The Wandering Weevil Wheels

Speech Professor Gary Marshall will oversee sanding and priming the Wandering Weevil Wheels in the bike workshop in 104 Jeter Hall from 12:30-4 p.m. He'll supply sand paper and rust inhibiting primer ready to apply to the frames.

If you have not yet adopted a bicycle but would like to be on the second round of fix-ups, please contact Marshall, Buren "Buck" DeFee or Ron Sitton.

Photo by Nancy Stephan

Fix-up Workshop - IMA members Jennifer Brown (center) and Cody Tornberg (right) work on the group's adopted Wandering Weevil Wheels bicycle as "Buck" DeFee, assistant professor of urban and regional science, observes.

Photo by Nancy Stephan

The Ambassadors - Stephen Cagle and Esbeida Arce dismantle their adopted bicycle.

Photo by Nancy Stephan

The Creative Society - - Choragus Shannon Stivison removes the fender from the frame.

Nearly 15 people huddled into Jeter 104 Thursday afternoon to adopt a bicycle in the inaugural stages of the Wandering Weevil Wheels on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Monticello. The rooms present a challenge for space to tear the bicycles down, but cramped quarters provide a better alternative than working outside.

"Buck" DeFee let each group present choose its favorite bicycle to adopt. He told the groups that the next step will be taking the bicycles apart and then sanding them down. He advised everyone to wear grubby clothes during this process as workers are sure to get grease and other stains on their persons while working on the bikes.

A second adoption day will be planned for those who didn't make the first event. Only six bicycles remain in the inaugural fleet. The following pictures represent the groups that adopted a bicycle in the first adoption. Some pictures turned out better than others. We plan to post re-takes when they become available.

While the bikes won't be ready for Homecoming, some suggested we should roll them along in the Homecoming Parade to show everyone what they look like before they get all gussied up! Click on the pictures of the Creative Society and IMA to see a picture of the bike as it originally appeared.

Photo by Nancy Stephan

The Ambassadors

Mars sent the campus an invitation to help with the Wandering Weevil Wheels:

Be part of the start of a new Weevil Tradition:

WANDERING WEEVIL WHEELS

Contact Dr. Buck DeFee, in Forestry, defee@uamont.edu to pick out your bicycle. We have a bike workspace in Jeter Hall. His wrench hand is itching to start fixing up these bikes. Some need more repair than others. So the early group has less work.

We’ll strip the paint and redecorate in Weevil colors (Shades of green and white). You can write your organization’s name or whatever you want in words and/or pictures on the bike to advertise that your organization is adopting this bike.

Down the road, when the center of campus is closed to auto/truck traffic; your bike will still be rolling, carrying students around campus.

Weevil Wheels, turning on into the future!

In other news:
- The UAM graphic design studio plans to design a circular sign for the Bike shop with Wandering Weevil Wheels circling a Weevil on a bicycle.
-The Advance Monticellonian ran a picture of the bikes this week. It featured Lt. Eddy Deaton helping Sitton unload the bikes.

Of the 10 bicycles donated to the University of Arkansas at Monticello, six came from the city of Monticello and four were provided by UAM faculty and staff. Student Activities provided a room (Jeter 104) to house and work on the bicycles, and the Student Activities Board approved a $250 purchase of tools.

Gary Marshall, Buck DeFee, Shannon Stivison and Ron Sitton keep pushing the project forward on campus. Mars sent out a call for campus organizations and individuals to adopt a bike, which means volunteering to help fix-up and paint the bike in distinctive Weevil colors. If you or your organization wants to volunteer to help fix-up tune-up or LEARN to fix and tune bikes, e-mail Buck at DeFee@uamont.edu.

Lt. Eddy Deaton of the Monticello Police Department and Michael Ford, editor-in-chief of The Voice, helped unload the bicycles into our new digs while Orkhan Rzayev took the pictures below. Sitton sent a picture from the unloading and the previous blog item to Beverly at the Advance-Monticellonian.

Janelle Martin sent in a link to edocuments.com, which notes bicycle riding can turn the lemons of high gas prices into lemonade. When Campus Police officer Mike May spoke to Sitton's journalism class, he mentioned the Wandering Weevil Wheels as an example of something good happening on campus.

Photo by Orkhan Rzayev

Unloading- Monticello Police Lt. Eddy Deaton (right) helps Ronald Sitton, UAM assistant professor of journalism, unload bicycles to be used for the Wandering Weevil Wheels program. The Monticello Police Department donated six of the 15 bicycles, with other donations from faculty and staff.

