A lock, a helmet, some good advice – and 12-year-old Issack Hussein was out the door on his new bike.

“Transportation independence” is what the crew at Spoke Folks like to call it. Hussein’s last bike was taken from him by a “bigger guy,” so the lock should keep his wheels under him a bit longer this time.

“A perfect situation would be to give out bike locks all the time,” said Craig Saddlemire, who helped create Spoke Folks during the summer of 2004. Bike locks are handed out on a limited basis due to a “small budget,” but helmets are given out regularly, thanks to the Brain Injury Association of Maine.

Spoke Folks is a community-bicycle program dedicated to recycling abandoned and donated bikes, fixing them up and giving them to low-income people.

“Accessibility to affordable transportation” is key, say members of the all-volunteer staff. Mechanic Nick Klinovsky estimated that at least 115 bikes have been pieced together from recycled parts and given away.

Most of the bikes are built, fixed and maintained for local nonprofits such as New Beginnings, Lots to Gardens and the Trinity Jubilee Center. But a few are passed along to people such as Hussein. Youths are encouraged to work with Spoke Folks to maintain their own bikes. “I want you to have a hand in building this bike,” Saddlemire tells riders during the bike maintenance workshops held throughout the summer.

It takes three or four hours to get some bikes road-worthy. “Other times it’s one hour and we are all done,” said Klinovsky. One particular bicycle – a Schwinn Racer licensed in 1963 – took “at least a month,” said Erin Reed. “I don’t think I ever worked on a bike this much. Mostly de-rusting, not mechanical.”

None of the volunteers is a bike mechanic by trade. “It’s trial and error,” Klinovsky said.

“Fine-tuning is the hard part,” said Becky Shor as she straightened a bent rim.

The crew all have one thing in common: “We knew that we really liked to bike-ride,” said Klinovsky, who rides every day. “I ride my road bike to and from work every day and love it.”