Missoula Free Cycles

Cross-country biking crew lends construction skills to Habitat projects

Volunteer crew leader Dick Twilde, center, instructs participants of Bike and Build as they work on a Habitat for Humanity home Wednesday morning on Shindig Street off of Mullan Road. Bike and Build participants pedal across the U.S. to raise funds for affordable housing projects. Twilde says this is the fourth year a crew has come to a site to help.

It's 4,000 miles from Providence, R.I., to Seattle not as the crow flies, but as the bikes pedal over state highways and America's backroads.

Biking that route has been the task of 29 cyclists, who stopped in Missoula on Wednesday not to rest, but to build a house.

"This is the coolest city we've been to," said Lily Smith, who pounded nails into fresh lumber of a home off of Mullan Road on Wednesday morning. "We're not around a lot of liberal youth culture."

Smith and her fellow cyclists - including a woman from Missoula - are members of Bike and Build, a nonprofit collection of young cyclists that annually makes seven cross-country trips, stopping every 500 miles or so to slap on tool belts and help construct homes for charities like Habitat for Humanity.

On Wednesday, they worked on two Missoula Habitat for Humanity homes - Nos. 43 and 44 - which Habitat expects to be owned and occupied by two local families by Thanksgiving.

The sudden arrival of a motivated crowd of free labor gave Habitat crew leader Dick Twilde a bit of a dilemma.

"Our biggest problem is finding enough things and enough tools to keep them occupied," he said.

Yet they all seemed to have plenty to do as they installed laminate flooring, put up Sheetrock and installed windows and window frames.

Among the group was 23-year-old Alex Campbell, who graduated in the spring from the University of Montana with a degree in human biology.

Campbell, who volunteered with Missoula's Habitat for Humanity all through college, was inspired to make the continent-trotting bike journey when she met the group last year. Bike and Build has been to Missoula four straight summers.

portable rocket mass heater / free cycles missoula | Eden Pure Heater

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