Anna Henschel and Amy Little

00:04 My name is Amy little I'm 62. I just turned 62 a couple of days ago. Today's date is January 31st, 2020. We are seated at working bikes at 24th Place in Western and my interview partner is Anna henschel. She is a coworker at working bike.

00:29 My name is Anna henschel. I'm 27 years old that it is Friday, January 31st 2020 here in working bikes in Chicago, Illinois, and I'm here talking with Amy little A co-worker of mine at working bikes.

00:49 Awesome. I'm glad to be talking with you. Amy. Thanks for doing this with me. So the first thing I am wondering because I know a lot about how working bikes started. But how did you start riding bikes my husbandly who's really the founder of working bikes says that I've been riding bikes a longer than he has but it's funny. He just gave me a bike from our basement. He purchased a bike here at working bikes and it's it's an old Huffy made in England Nottingham England and it is a 1966. So I got my first bike when I was 8 years old and I think my father was so cheap that he didn't ever buy me a kid bike. So he got me this 3-speed step through and made me ride the bike and of course, I could not reach the seat. So I just had to stand up and ride the bike until I could reach the sea.

01:49 It was it was when I was 8 years old, which I guess puts me in third grade So and I've been kind of a always a bicycle commuter. I rode a bike when I was in the Peace Corps on and off but I had a motorcycle then when I got back from the Peace Corps. I was kind of a crazy environmentalist and I remember my friend and I who had also been in the Peace Court. She lived in Fort Lee New Jersey at the time and she and I decided that we were going to go into Manhattan and not spend a lot of money to get there. So we borrowed bicycles and rode across the George Washington Bridge. So I've always been a bicyclist but a commuter bicyclist

02:34 That's awesome. I got to see the bike the other day, which is very cool know. It's cool. The only thing is mine was mine was emerald green which was not able to find and I'm really surprised because we have so many bikes in the basement, but he just couldn't find the emerald green made in Nottingham. Huffy. And Allen Lloyd was saying that it's really unusual that have fees were made in England. So but it's something that I distinctively remember from, you know being on the bike, especially so close to the bar when I was little I remember made in Nottingham. That's cool. I regret the fact that I cannot remember the first bike that I had I was young probably 4:00 5:00, and I don't remember exactly what I like. It was I do remember a bike that I had when I was a kid. I had like an old black and white Schwinn, it was probably a mountain bike one of those like kind of high.

03:34 Mountain bikes that they make I remember it because I crashed on it twice really hard as a kid and so like as a five-year-old I was like eight. Yeah and took a really big spell knocked out my front tooth and adult tooth. So it was like seared into my memory and then was off the bike for a few months like too afraid to get back on until I distinctly remember it because I think it like lorded over me while it sat in the garage finally got back on after a few months and then it was fine. But I remember thinking like maybe I'll never ride a bike again. Like maybe I'm going to be afraid of this forever. So I think that's why that one sort of seared into my mind. Oh, that's so funny. Well it really it really is why I tell all these people who come to get children's bikes that they really should not get training wheels because it's so

04:34 Search faster to be able to train a kid on how to ride a bicycle with no training wheels. Cuz when you use training wheels, you're like either on one side or the other you're not really balancing yet. So yeah, my I just bought well, I guess a year ago. Now I bought a balance bike for my first my oldest niece. So for her second birthday, I bought her one and I knew she was a little too young but I've my brother rides bikes and I knew that she would love it. So she is now outgrown it which is cool. And now it'll be her little sister is so we're working on getting her a bike with pedals on it now, which I'm very excited about because it to get her out riding bikes with me. That's so cool. That's really great. The other goofy thing that I did. I remember on a bicycle that nobody was doing at the time was you would not believe this but I did go to business school a long time ago after I got out of the Peace Corps

05:34 Northwestern in Evanston and I insisted on riding a bicycle everywhere so I would go to my interviews in my interview clothes in the middle of the winter time on my 3-speed bicycle and it was I would show up and all these other Kellogg students were kind of looking at me like what is she doing? She just I was always kind of a crazy person who had just come out of the Peace Corps and wasn't really didn't really like fit in at business school. Anyway, I'm glad those days are over people because I feel like all of all of my friends who ride bikes, you know, a lot of my friends also working bike shops and stuff like that, but I have a lot of friends and one of my roommates rides her bike to work everyday and she doesn't work in a bike, you know in the bike industry at all. And I love hearing those stories of people being like Oh well at my office, I'm the bike person. You know why I'm the person who shows up kind of sweat.

