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'.