Photo by Orkhan Rzayev

Home - The Wandering Weevil Wheels now reside in Jeter 104, where students and organizations will fix up and paint the bicycles before they're released to the campus.

Here's an update on those "Wandering Weevil Wheels," with pictures of the inaugural fleet by Shannon Stivison.

Mars, Buck and Sitton drove down to the old Post Office Friday afternoon to decide which bikes we would use for the 3-W program. Upon arriving, Mars and Ron noticed some of the bikes we'd seen previously were now gone. I queried Chief Tommy Free about it, and he said a few were being used to prepare a four-man bicycle patrol in Monticello. Wow ... it seems we may have started a trend.

Though less than 10,000 strong (not counting the university community), Monticello acts as the cultural hub to the timberlands of Southeast Arkansas. Pronounced Mon-tih-SELL-oh to you folks outside Arkansas, the community perserveres through sheer will while victimized by industry layoffs including the Coca-Cola bottling plant. A proud people, this region tends to vote conservatively though economically it would make more sense to vote progressively. So it's nice to see progressive ideas accepted.

The idea of a bicycle program is not original by any means. Similar programs work in Oregon, Minnesota and South Dakota, as well as all over the world. I first encountered the idea in the ski town of Telluride, Colo., which recently received a $2 million grant to build a federally-funded bike path.

Mars and Alice tried starting a bicycle program previously, but the administration at that time was not interested in bringing the bikes on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Monticello. We talked about the idea at their Prom Party, then followed up on the return to campus this fall. Tom Richard, an associate professor of art, said he could provide the paint.

The current administration, led by Chancellor Jack Lassiter, seems excited about the idea. Vice Chancellor Clay Brown is currently looking for a place that we can work on the bicycles. Members of the campus community are pitching in to help. Officer Jeff Peebles has already worked up possible rules and regulations for biking on campus.

"Buck" DeFee, an assistant professor of spatial information systems in the School of Forest Resources, regularly rides his bicycle to work. He contacted me immediately following the article publishing in the Voice, and offered to help get the donated bikes into working order. During Friday's pick-up, he inventoried the bicycles and determined which ones could be fixed and which ones would be cost-prohibitive.

Mars talked with students in the Creative Society and in some of his speech classes about the idea. They've been brainstorming about possibilities, including coming up with a idea to also paint the bike racks around campus to make them more noticeable. Lori Andrews recently scoured the campus to locate the current racks and will publish their locations in next week's Voice. Another student journalist, Marcus Roberts, offered to help tear down and reassemble the bikes since he previously assembled some for his job.

As you can see, it's truly turning into a campus-wide effort. :) Now for a little background on the name "Wandering Weevil Wheels."

The Boll Weevil terrorized Southern farmers for a long time, even prompting songs from artists like Leadbelly. According to the Drew County Historical Journal, former UAM president Frank Horsfall gave the name to the school's athletic teams during a pep rally before a homecoming game against Magnolia A&M, now Southern Arkansas University. "The only gosh-darned thing that ever really licked the South was the boll weevil. Boll weevils! That's what you are - Boll Weevils!"

To be honest, the historical journal helped supply the name for the bicycle program. Donald Holley's article on "Stewart Ferguson, the Wandering Weevils and Why They Played Football for Fun" details one of the more colorful episodes in the history of UAM football. During his short tenure at UAM in the Depression, Coach Ferguson took the Weevils from coast-to-coast just prior to World War II. Though they only won three games in three years, the Wandering Weevils gained national notoriety by trading laughs for touchdowns. The cartoon feature "Strange as It Seems" depicted "Football for Fun at Arkansas A&M," which noted the players made their own training rules and originated many of their own plays and formations. The most widely traveled team in the United States during its three-year reign, Ferguson wanted the players to have fun but also get an education by visiting historical sites and sitting in on classes at universities they visited to play football. The team earned a profit for it travels, making A&M an exception among small colleges that usually lost money.

So to recap, a little initiative seems to be working with the "Wandering Weevil Wheels" program. Though we'd originally saw approximately 30 bikes, we whittled down the number of serviceable bikes to six for our inaugural program. It remains to be seen how the campus community will react once the bikes are ready to roll. We still need to strip them down, prime them and paint them. Alice is putting together a palette for students to paint the bikes in Weevil colors. With any luck, we may have them ready in time for this year's homecoming. Stay tuned.