06:34 In the summertime who everybody thinks I'm crazy in the winter when I ride my bike. I feel like I know a lot of those people like I'm like, oh you're that person in your office, but everyone's like looks that kind of sideways is but but it's fun. I mean, I was definitely that person before I started working at working bikes at my old job, which is great. It kind of gives you like the ability to talk to people while riding a bike ride a bike or help them with whatever problems they have cuz they're like, she's always carrying around a bike helmet like I should go ask her a question since she doesn't know what she's talking about. So, okay remind me what you did again before you came to working bikes. I can't remember previously worked as a volunteer volunteer program at my last job at another nonprofit. It is a hostile. So there's a network International Network Apostles that are nonprofit organization. And so we had a lot of

07:34 Volunteer is there that ran our concierge desk and ran walking tours and events for gas and stuff like that. So I managed the volunteer all the volunteers there. And then I done that for about 4 years and decided that I needed to go not work for a while and do something fun. So I quit that job and went on a six-week bike tour with a good friend of mine. Well, actually someone who is a good friend of mine now someone who I didn't really know very well before we went on the trip. We had met about six months earlier at a bike race and learned that we both wanted to quit our jobs and go on a bike trip and I didn't want to go by myself. So I was like, do you just want to come with me? So we plan the 6-week bike to her? And we rode our bikes all over the southern like Southeastern us did like eight states in six weeks and 1600 miles.

08:34 Motorbikes encamped and all that and then I came back to Chicago and was looking for a job and I think like six people sent me the job posting for the volunteer program manager at working Kismet. All of my friends in the Bike World in Chicago, like it's perfect. Perfect. So I applied for the job and then interviewed and was like, I really want this job, but I already planned another bike trip and I have to leave for the month because I'm going to Argentina to ride my bike. I'm just lucky was a good excuse because everybody at work advice was like, yeah. Yeah, that's fine. Sounds go. Have fun. Just come back and you can start after that. So yeah, so I had done two back-to-back long bike tours.

09:32 Wow, before I started here. That's so wild. So the Southwest trip was that in the middle of the summer time or was that like springtime? It was the fall. So it was we left Chicago in the middle of September and came back at the end of October and I had planned the route actually as a teenager. I had planned it as a road trip and then I just never did it and then I had this route plan and I was like, why would be way cooler to do on a bike. So it was too like seven different states that I never been to before and I figured I'll go in the fall and it'll be cool. But I didn't realize that like the middle of September is not fall in Alabama like it is summer. So we it was still really hot. We had a lot of crazy weather while we were down there. We left Chicago.

10:32 The day that hurricane Charlotte I think hit this the east coast and I was like, I wonder if that will cause us any trouble and then 4 days later. We were in Tennessee and the remnants of the hurricane just sat over the state for a whole week while we were there in the pouring rain. So that was interesting. But yeah, it was the weather was nice for the rest of it was like hot and sunny and by the time we finished at the end of October we were in st. Louis and it was cold. It was like in the thirties we kind of got the whole like the whole spectrum of weather. Okay, I misunderstood I was thinking it was the Southwest was the southeast Southeast Sykes hot and humid. Yes. Yeah and hilly to I mean pretty hilly. Yeah. Yeah. It was very hilly the beginning in like the Ohio River Valley was really Haley in southern, Indiana.

11:31 And Kentucky and then it was flat for a while after we like kind of crossed the Smoky Mountains. We were in Alabama and Mississippi and those were really flat and that was nice but then we spent the last like week or so in Arkansas and Missouri riding through the Ozarks. And that was wonderful. That was are so beautiful. I had no idea. I really really loved Arkansas, but it was so hilly and we were just lucky that by that point we had been riding our bikes all day everyday for a month. So we were very strong because we were riding these like 60 pound of loaded bikes a piece of the mountains which was tough. But but it was really fun. Wow. Yeah, if I could like find somebody to pay me to do that all the time, I would ride my bike forever.

