After Tom...

So you have that bike someone in your family brought bike from an overseas tour of duty. Or you have a Bike Boom era ten-speed you still ride--or want to pass on or simply don't want to give up.  Maybe you're holding on (and still riding) that beatiful machine from your racing days or the one that took you across a state or continent, and you want to keep it going for everyday riding or eroica-type events.

Sometimes you can replace old parts with modern ones.  They may not have the style of the stuff the bike came with, but they--especially derailleurs--might work better.  Other times, though, new parts simply won't fit or just won't look right on the old bike.

So what do you do?

These days, you can peruse eBay and other sites.  The Internet is also useful for learning about swap meets and the like.  But one often-overlooked source is the old "family" bike shops that have been in the same location for decades.  Folks in bike costumes with four-digit price tags astride bikes with five-figure tabs might turn up their noses (which, I admit, are often better turned-out than mine!) at such places.  But they often have freewheels, for example, or chainrings in bolt-circle diameters no longer made--or small parts for Mafac or Weinmann caliper--or Bendix or New Departure coaster--brakes.  

And, of course, such shops are called "family" shops because families are not only their owners, but their customer base.  The world-champion racer, globe-spanning tourer and the lifelong everyday cyclist almost invariably started riding as children, whether alone to school, with friends at a local dirt track or family at the park.  Those mom-and-pop proprietors and their employees don't get nearly enough recognition for the role they play in initiating the young into cycling and nurturing a cycling culture.

Tom Anderson, the retiring owner of The Bicycle Rack in Muskegon, Michgian.  (Photo by Cory Morse for MLive.

Tom Anderson of Muskegon, Michigan is such a proprietor.  For 46 years, he's catered to "the mom and pop, the bread and butter of bicycling"  in the western Michigan community.  At one time, the showroom of his shop, The Bicycle Rack, brimmed with 150 or more bikes of all kinds, from kids' trikes to high-end racers.  But like too many other small shops, he hasn't been able to re-stock bikes--or even parts--as the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted production and supply chains.  

So now the lifelong Muskegon resident--who helped to spearhead the 12-mile Lakeshore Bike Trail on Lake Muskegon--is closing his shop and retiring. He considered selling his business, he said, but the next owner would have faced the same struggles that have confronted him.  Truth is, nobody knows when the bike business--or anything else--will "go back to normal," whatever that will mean.

When folks like Tom close up their shops, it doesn't mean only that there's one less place to buy or fix a bike.  Shop owners like him build relationships with people in their communities.  Even if they don't grow up to be dedicated cyclists, they fondly remember folks like him and his willingness to help. Oh, and where else--besides eBay--are you going to find that original lever for your 1950's English three-speed or French-threaded freewheel--without paying eBay prices?

And how can you not miss someone who says of his life's work, "I loved every minute of it"?

Say It Won't Close!

Many years ago (Can I still say I'm in "midlife" if I can use a phrase like that?), I worked at Buck's Rock Creative Work Camp.  Aside from having one of the strangest names of any place in which I've ever worked, that place taught me things I probably wouldn't have learned any other way.

About the name:  Until someone encouraged me to apply to work there, I thought a "work camp" was a place where wayward youth were sent--a stop between reform school and "juvie."  So how could a "work camp" be creative?

Well, Buck's Rock was a camp for creative work:  Kids could spend their time in art, sculpture or dance studios, at the radio station, practicing and playing musical instruments or engaged in crafts like woodworking, batik or weaving.  A farm bordered on the camp; campers could attend to chickens, goats or other animals if they didn't want to indulge in their artistic impulses (or if they didn't have such urges:  some campers were rich kids whose parents' involvement with them was inversely proportional to how much money they had).  

So what was I doing there?  Well, there was also a creative writing workshop.  I was a "counselor" there:  I worked one-on-one with young poets, fiction writers and other scribes.  Two other writers worked with me to conduct group activities and the occasional class, which we tried to make as little like the classes to which they were accustomed as we could.

As you might guess, it was an important experience for me because it was the first time I was paid for working with people on their writing and, if you want to use the term loosely, teaching.  I also met two people who are friends to this day.  In addition, I  came to understand, a little, a world completely apart from the blue-collar Brooklyn and New Jersey enclaves in which I grew up.  Most of the kids came from neighborhoods like the Upper East and West Sides.  Some went to boarding schools, and came home only at Christmastime and for a week or two between the end of the school year and the beginning of camp.  During that time, they didn't see their parents:  Nannies, au pairs or housekeepers tended to them.  More than one kid told me they talked to me than they talked to their parents!

That is one reason I chose not to return for a second summer.  I really liked working with the kids--aged 12 to 18--with their poems and stories, and sometimes playing chess or softball, or simply talking, with them.  But that last part was sometimes heartbreaking:  I came to the realization that they needed an adult they could trust and confide in more than they needed that camp.  Then, perhaps, they would have been healthier:  Even when I worked in a children's hospital and as a writer-in-residence in schools located in some of New York's poorest neighborhoods, I never saw kids who were sick, whether physically or emotionally, as I did at that camp.

Another reason I didn't want to go back is that I did almost no cycling that summer.  You see, I was on site around the clock; I got one day (literally:  24 hours) off every two weeks.  That was the only time I could leave the premises.  So, while I learned more about some of my passions, the experience took me away from another--and I learned that I don't want to live and work in the same place.  (Many people have come to that realization during the past year!)

Our time off really didn't leave much time except to go from one place to another and back, as the camp was in a pretty remote location.  Also, I was on camp with someone with whom I would elope and, a few years later, break up. (Is it a divorce when you break up an elopement?  Is "elopement" even a word in English?) She was about as far from being a cyclist as anyone I've ever met: In fact, she was all but allergic to any form of physical exercise except one, if you know what I mean. We did manage to get the same days off and went to some nearby hotel or cottage where she could get her exercise, which she didn't like to do alone.

On our way to wherever we went to work out, we'd stop in the town.  I would leave her for an hour or so--our only time apart--to look in a gift shop or some other place while I browsed and chatted with the folks in Bike Express.  It was frustrating to look at and talk about bikes when I couldn't ride; they understood and indulged my browsing.  I think I bought a couple of things I wouldn't use, of course, until the summer ended.  

What brought back those memories is a news item that came my way:  Bike Express is closing. 

The reason?  Its owner, John Gallagher says, "I want to go out and ride my bike for fun."  He's 67 years old and has owned it since he and his brother bought it in 1985.  The lease is up in October; he hopes to sell the shop by then because he doesn't want to leave New Milford without a bike shop.

John Gallagher, in his Bike Express shop. (Photo by H. John Voorhees III)

The past year, he says, has been a paradox. "Last year was our best year ever," he says.  This year, however "will be our worst" because "there is an unavailability of bicycles to sell our customers."  That actually could help to sell the shop, he explains, because as with any such enterprise, a buyer pays for the business as well as the inventory.  He still has 200 bikes on order from the last eight months and a waiting list of between 60 and 70 customers--but has received only 15 bikes in that time.  That means his inventory could be "at its lowest level ever" so if someone wants to buy, "they won't have to put up a huge chunk of money" for the inventory as well as the business.

I hope this all ends with New Milford keeping its bike shop--which, according to its "tech expert" John Lynch caters to the "regular person"--and John Gallagher having his days to ride for fun.