Mahru Elahi

Pedaling Power

Cycles of Change promotes environmentalism while giving young people life lessons.

 INSIDE A WAREHOUSE on a former Navy base, Barry Luck unlocks the chain-link gate of the Bike Shop at Alameda Collaborative, revealing a tidy workspace dotted with carpets and bikes mounted on stands in various stages of repair.

"I think [bikes] are the most practical, efficient form of transportation ever created," says Luck, program director for Cycles of Change, a 9-year-old bicycle education program in Northern California's East Bay that promotes bicycling as a sustainable form of transportation.