12:31 That's wild so this is obviously in 10 years right that you had your packs and everything in your tents. Yeah, so my bike was set up in sort of a traditional like bike touring setup. So I had a basket on the front with like lighter stuff and easy to access things and then to Pin ears on the back with all of my stuff my friend who I toured with had more of the like newer style bikepacking setup where she had a frame bag. So you have like a bag that actually sits inside the like triangle of your bike frame lol and that was full of stuff and then she had a big roll bag between her handlebars and then a big saddlebag like hanging from her or like mounted from her, okay.

13:21 So that's kind of the more like minimalist set up. It's nice because it's a lot lighter it doesn't weigh nearly as much but also it takes so much time to pack like every night. We we get to camp and shoot unpack everything and then every morning to repack it all then I think about panties as you can just like shove stuff in this so I was much quicker but carried a much heavier bike. Oh my gosh, but she hers also was like 60 lb of pack or no, I think mine was like 70lb and hers was like $50 was certainly lighter.

14:01 But yeah, I carried a lot of stuff but it was it was great. I was super strong afterwards. I was like I can ride this bike up mountains looks great in shape and I don't have a job. So why not? Yeah, that was that was kind of what I was a little nervous about the idea of going to Argentina, but I think I don't have anything else to do in this is the time to do it. So so that was really great. I was very lucky for the opportunity but Argentina so you were saying that you started because the prevailing wind is from west to east. So you started on the west coast and went East correct and we were very lucky there were two guys in our groups there were seven of us that did that trip and and two of the guys in the group had previously tried to do the trip 10 years earlier and didn't think about the prevailing winds like didn't think about going from west to east so they had started on the Atlanta.

15:01 Coast to the east coast of Argentina and their whole plan was to ride all the way across South America and into juillet to the Pacific and they made it like 3 days and they're like, oh we can't do this. I mean we can't ride until like 30 mile an hour winds for the next six hundred miles. So they turn to turn back and just didn't do it and then 10 years later. They're like, we're going to try it again and we're going to do it the right way and a good friend of mine here in Chicago is from Argentina and she currently works at Northwestern and so these two friends to still live in South America had invited her back to do the trip. And so then she just brought some of us down from Chicago to do with her butt. So how many miles was it total and like how far up the continent was it? Like how many miles from Tierra del Fuego? Did you cross a pretty far? So we were kind of in like the center so so chili

16:01 Runs, you know like down a lot of South America. So we were we were in like North Central to a where we started in this town called to I-10 right on the Pacific and it was I think 550 miles across to the Atlantic and chili is really narrow. So it was only like three days in Chile and then 9 days, I think in Argentina, so you kind of from from the Pacific you climb up through the Andes and then down on to sort of the like desert plateau. And then it's sort of just a plateau for hundreds of miles through Argentina and then it slowly starts to descend towards the Atlantic Ocean. Okay. Yeah, and in the middle there there's nothing it's like it's desert. Yeah, it's the Patagonian plateau and there's just it's just desert and there were two days in them.

17:01 No, I think we're we rode a hundred miles because you had to get through. Yeah, there's nowhere else to go but there's like towns about a hundred miles apart town is a generous term. There's it's like of to build things, you know in a general store something people were so hospitable though and and people do that in Cars 2 like that track across the continent. So, you know that you can stop in these towns and there will be somewhere for you to sleep that you know, someone will be renting out a bedroom or something like that. So you didn't have tents there when you went across Perry tens cuz we didn't actually know where we were going to sleep. So we brought tens just in case we had to stay in them. But yeah, we would roll into a town and you know, go to a small little store and you know find out where we could stay and then where we can eat or eat dinner and a lot of times it was like, oh, you know someone so Cooks in their living room,

