone who traded for one of the road bikes. I told Shane that it appeared to me that he stayed temporarily in the Todd House for a couple of months so he could get involved in helping us sell off the bikes and get the new bikes without any cost to the mission plus we'll have money to purchase some locks and other supplies for the bikes. We received $4000.00 from selling the bikes and as of Oct. 28, 2012 we have 2 bikes left that should sell for $500. The cost of the 15 Trek bikes was $3200.00 or about $213.33 each including shipping and they retail for about $550.00. We've purchased 15 newUnguard locks from Fruitvale Bike Station and Mike, the manager, gave us an extra so we have 16 for a cost of $30.00 each including the sales tax. They retail for about $50.00.
The project is about complete and turned out better than we could have imagined.
Elder Mathew J. Lyman
California Oakland/San Francisco Mission
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