YELLOWKNIFE - Wilf Schidlowsky knows bikes. "I can look at any bike and immediately tell you what's wrong with it," says the 77-year-old Schidlowsky, his hands smeared with grease.

K & W bicycle repairman Wilf Sehdilowsky, 77, stands beside one of several bike piles outside the shop. Sehdilowsky and his co-workers at K & W salvage usable parts from stolen and abandoned bikes gathered by the RCMP to make new bikes for the Rotary Club's annual bike fair. - Guy Quenneville/NNSL photo

Schidlowsky has worked as a bicycle repairman at K&W Cycle for more than a quarter of a century. The number of bikes that have come his way over the years - either from customers, or from Canadian Tire, for whom he also assembles bikes - is too large to remember.

But what has survived in Schidlowsky after all these years, and what keeps him happy at his job, is a keen determination to salvage as many bikes as he can, warts and all.

"I hate to see waste," he says. "That's the big thing. I see so many wasted things just fill up the garbage dump. Why? We're in a disposable society. You buy a Canadian Tire bike or a Wal-Mart bike or a Home Hardware Bike. Use it for one year. And then it's gone. There's no pride left in kids anymore."

Part of the reason why Schidlowsky keeps plugging away after all these years is a fear on his part that nobody is willing to take the reins from him.

"I put out the word last fall that I was looking for somebody, a student, to work here in the spring. I never got one application. Not one."

Schidlowsky believes that has a lot to do with the technology-ruled age we live in.

"Nobody works," he says. "Everybody just wants to play with a computer. You notice you don't see one in this shop."

The K & W garage is filled to the brim with bicycles new and old, parts, wheels - so much clutter it seems the place can barely hold any more.

The outside of the shop is flanked by piles and piles of bikes that Schidlowsky and his co-workers have rummaged through in order to save usable parts, which they then use to assemble new, working bikes.

"That's not all of them," said Schidlowsky. "There's a bunch you can't see because they're still underneath the snow."

For the last three years, K & W has been asked by the Yellowknife Rotary Club to repair the stolen or abandoned bikes found by the RCMP. The bikes are then sold at the Club's annual bike auction.

Schidlowsky knows a stolen bike when he sees one.

"You can often tell if they're stolen by looking at the paint," he says. "They often paint them black. But the paint job is never very good, though."

Despite his affirmation that no bike cannot be saved, there's one prized possession in his shop that he would never consider selling: a 1937 CCM bike.

"That's a beauty," he says. "I got it for a mickey of rye. The guy I got it from was going to throw it in the garbage. It's almost as old as I am!"

Asked how much longer he'll continue at his job, Schidlowsky grins and says, "Until I go peddling around upstairs, I guess!"

The truth is, Schidlowsky would miss the people he deals with.

"You get to meet people - all kinds of people. Good people, bad people, grumpy people like me. They're grumpy because something's not working or they figure they got ripped off and then they figure we're supposed to do it well. And we do."

This year's Rotary bike auction will take place Saturday, May 5th at 10 a.m. in the Yellowknife Education District No. 1 parking lot.