18:01 Do you know when they're happy to make you a meal and that's kind of how it went was and that's that seemed pretty normal. Like people were expecting travelers to come through because the towns are so few and far between so every place we would stop and it would be like if you want fresh fresh break bed bread you go here and you know, this person does laundry in this house and you can sleep in this house. And yeah, it was really great Plateau some people farm for sure while we were, you know, there's like a huge branches out there. So as you ride, there's you know, you see animals all over the place. So and then like thousands of Acres just tons people have these huge Paws land. So people are out there farming and then people live in these little towns because

18:56 Because people pass through okay run a small restaurant or a small store or a small hotel or something like that. So are these the grasslands of Argentina or is it desert-like are Southwest it actually changes a little bit. So like there was one day we went through an area that's a lot like Monument Valley. So it's like big powering Rock structures and then you'll kind of like go into a small Valley and it will be just like sand desert and desert-scrub like our Southwest here. So it's just like it's a lot of different ecosystems which was cool. And then as you kind of get closer to the Pacific you start to hit a lot more towns. Once we were in with within like two hundred a hundred fifty miles of the Pacific Ocean are much larger towns and then big cities along the water water. Okay. So cool. Yeah, really an interesting place that I knew nothing.

19:56 Even when I went there, I was like, I don't know a friend invited me on this trip with but it was really cool as a very interesting to learn a lot and it takes like what 20 hours to take a flight to Argentina. How long is it until 10? I guess we will We flew to Miami. So from here to Miami about 2 hours and then it's another 10, I think to win a Cyrus but we flew it Buenos Aires was I mean you could fly further for sure. So we flew there and then took a domestic flight from Buenos Aires to a small town in Western Argentina. So that was like another two hours and then we drove from there into Chile to the coast with our bikes and then that was when we got on our bikes across

20:46 Yeah, it was a it was a hike it was definitely like the farthest I've ever been from home like looking looking at a map. It was crazy to just see like how far south we were going and then you know take another flight and go even further south and then drive and go even further south. Yeah is wild was like, yeah very cool. But you've also a bunch right? I mean you were in the Peace Corps and then also, I mean I was I traveled only in Europe before before I went into the Peace Corps and I actually requested I I studied of developing economics or development economics and I really had wanted to go to Africa. So that was my choice when I applied to the Peace Corps and I think what they do is they swore you a little bit and they give you places that you don't request to make you decide you don't want to go or to toughen you up. I have no idea why they do it. But so they ended up sending me to

21:46 Central America and which is a great place now, but when I was there in in 1981, it was not a great place. I mean it was a military dictatorship and basically a guerrilla war and they just finished Mayan Indians had occupied the American Empire or the Spanish Embassy and a bunch of mine Indians have been killed. So so anyway, it was a Peace Corps experience but a very different Peace Corps experience from what most people go through which is mostly about the people that this was really dangerous. Like when I was in when I was in my training group, which is the first 3 months where you're learning the language and stuff people would routinely come in and you know, our teachers would would have family members disappeared and so it was it was quite a different experience from you know, what what the normal is ice.

22:46 Anyway, I stayed for two and a half years, even though I probably shouldn't have what was the what was your project while you were there or what was your job so I was assigned to a bank and I was supposed to be doing agricultural loans if you can imagine which really meant loaning people money to buy fertilizer and what I quickly ended up realizing was that women do most of the work in developing countries going all the way there and it's funny because now we're sending bicycles mostly to women's groups. So kind of has come around completely. But yeah, I realized pretty quickly if I wanted to actually accomplish something I should work with women. So so I got an in no time at all. I had like probably 10 different women's groups set up in in the location where I was in the Peace Corps in a really really pretty part of Highlands Guatemala total.

23:46 Define area and so I would visit would visit like two groups a day, you know 1 in the morning and 1 in the afternoon and it was pretty much Agricultural Extension. I mean, we were done we worked on Terrace farming we worked on things like as simple as how do you store potatoes at to make them last longer so they don't rot. So we did potato bodegas or Warehouse in a little tiny warehouses for potatoes vaccinating animals things like that. And then later on I started working on Lorena stubs which are fuel efficient stove because of course the women are the ones who cook and get you know, long diseases from too much firewood and smoke in the house. So anyway, it was the women were very interested in building these stoves their husbands, not so much so groups of women would build these clients and one meter Square.

