Thirty-year-old Daniel Furbish has found his calling: working to change kids’ lives, one sprocket at a time. He teaches inner-city kids to build bicycles. WPLN’s Kim Green visited his class at a Nashville youth center and has this story, of how Furbish aims to give his students power beyond mere locomotion.
A Renaissance Man Who Made His Own Job
Daniel Furbish
In a cavelike basement stacked high with rickety old bicycles, stripped-down frames, handlebars, and tires, Daniel Furbish barks orders at a churning maelstrom of middle-schoolers. With a close-cropped beard and a pen behind his ear, Furbish is an art student-turned-teacher from a military family, a mix of creativity and discipline.
At first glance, his resume seems kind of patchwork, and a bit nomadic. He studied sculpture in New Orleans, led public art projects with kids in New York, guided youth canoe trips in Florida, and counseled misbehaving students in Nashville. In retrospect, it seems Furbish’s wanderings have led him here, as if there were a master plan at play. “Here” is his current job, which started as a summer experiment in 2009. On a whim, he wondered, “What if I asked people for a bunch of donated bike parts and then taught kids to put them together?”
Less than three years later, he’s taught hundreds of kids to build bicycles and created a full-time job for himself, one that he loves.
Pride of Ownership
On a wintry Thursday evening, Furbish is marshalling his troops to put the finishing touches on their bicycles. A month ago, each kid started with a frame and some greasy bicycle parts. Some actually selected a working bike from the pile. Furbish says that when they found out they had to strip it down and start from zero, their disbelief was priceless. “I love seeing the expression on their face when we tell them, ‘OK! Now take the whole thing apart!’” he says. “And they’re like, ‘What?! This is gonna take forever!’”
Within the hour, order emerges from chaos—the energetic students have settled in and focused on threading bike chain over gears and cogs. An eighth-grader named Markus says he’s excited to take home his new-old bike, and he’s proud of his hard work. He and Furbish met in an after-school program that Furbish taught for kids who struggled in class.
At the time, Markus kept getting in trouble because it was hard for him to sit still and focus for hours at a time. But in smaller groups, doing hands-on work, he shined. He started writing poetry with a spoken-word group. And today, he’s just built himself a bicycle. “Makes me feel different than a lot of kids that have bikes ’cause they just went out and bought one,” he says. “Or some people even steal bikes or whatever. And I like made my own bike from scratch.”
Furbish helps a student
A Taste of Freedom
On the final night of the six-week class, Furbish teaches the kids how to take what they’ve built and navigate their world. He briefs them about traffic laws, bike safety, general practicalities: It’s illegal to ride on the sidewalk. Storm drains can send you over the handlebars. Cars will ignore bike lanes.
The kids watch, rapt, as Furbish unfurls a cyclist’s map of Nashville—seemingly, an ordinary object. But it’s actually much more. It’s a golden ticket to places they’ve glimpsed but couldn’t reach on their own. He points out bike lanes that run from their neighborhood to a park with miles of greenways—paved paths for walkers and bikers.
His point is, these bikes aren’t just toys for popping wheelies. They’re tools that can impart freedom to go places and explore. “They can see the Capitol from their driveways,” says Furbish. “Takes us not even ten minutes to get over there. And once they’re over there and seeing where they’re at and saying, ‘Oh my god, I didn’t know this was so close! I’m gonna come here all the time now!’ That’s it for me. That’s why I started the program.”
The World, Opening
Ahmed Sharhan
Ahmed Sharhan had never heard of greenways before he took Furbish’s bike-building class. He’s a high school senior who came here from Yemen six years ago. He says his parents didn’t have much schooling, and his mom doesn’t speak English. So he has to figure out a lot of things on his own. Since he built his bike last year, he rides it all over, to go play soccer and visit friends. And he’s joined a competitive mountain biking team that Furbish started. He races with four kids from Mexico, Ethiopia, and Somalia.
Furbish hauls the team to occasional off-road races and insists that they practice every few weeks, in all kinds of weather. Furbish is not a guy who gives up on a plan just because of a little icy discomfort. And that impresses Sharhan. He recalls one practice on a cold winter day, when Furbish lent him his gloves. “And his hands was like, freezing,” says Sharhan, his voice slightly accented. “And that’s how he showed, like, a person that really care about the team.”
Pay It Forward
Now Sharhan cares, too, and he’s spreading the Furbish doctrine. He’s been helping his former teacher instruct other kids, so they can repair broken chains and flat tires, too. “Now I want to help people that don’t know how to fix a bike,” says Sharhan. “‘Cause a lot of people want to go to different places. But they don’t have the chance.”
Sharhan goes all sorts of places now, on his bike, and in his life. And you won’t find any old bikes rusting in his back yard. Because when something breaks, he knows just what to do.
Furbish has taken his workshop mobile
To learn more about the Oasis Bike Workshop, visit this link or email Daniel Furbish at dfurbish@oasiscenter.org .
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