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UNITED BICYCLE INSTITUTE IN ASHLAND Shifting gears Women's Bike Mechanic program reflects growing trend Comment By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune Posted Mar. 8, 2016 at 12:01 AM By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune Posted Mar. 8, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Social News Nicole Davison owns her own bike shop in Virginia and is an amateur racer, so she’s picked up a few things over the years about how bikes work. But when a customer walks into her shop, called Veloville USA, with a bike in need of repairs and begins to explain what’s wrong, Davison steps aside and lets her experts, the bike mechanics, take over. It’s a scenario that plays out every day in bike shops all across America, and the gender roles at Veloville USA don't change much, no matter where you go. The truth is, if there’s a woman in the shop, she’s probably not working on bikes. The Women’s Bike Mechanic Scholarship, sponsored in part by Ashland’s own United Bicycle Institute, was created to help change that, which is why 16 scholarship winners are at UBI’s Williamson Way campus this week and next, learning everything from the difference between one-piece and three-piece crank systems to how to disassemble a wheel hub, service it and reassemble it. “I’ve been in the industry for years but being a mechanic or having a mechanic certification was just something that always seemed a little out of reach for me, personally,” Davison said. “But I’m two years in business with my bike shop and it’s just one of those things that needed to happen, not only for my own personal growth but to be legitimate in my own shop to stand behind a counter of my service department. I can do everything else in my shop except for wrench on bikes, and that wasn’t acceptable for me.” Davison and her classmates arrived in Ashland for UBI’s two-week Professional Shop Repair and Operations workshop Saturday, broke out the tools for their first class Monday morning and by Tuesday were building bike wheels from scratch. In order to pass the class, which usually costs $1,950 plus a $150 registration fee, students must score 80 or better on a 100-question test March 10. They’ll also be required to assemble and disassemble an entire bike. Like many of UBI’s students, the scholarship winners while here will be staying at the “The Cycle Hostel,” a sort of dorm house for UBI students that’s five minutes away from the workshop. Over 300 women applied for the scholarship. Funded by 12 sponsors, the goal of the Women’s Bike Mechanic Scholarship, according to its website, was twofold: to keep and encourage talented women working in the bike industry and to better serve and grow women ridership. The winners, who learned they were selected Jan. 7, come from all across the country — none are from Oregon — and were picked, in part, because their passion for the sport of cycling and the mechanics behind it could inspire other women to take similar steps. Cali Jirsa is the only female bike shop solo owner that she knows of in Minneapolis, Minn., and is currently building a frame shop there where she hopes to eventually pass on what she learns at UBI to other women looking to break into the industry. Amanda Resch is a salesperson and floor manager at a bike shop in Providence, R.I., who works with advocacy groups such as RIBike and Women Bike RI. RaeLynn Milley, a manager at Boulder Cycle Sport in Boulder, Colo., is a USAC Level 1 cycling coach who writes for Road Bike Action magazine and founded B4T9 Women’s Cycling Team. Stephanie Surch, also from Colorado, leads women’s mountain bike skills clinics and volunteers with a non-profit group which helps low-income families gain access to bicycles. While their backgrounds are as diverse as the places they come from — 13 states are represented — one thing all the scholarship winners have in common is the desire to broaden their knowledge base, thereby improving their chances of advancing in an industry dominated by men. Resch said during a break between repairing flat tires Wednesday morning that the workshop, for her, represents an opportunity to get her foot in a door that previously was closed to her. “I know in theory how things work,” she said, “but I didn’t really have a lot of confidence working on them daily because I just don’t do it for my job, and I do think that’s one thing that … as a woman, sometimes in this industry you have to be really assertive to get into the mechanical end of things. So, it’s to improve my confidence with stuff and hopefully do more mechanic work at the shop, too.” Even when it comes to something as simple as repairing a tire, she said, there’s a right way to do it and a wrong way. The instructors at UBI, which has been in business since 1981 and has another school in Portland, are very good at breaking down the process, Resch said. “They thought my job was a little sloppy,” she said, “so I think I have to slow down a little bit. … The standards here are very high level.” Jirsa has worked on bikes for 10 years and has owned a shop for five, but was eager to improve upon her experience with formal training at UBI, considered the top bicycle mechanics school in the country. “I guess for me,” she said, “it gives me legitimacy. That’s one aspect. But also, I wanted to be able to know that I was doing things the right way.” After she completes the course, Jirsa plans to pay it forward in Minneapolis. “I’m trying to do more social things to be able to share what I’m learning here and share how to make cycling in general more inclusive, more friendly and more of a community with people who are maybe kind of disenfranchised, either economically, based on gender identification or sexual orientation, or age. There are a lot of different things that make it so that people aren’t really cycling as much when they get to a certain point, or they’re not involved in the community aspects that a certain age group and certain demographic are more inclined to be a part of.” For Davison, the scholarship, which also includes a small stipend for food and travel costs, represents an opportunity that she may not have been able to afford otherwise. “I think it really shows a shift in the bicycle industry,” she said, “that these sponsors were willing to put their money into all of us.” Demographics aside, Davison also just plain loves getting her hands dirty. Described as a “gravel-road adventurer” in her scholarship bio, Davison, sporting a black and checkered casquette, guided a rear wheel into its slot Wednesday before adjusting the chain and bolting it into place. She describes in reverent tones the “innards” of the wheel hub, an intricate network of tiny prefabricated components most people never see. Wheel-building class was Tuesday. Davison points to a set of rims leaning up against a work bench and attempts to describe the thrill of turning what to most would look like a pile of scrap metal into a fully functioning bike tire capable of carrying a person thousands of miles. “You see the boxes of spokes and you see the spoke nipples there,” she said. “We literally started out with just the hub — this is what makes the wheel spin. We started off with a hub and the rim and the spokes and the spoke nipples and machinery, and little tools here that helped us build this entire wheel from scratch. “It was awesome. Very empowering, very special, because this is a craft, this is an art.” Joe Zavala is a reporter for the Ashland Daily Tidings. Reach him at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @Joe_Zavala99. By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune Posted Mar. 8, 2016 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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