24:46 Stoves in each of the women's houses and they all stuck together and did it for each other which was really really cool. That's awesome. Did you have an agricultural background before you were just economic? Yeah. I was an economics major and I really tried to play up my very limited agricultural experience. Like I sent out I grew up in New Jersey and I actually my dad did have a little tiny garden but that's all the agricultural experience. I had that and a couple of books on organic farming. So that's what I had in the Peace Corps, / but they did they did training for us at least on the stove portions so that I actually learned to do in the peace Peace Corps training a little bit of I dabbled in raising rabbits for protein for people be keeping things like that they do

25:46 They do actually teach you that when you're in your training so it's kind of cool. Yeah, but and now we have a project we actually have a working bikes project in Guatemala pretty cool couple of them actually, but I think most of the women's groups. I mean my husband and I just recently went to El Salvador to to visit our project their assess the end. I was so impressed with they took us all over El Salvador and almost every single project we went to was run by a woman mechanic is really really cool. Totally pretty funny seeing leaves 6-5 stand next to these women who are like maybe for 6, but they're such good bike mechanics. They're really and they're very Savvy business people. So it was really able to just such a great thing. And I know we send you know, we're sending a lot of bikes to women's groups in half.

26:46 I also but to see it actually see it with my own eyes was fantastic. I mean, it's just it is so funny really did take me back to my days like doing Miranda stoves with women's groups cuz I was like, yeah, they stick with each other. They definitely even though there still was already built. They still will show up, you know, the following week or month later to help the other women build their stuff. I mean, it's just it's Community is what it is. It's really very cool. Yeah. That's that's amazing. I think they like that Community is there it just you know, sometimes you just need like something to gather around, you know, like need a project whether it's you know, building clean stoves are working on a flight Farms together or working on bikes or something like that, but you're having sort of like that common goal and then everyone just gets behind it yet. Very cool were you you said you came back from the Peace Corps and you were this like,

27:46 Environmentalist in your business school was that like part of you before you went into the Peace Corps or would you think that was something that came out of being there?

27:56 I think I think it was probably part of being in the Peace Corps. I would sink. Yeah, and I was always kind of

28:09 A minimalist, you know didn't like driving didn't like eating in corporate restaurants. But yeah, it's I just think it's gotten stronger over the years of course, but yeah, it's it's it's kind of what imbues working bikes with I mean, it's just so important here at working bikes. I was going to say

28:37 It's it's one of the things that I tell my friends with my friends get depressed. I say well, you know, you should come and volunteer at working bikes because it still gives me the feeling that I had when I was in the Peace Corps. It is about working on projects that are not for yourself or your own, you know for your own self-aggrandizement. It's just for other people and it just when people are worried about what's going on in the world. I think, you know what to put all that aside for a bit and come in just stretch on some bikes and it'll be great.

29:12 It's so true. I think like you can get really down on you know, I'm big things that can like take up all of your headspace, you know, you can get like that. It's so easy to get down on like whatever whether it's like big like geopolitical things are like small things going on with your friends or family or whatever, but I just like being able to do something concrete and like make know you're making something better by the work you're doing immediately. I think is really helpful. I had always liked the idea of working piano in the non-profit world, but I think like the nature of working bikes specifically really fits like the way my brain works cuz I I think like the higher-level nonprofit stuff for your like, you know, we're changing the world in this sort of nebulous way just doesn't

30:12 Work with my brains, but being able to like work on a bike and then give it to someone and then see them right it is that sort of like concrete change and like satisfaction that like feeds me so I may both like see that happen one day and then know that I can like come back to work the next day and that that can happen again, which I think is great and I think fairly unique there are a lot of you know nonprofit organizations or

30:42 Charities or Community organizations where you really are working on sort of longer-term projects where you like we're going to put in the work now and we will see some change down the road and that's great. Like there's nothing wrong with that. But that's just not how my brain works. So I'm like I like to be able to see this change that I'm making at the end of every day. So it's it's really immediate it it's funny cuz it's it's really solely was salvaging bicycles from the junkyard and bringing them back home and very very quickly. We accumulated way too many bicycles as you now know, I mean sitting in working bikes, how many bikes do we have in the building? It's like

