I love discovering an occasional gem of a Website during minutes (hours?) of random Internet browsing, and today I found a real diamond: RUBARB, which stands for “Rusted Up Beyond All Recognition Bikes.”
Started by volunteers in March 2006 — about a half-year after Hurricane Katrina and the levee-failure flooding of New Orleans — RUBARB was inspired by a much-repeated experience of hurricane cleanup crews: pulling bicycle after unused, flood-damaged bicycle from the mountains of trash that covered the city. Rather than consign these flood bikes to the post-Katrina dump, these volunteers decided, why not clean them, fix them and then pass them along to residents and other volunteers who need them?