((PKG))  PANDEMIC BIKE REPAIR SHOP    
((TRT:  08:04)) 
((Topic Banner:  A Biker’s Friend))  
((Reporter/Camera/Editor:  June Soh)) 
((Map:  Potomac, Maryland))    
((Main character:  1 male))  
((Sub characters:  3 female)) 
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
I love working on bikes.  I love taking old bikes and fixing them up 
so people can use them again.  And cleaning them up and I turn 
them into a thing of beauty in my mind.  I don’t charge, just my gift 
to my neighbors. 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
The wheels work and that’s good. 
((NATS:  Kara Sun & Ric Jackson)) 
((Kara Sun)) Hey, Ric. 
((Ric Jackson)) Hey, Kara. 
((Kara Sun)) Oh, the bike’s ready, huh?  And his bike.  Wow, look 
at that! 
((Ric Jackson)) It is clean and neat and tidy and updated.  How 
do you like it? 
((Kara Sun)) Oh, my God.  So, I am going to ride his bike. 
((Ric Jackson)) Oh, okay. 
((NATS)) 
((Kara Sun, Customer)) 
During COVID, we picked up biking because we want to be 
socially distanced.  However, all of our bikes were not in a good 
condition at all.  So, we’ve been trying to get her bike to a repair 
shop.  Everywhere we went, we called, they say, “Oh, at least six 
months, five months.  We’re not taking any more bikes.  We’re 
completely booked.”  
((NATS)) 
((Kara Sun, Customer)) 
As a whole family, we dearly, sincerely appreciate what Ric does.    
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
Back in April, April, early April in the beginning of the pandemic, 
there was somebody who sent out a message on our local 
ListServe and said, “Is anybody out there that can repair bike, my 
daughter's, the breaks on my daughter’s bicycle?”  I said, “I’m 
willing to do it.”  And since then, I have had over 670 bicycles that 
I have repaired.   
((NATS:  Phone ring music)) 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) Excuse me just a second. 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) Pretty good.  When would you come?  
That would be perfect.  
((NATS:  Customer)) Thank you so much. 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) Sure.  Sounds good, right.  I will see you 
then.  Sure, bye bye.   
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) So, that’s somebody who will be bringing 
her bike over shortly.  Alright? 
((NATS: Ric Jackson)) A lot of what I do is actually just 
lubricating these things. 
((NATS)) 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) That’s good Nikki.  That’s good. 
((NATS:  Nikki Mock)) You know, maybe you can tell just looking 
at it right away.  You don’t even need it to say.  
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) Good enough to go.  They don’t have to 
be beautiful.   
((NATS:  Nikki Mock)) Right. 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) They just need to function.  
((Nikki Mock, Volunteer Collecting Donated Bikes)) 
With the pandemic, I started to think like what else are the kids 
doing?  Like they, you know, parks were closed.  They weren’t 
going to school.  In Ward 8, which is, you know, the poorest, 
probably the poorest part of Washington, D.C., where the most 
underprivileged families and kids live, there really was hardly 
anything to do.  So, every time I bring a bike to a child, I feel like 
it’s giving them, you know, a sense of freedom, a sense of fun 
and probably most importantly, a sense that people care about 
them.  I couldn’t do this without Ric.  Ric doesn’t charge me 
anything.  He does it out of the goodness of his heart.  You know, 
Ric is my hero in a lot of ways. 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) Alright.  I will be in touch, Nikki.   
((NATS:  Nikki Mock)) Have a good day.  Thank you. 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) I will let you know when things are ready. 
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
I guess it’s always been in my nature even when I was working.  
The place that I worked at, the National Institute of Standards and 
Technology, has a mission to support commercial activities in this 
country.  And so, I was a mission-oriented person even during my 
career, doing stuff to help other people.  But after I retired, 
volunteering just seemed like a natural thing to do.  I was 
comfortable.  I was happy with what I have done, and I was 
looking for something else meaningful to do.  
((Courtesy:  Bike Loaner Program)) 
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
And I started volunteering at the national park nearby, the C&O 
Canal.  And I created and ran their bike loaner program down 
there.  It’s the place where people could come in and borrow 
bicycles for two hours for free.  We had 150 bicycles in our fleet, 
and that’s when I learned how to repair bicycles. 
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
I fix the bikes in my garage.  I park my cars out on the driveway 
around the street.  After the pandemic is over and I stop doing 
this, I will put my cars back in the garage. 
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((Courtesy:  Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
My own spare time?  I ride my bicycle a lot.  I go on long bike 
rides with friends.  It’s important to me to ride, to be healthy, to 
stay healthy.  But it also gets me out in nature, and I can just 
enjoy being away from everything and just riding my bicycle. 
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson))  
I am going to go for a little test drive.  Okay?  I will be right back. 
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
I don't charge for anything that I do.  But people do frequently 
bring me gifts, goodies, baked goods, brownies or, in this case, 
chocolate.  These appeared from a lady whose bike I repaired this 
morning. 
So, this is the note that the lady left along with the chocolate.  It 
says, “Thanks for being big-hearted.  Now, my dogs and I can go 
on more bike rides together.”  It makes me feel good that I made 
somebody else feel great.  That makes my day.  
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
But one of the things that works for me that I enjoy very much is 
that doing this, doing this in my garage out here, allows me to 
interact with my neighbors.  The neighbors right next door to me, 
the neighbors across the street, the neighbors many streets away.  
I get to meet them, talk to them, interact with them and get to 
know them.  And that’s an awful lot of fun.  It’s like it was when I 
was growing up. 
((Rima Adler, Customer))  
Ric is a great example of how to be a neighbor and contribute to 
the community and, I think, really inspiring on how to keep a 
positive, upbeat feeling during a pandemic and make us 
connected in this sort of disconnected time. 
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
My idea of a community is just the people that I interact with, 
where I live, the people in my neighborhood, in my town, in my 
city, in my country and in the world.  A lot of the bikes that were 
donated to me down at the bike loaner program that I couldn’t 
use, I re-donated to a group called Bikes for the World and they 
would send the bikes out to other countries.  So, just the notion of 
helping people anywhere, everywhere is, I guess, what I call a 
community. 
((NATS)) 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) 
I'm not going to make it really beautiful but I'm going to make it 
work.  
((NATS/MUSIC)) 
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) Tada. 
((NATS))  
((NATS:  Ric Jackson)) Good. 
((NATS)) 
((Ric Jackson, Pandemic Bike Repair Shop)) 
At the end of the day, I can say I did something positive.  I made 
something work.  I made somebody happy.  And at the end of my 
days, I am actually pretty happy.  And when I put my head down 
at night, I go right to sleep.  And I wake up the next morning, I 
look forward to doing it again. 
((NATS/MUSIC))