31:27 Yeah, 2002. Yeah, 8500 something like that for night we can get another 200. So yeah, so he needed a place to put them and we didn't really know we thought really he at first he was stapling little sheets of paper to people's bicycles at University of Illinois. In fact, some of the people who are here now actually received a staple piece of paper saying giant humanitarian bike sale on their bicycle like, you know, 20 years ago and what his first thought was that we could fix up bicycles and then resell them to people who needed them at the University, but when he got so many bicycles so quickly we ended up putting them in a building's basement that I did. I own like a six flat basement. And before you knew it we had, you know, 400 bicycles stuffed into this basement.

32:27 And people would come on the week the weekends and people would come from the University and would want to buy a bicycle so they would fix up a bike on the Fly for them. But we had to do something with the 400 bikes that were in the basement. So that's when we had our first International shipment Lee had been to Nicaragua few times. And so we just had a 40-foot container on a truck back up very close to the door of the basement. And we loaded 400EX live load had a hard time getting the guide to turn off his engine while he idle there. But yeah, that was our first shipment and I guess that's when it kind of gel that. Yes, we could fix up bicycles for local people and then also have a surplus because it's Chicago and there so many bicycles that we're going to the junkyard at the time that we can do both at the same time. So it just kind of continued

33:27 Snowballed after that and then we had to go to no place. I mean, yeah, it was quite amazing that we could send 400 bikes like only after being together for a beer at you know, be working bikes being there for very short time is really cool. Yeah, I think that's I think it's so cool at co-worker and I were talking earlier today and we were talking about how it's really great that you know, we're able to fix up some of our bikes and donate them here in Chicago and you know, and it's it's a lot of bikes but it's you know, we would never be able to fix up every bike that we send internationally and I was thinking about how you know, even if we could do that the way that we do it now and the way that we send our surplus of bikes to someone else on the ground in another country that can fix it to me. That's that's awesome because instead of just dropping a bunch of fixed bikes in a

34:27 Community where we don't have a presence we're able to give those bikes to someone who then can hire their own employees and run their own sustainable business and fix all their own bikes and you know a staple in their Community, which is so great. We're just like, you know constantly trying to build on on what we have here and sort of any sort of right the like imbalance of Rob ickes. There are so many like like you were saying abandoned bikes it would end up in a in a junkyard here in Chicago and being able to move that Surplus from here to somewhere else where they need the bikes is just so cool in my head. It's like evening out of scale know I agree with you. I mean those spillover economy's is what they call it in economics formerly, but it's amazing that we can we can create these these little businesses elsewhere.

35:26 Just such a cool thing. It's it's it's I think that's one of the most satisfying things about working bikes is that it really is creating jobs for people elsewhere and especially jobs for women, which is really really need ya I think about how excited I get when I see a bike out in my neighborhood in Chicago that has a working bike sticker on it which like I live in a 3 Flat 6 bikes in our basement that it working bike stickers on them, which is incredible and I see him all over the city and I eat like things that That's so exciting. But in reality like, you know, those bikes only made it five miles from the warehouse here, so it's incredible to think about the bikes that are all over the world and how far they've made it from the warehouse here, which is just incredible say it's so nice to think of them like right being written somewhere and not just ending up in the junkyard 5 miles from the warehouse Ceres, Chicago, right and we've touched them all week.

36:26 So funny that lie who's the founder is still the chief Packer the pattern in Chief of the containers every time a container pulls up Lee knows exactly how he's going to fit as many bicycles as possible inside the container. So I feel very lucky to have like learned a lot about how to do that from him. I'm like, you know now we're able to occasionally when lie like, you know, God forbid needs to take a day off cuz he's got a cold we're able to like, you know, take over and and do it with just a little bit of guidance from him, which is so cool because it makes me think that like, this is something that could go on forever, you know? Yeah that live all of us. Yeah. That's so cool. It's so pleasing that it will go on. I hope it will go on forever. So thank you so much for sitting with me and having a conversation and then I'm so glad we got to talk and so great. Thank you.