STORES ACCEPTING DONATIONS OF USED BICYCLES FOR KIDS SATURDAY

Gently used bicycles will be collected Saturday for kids in need at five area Trek Bicycle store locations as part of a bike drive organized by the San Diego chapter of nonprofit Free Bikes 4 Kidz along with the San Diego Bike Coalition.

The bikes will be refurbished by volunteers and given to local youths whose families cannot afford to buy a new bicycle. The bikes will be distributed throughout San Diego with the help of partner organizations, including Outdoor Outreach and the Kiwanis Club of Southeastern San Diego. The nonprofits are hoping to give out more than 1,000 donated bicycles this year.

Free Bikes 4 Kidz, a nationwide nonprofit, has given away more than 100,000 bicycles since it began in 2008. The idea is to provide kids with a bike who couldn’t otherwise afford one, so they can get exercise and fight childhood diabetes while at the same time reducing the number of unwanted bikes that end up in landfills. San Diego’s chapter of Free Bikes 4 Kidz formed last September.

“Every child, every smile is a story. We all remember our first bike, but millions of kids will never have that memory. We are trying to change that,” said Terry Esau, founder of Free Bikes 4 Kidz.

For more information, visit fb4ksandiego.org. the background. He got better at writing, and he began getting published. In 2001, he made it his full-time career.

“I read somewhere that you should expect to have five books on shelves before giving up your day job,” Rollins said. “By the time I stepped fully away, I had five books. I was literally the rule of thumb.”

While “The Starless Crown” was published just this week, Rollins has already moved on to the next book. And the next scare. Are you ready?

“The next ‘Sigma Force’ book is all about viruses,” Rollins said of “Kingdom of Bones,” which debuts on April 19. “I pitched it before COVID, and I had to tweak it a bit because I didn’t want it to be a pandemic novel. It is less about a pandemic and more about their biology of viruses. Still, that was weird.”