Sitting In An Empty Shop

In a chair in the middle of our empty bicycle shop...after fifteen minutes of feeling my separation from my previous 31 years as bike shop owner, I realize...the most important thing is that I had the best customers in the world. People interested in outdoor quiet mountain sports. People devoted to exercise. People interested in sharing their stories about mingling with nature. People steeped in the positives of everyday adventures. People who wanted to help me get the word out...Life Is Good! What other business can attract these kind of people? We had our 'down and out' characters but we almost always made their day better...with free flat repair or rusty chain improvements. We were 'there' for people, we listened, we empathized and we offered help.

Retirement Five Years Late

I had thought about retiring at 70 years young in 2020. Retirement Vision 2020, I called it. In February, Covid lunged into our world. My sister was in the ICU being intubated, she couldn't breathe. In March and April people were hiding out, afraid to mingle. On June 3 our doctor called us into her office and informed us that Lisa had lung cancer, stage two. My world turned upside down. Meeting customers at the bicycle shop was dangerous but the functioning shop was my anchor. We battled with Covid and Cancer and Fire and Smoke and my own Cancer surgery for the next three years. We were given health "all clears" in 2024. Retirement at 75 is looking promising.

A Good Run

Thirty-two years ago we decided to plan our new bicycle store...Bodfish Bicycles and Quiet Mountain Sports. We had been operating as Outback With Bodfish for ten years before that..."The graduate school of bicycle touring". We had also put a lot of effort and research into publishing our own bicycle guidebooks...Butte Country Bicycle Journeys, Cycling The California Outback, Cycling In The Shadow Of Shasta and California Dream Cycling. I loved hand printing the narrative and drawing maps...very low-tech but satisfying on so many levels. Chester needed a family bike store. We were right across the street from a bookstore and a coffee house and a Saloon...Old Town Chester, an entertaining section of downtown Chester, California. Well, we had a good run! The bookstore, the coffee house and the saloon have been empty for more than a half-dozen years now. The bicycle store has plugged along without them. Not easy, the changes have come on at lightning speed. The new Asian tariffs of '18 ran prices higher, the Covid pandemic scared shoppers and dampened the enthusiasm for gathering at the coffee house, Internet shopping boomed and Amazon was the easiest place to buy books. The 960,000 acre Dixie Fire blew through Plumas County in 2021 radically changing outdoor recreation opportunities. Adventurous cyclists from the more populated areas of California chose to explore elsewhere. Still, the bike shop plugged on...profit was not our main motivation...we were a service oriented business. We wanted to keep everybody rolling on two wheels. Now, age has caught up with us and we are thinking that with the time we have left we would like to play more and worry less. The whirlwind of economic uncertainty continues to play havoc with our 'peace of mind'. so, it's time to fold up the tent and bid everyone 'Namaste'.

Bar Mentality

When I was a youngster my mother and her new man (unofficial step-father) loved to "Go on a drive", the five of us kids (from a variety of pairings ) thought this would include a swim and some frolicking in a park or along a lakeshore...we were excited. Invariably a stop for a drink, a country bar, would come into play. I, being the oldest, was assigned the task of 'keeping the peace" in a hot station wagon amongst the five of us. Kids were never allowed in these drinking establishments. It was never easy and it often left us thinking that we didn't like each other's company. One drink led to two drinks and often three while our guardians got involved in conversations that helped them lose track of time. When they returned to the big old station wagon, never less than an hour, we were feeling beastly and somewhat cheated out of a pleasant family afternoon. The parents were often a little toasted and arguing about some stupid conversation that took place in the saloon. It seems that everyone in the joint was complaining about, well everything...from fishing regulations to road construction to union dues. Drinking and smoking and conversing never made things better.

Offroad Bicycling Pioneer

A couple came into the shop while I was busy talking to one of my 90+ year old customers (who was glacially slow at asking me a question about electric assist bicycles). The man was explaining to his partner, "This guy should be famous. He was one of the earliest to promote off-pavement bicycling in North America." On the side, I heard that and wanted to say, do you think I'm 150 years old? But, I was waiting for my 95 year old cycling enthousiast to finish her question about e-bikes. It turned out that she wanted me to buy her e-bike, "My son says I have to stop riding two-wheelers." They were a patient couple and they pretended not to eavesdrop on my discussion with my nonagenairian retiring cyclist. Minutes later, I agreed to take her bike on consignment and she left with a smile. The man discovered my Mountain Bike Hall of Fame plaque near the cash register and said, "See, he was there in the beginning." His partner asked, "Why did they induct you into this group?" Early off-road bicycling promotion was what I was told. However, I explained, in the late eighteen hundreds all the cycling was on dirt. Me and a handful of writing/ off-road cyclists should be called New Age off-pavement cycling promoters. It was late in 1973 when I submitted my columns to a Kern River Valley newspaper describing my unusual forays into the hills surrounding the Lake Isabella region. 'Outback of Bodfish' was the name of my twice-monthly column.

Awesome Dog

Our Labradors, thirty years worth of Labs, have been awesome friends. We obtained the first in '94. his name...Hunter, he was from a 'Show Dog' lineage and we scooped him up from a breeder in Medford, Oregon. He was a pretty boy but not very brainy. Next, we adopted a Black Lab from a different breeder in Medford...named her Naja, she was the classic Bicycle Shop Dog. She greeted customers and chased frisbees through our parking lot seven hours a day. She was a real 'daddy's girl'. Our current Black Lab invests most of her time with Lisa...she's totally tuned-in to mommy's needs and movements. She lays down to perform Yoga with her at least three days a week. Her name is Nori, "Like the seaweed". In 1994 we said, "every boy needs a dog". Now, thirty-one years later we believe "Every human needs a dog".