Hurricane Harvey devastated the Texas coastline as the storm lingered for days with torrential rain and flooding. Millions of people were displaced after the storm, and nearly everything has been lost. For some, their cars were the number one method of transportation. Rental places in Texas are facing a shortage of rental cars as more and more people try to go back to normalcy while waiting for the water to go down in those heavily impacted areas.

Biking to Nevada

Burning man is a festival marked by days of celebration and partying. People don their bikes and RV's out to Black Rock City in Nevada.

The end of the festival is marked by the burning of a giant wooden structure.

After Burning Man this year, nearly 5,000 bikes were left out in the desert, covered in dust and ashes from the festivities. Many non-profits donate the bikes to charity once they have been refurbished. However, this year, many of the organizations who collect the bikes after Burning Man festivals are swamped with a number of abandoned bikes.

The core motto of the Burning Man festival is to leave no trace or evidence of something happening there. "Please don't leave your bikes at Burning Man" tweeted Logan Mirto who is a Burning Man employee.

Harvey and Irma

Burning Man contractor Matthew Rockwell thought there would be a use for these abandoned bicycles.

He was able to find 500 bikes in good condition to be restored and donated to Hurricane Harvey victims through the non-profit Disaster Hack that Rockwell founded.

Meg Kiihne from the Turks And Caicos used to run a bicycle shop before Hurricane Irma struck the small island nation. She thought about her friends and family back home who were caught in Hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Kiihne set up a Go Fund Me page to retrieve the bicycles from Burning Man. After renting a storage unit and a moving truck in Reno, Nevada, Kiihne brought back about 110 bicycles to refurbish and send to the Carribean.

Final destination

It took 48 hours to claim all the bikes left over by Burning Man attendees. For those who were not claimed, Rockwell's Disaster Hack and Kiihne have started the process of bringing back the bikes to pristine condition.

Once the bikes have been restored good as new, several of these bikes are going to be shipped out to Houston and the Caribbean. Kiihne is still trying to raise money to cover the cost of shipping all 110 bikes to the Caribbean while she is working out industry contracts with the government of Turks and Caicos.

Rockwell wants to send out 100 bikes he recovered from Burning Man for people to use next year. He will take about a small amount of those bikes to Houston and assess whether or not he may need to bring more.

It is still a long road to recovery for Houston and the Caribbean, but hopefully, the bikes recovered from Burning Man would help with the problems of getting to work or getting access to food.