Bikes for All Mainers 

This past Wednesday, our program staff and translators hosted our second wave of earn-a-bike participants and group ride! After an instructional lesson on bicycle anatomy, safety and rules of the road, these participants rode away on new sets of wheels - some for the first time! We love hosting new riders and those returning from years without being on two-wheels.

A total of 19 individuals were able to earn bikes, helmet, lock and lights to help them with getting around town, to school, or simply enjoying themselves right out their front doors. It is with simple set of wheels that access to a larger network of possibilities becomes new opportunity.

Thanks again to all of our volunteers, translators and youth program staff for their continued hard work and efforts to making this program possible for all Mainers.

La Sportive Approach Boots

It seems like most Italian sportswear brands have a similar origin story. La Sportiva is similar to Alpine Stars and Fila in that it started as a mountaineering and skiing company about 100 years ago and found its niche. While Alpine Stars became famous for its motorcycle safety equipment and Fila became famous for its tennis shoes, La Sportiva focused on specialized footwear for rock climbing. La Sportiva is still located in the Dolomite mountains of Italy and continues to make some of the best climbing shoes in the world. Tommy Caldwell and Alex Honnold both used La Sportiva shoes in their famous free ascents of the Dawn Wall and El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

In the 70's rock climbing saw a shift from using heavy mountaineering boots to what is now known as the "climbing shoe." These new shoes were very light, very sticky and very tight which allowed the climber to contort their foot into tiny cracks and crevices on what was once an unclimbable wall. These new shoes made by La Sportiva gave climbers the option to use the sides of their foot as well as the toes.

This pair of classic shoes came to us in unused condition and would definitely turn some heads over at Salt Pump or Evo Climbing Centers. They are a size 39.5 in European Sizing and are made of high quality dyed Italian leather. I know very little about rock climbing and I'm sure that big wall climbers have to have the best and newest equipment possible, but these shoes are inexpensive (only $50), have La Sportiva's classic sticky resilient rubber soles and look pretty darn cool to boot.