Sam, Sam The Bicycle Man

If I am ever near Seattle, I just might take a side trip to Sequim.  Why?  The lavender fields, which look like a little bit of Provence in the Pacific Northwest.

It also sounds like a place with interesting characters--like Sam, Sam The Bicycle Man.

With a name like that, he could have been one of the folks in The Spoon River Anthology if its author, Edgar Lee Masters, had a more sanguine view of small-town life.  What I am about to relate about Sam, though, comes from Sequim resident Tim Wheeler.

Wheeler's family purchased a dairy farm just south of the town.  A small creek cut across the bottom corner of the farm, isolating a one-third acre parcel that was "worthless for any agricultural purposes," in his words.  When they arrived, Sam Wyatt--The Bicycle Man--was already living there, having rented the space from the farm's previous owner.  

Sam lived in a tar-paper shack he'd constructed.  It contained a makeshift kitchen and single bed, and was heated by a tin stove.  There was also an outhouse. On his porch, he plied the trade for which Tim and other kids would recognize him.  As Wheeler recalls, "He could take any junked bicycle, no matter how rusty, and reconstruct it into a bike that some needy child could ride."  For Wheeler, Sam "took steel wool and polished off the rust" after adjusting the bolts and tightening all of the nuts and bolts.  But he couldn't find a proper seat.  So, he cut a chunk out of an old automobile tire and "wired it on the seat stem poking up from the bike frame."  

Wheeler rode that bike "hundreds of miles on all the scenic byways" in his area.  If he had a problem, "there was Sam, Sam the Bicycle Man to fix it for me."  Recalling that bike, Wheeler says, "No brand new plaything under the Christmas tree ever gave me as much joy as that bicycle."  What Sam did for Tim, he did for other kids in the area even though "I can't recall any of us paying him a penny for his work."  

Sam also rode his own bicycle to do his errands and visit relatives, who were scattered all over the Pacific Northwest.   He was doing that in his seventies, according to his grandson, Russell Wyatt.  He visited "every one of his brothers and sisters," according to Russell.

Tim Wheeler was in his early teens when Sam died.  At his funeral, the church was "packed" with kids for whom he'd built bikes.  I'd bet that they, like Tim, "learned to value old things, to try to fix broken things before we buy something new."  

But perhaps the greatest lesson Tim Wheeler learned from Sam, Sam The Bicycle Man was that "every child deserves food and shelter, and a bicycle, and lots of love."

I can hardly think of a better legacy.

The Kids Aren't Riding: Why That Matters

Depending on where you live, you might think that this is a great time to be in the bicycle business.   More and more adults are pedaling to work and for fun.  And wherever you look, new bike shops are opening, the online business be damned.

At least, that is the picture you'd see in certain urban areas and, perhaps, some inner-ring suburbs.  And most of those adults you see riding are relatively young and well-educated.

It is among that demographic in areas like Boston, Portland, San Francisco and Seattle that one sees bicycle culture flourishing.  On the other hand, in areas where people are poorer, older and less educated, one sees few adult cyclists, and nearly all of them are male.  As often as not, they are riding machines "rescued" from basements and junk piles, and seem to be held together by duct tape.

Those older, poorer and less educated people aren't the ones who are driving the bike business.  They don't buy new bikes or even spend spend money to refurbish old ones, and they certainly aren't the ones buying hand-tooled leather-and-oak craft-beer bottle holders. If they go to bike shops, it's because their bikes have problems they can't fix themselves.

I am not conjecturing:  I see such riders on my way to work or any other time I venture out of Hipster Hook and into the outlying areas of my city.

Those folks are not fueling all of those bike cafes serving Marin Macciatos or Linus Lattes.  Nor is another group of people.  The reason is that the cohort I'm about to mention doesn't ride at all.  At least, fewer and fewer of them are.

I am talking about children and adolescents.  While sales of adult bicycles and accessories are on the rise, that of bikes and related items for kids is plummeting.  At least, that's what industry analysts are saying.  They are genuinely worried about the future of the children's bicycle industry.

Time was when bikes for kids were the "bread and butter" of most bike shops.  I can recall such a time:  Shops were busiest in the Spring, around the time the school year began and during the weeks leading up to Christmas.  In fact, shops often had "layaway" plans for kids' bikes, in which the buyer paid for the bike over a period of time.  It was sort of like a "Christmas Club" for bikes.  

(I remember having a Christmas Club when I was a child and adolescent.  Nearly all banks offered them.  If I recall correctly, I opened my first one for a dollar a week when I was about ten years old.  When I started delivering newspapers and other work, I increased the amount I saved.  Do banks still offer such accounts?)

Even though most shops have at least a couple of kids' bikes for sale, not many seem to be sold.  Instead, I reckon, most such bikes are sold in department stores.  In a way, I can understand the reasoning:  Most parents can only, or want to, pay as little as possible for a bike that the kid will outgrow in a couple of years, if not sooner.  And, since there are more single-kid households than there were when I was growing up (I have three siblings; we weren't seen as a large family), there's less of a chance the bike will be "passed down".  

Aside from changes in the family structure, there is another compelling reason why kid's bike sales are falling:  Fewer and fewer kids want new bikes for Christmas or other occasions.  Instead, they want electronic toys.   I would also imagine that other outdoor activities are becoming less popular with young people for this reason. 

Finally, I will offer an observation that might help to further explain the decline of the children's bicycle industry:  Today, many kids are discouraged or even forbidden from venturing outside by themselves, or even in the company of other kids.  These days, when I see kids under 14 or so on bikes, they are accompanied by adults.  The days of kids going out and exploring on two wheels seem to be over.

So why should readers of this blog care about the children's bicycle industry?  Well, we might be keeping the adult bicycle industry thriving.  But how often do we buy new bikes?  After a certain point, we don't buy a whole lot of accessories:  When we have what we need (and want), we tend to stop buying.  

Also, in a point I don't enjoy bringing up, none of us is going to be around forever.  So when we go to that great bike lane in the sky, who will take our place?  Will today's adolescents ditch their X-boxes (or whatever they play with now) and climb over two wheels?  We should hope so; so should the bike industry.

Death While Training For A Memorial

For the past several years, Florida has been the state in which a cyclist has the greatest chance of being killed by a motorist.

That point was underscored, for me, by a story that came my way.  The other day, Deputy Sheriff Frank Scofield was training for a memorial ride to honor 9/11 victims when he was--you guessed it--struck from behind. 

The motorist who ended his life on a county road blew through a stop sign. But that motorist wasn't a "good ol' boy" in a pickup truck or some drunken sunburned youth.  Rather, the driver in question is 75-year-old Lajos Toth of Lake Helen.

Deputy Sheriff Frank Scofield

The road where Deputy Scofield took his last ride is County Road 415 in Volusia County.  You might the collision "hit home" for me because Volusia is the county directly south of the one in which my parents live.  Just about every time I visit my parents, at least one bike ride takes me into the county, which includes Daytona and Ormond Beaches and The Casements.  

Frank Scofield was training for a ride to commemorate 9/11 victims.  Now I am writing a post to remember him.