With the last of the snow from a rather intense winter finally melting away, spring has sprung and people are busy preparing for the many outdoor recreation activities abundant in the region.
One of those popular activities — bike riding — is equally appreciated and celebrated by both residents and visitors in Leelanau and surrounding counties all year-long, but the sport is especially favored in the warmer months.
Local bike shops report that now is the time to take your bike in to be serviced before heading out on the trails to ensure a comfortable and safe ride. The start of spring isn’t as busy because many people are just returning to the area, but getting your bike looked at now means avoiding the more crowded times in the heat of the summer.
Jordan Peterson, Suttons Bay Bikes tour manager, said getting your bike serviced before or at the start of the season is very important and can help with any possible failures in the future. Most people come in to get a basic tune up or to get any replacements done after the wear and tear from last season.
All of these services help to make the bike last much longer, Peterson explained, adding that the shop began getting busy with bikers preparing for spring about three to four weeks ago. He said Suttons Bay Bikes has a regular crowd of customers that continue to come back, with many of those people having previously bought bikes from them, for maintenance needs. Once the snow completely melts, Peterson said that’s when people begin coming in droves.
“We see hundreds of people — if not hundreds of hundreds of people — just coming at this time of season. For every three bikes we fix, five bikes come in,” Peterson said. “That’s what we see every year. We’ve also been very fortunate, we have a really solid crew here, so I think that brings a lot of people in and of itself… It’s very busy this time of year, and we’re extremely fortunate with the Tart Trail, the way that everything works up here. I can’t say it enough, we’re so fortunate, from the roads to the trail, all the maintenance that gets put in.”
As with much of the up north establishments, there’s the July rush, but there’s also a fall/ October rush when bikers head to the bike shop for tuning up and other needs. Peterson said they definitely see more people biking for recreation than anything else, but there’s still a good number of those that commute via bike as a mode of transportation. The TART Trail nearby draws many from Traverse City, Old Mission peninsula, and surrounding areas each year and is a magnet for recreational bike riding. About 90% of the customers Peterson said they’ve seen up to this point have been road cyclists, noting that “there’s no bad weather, only bad gear.”
“The Traverse City area is such a wonderful biking community and again, this is because we have the VASA, we have Holiday, we have Hickory, we have the TART Trail and we have the Boardman… And those are marked trails, if you get into unmarked trails in this area, the community has built endless trails,” Peterson said.
Keith Conway, an avid biker/ athlete and the sales manager at Suttons Bay Bikes, has been active in the cycling industry for 20-plus years. While Conway is very much involved in the competitive bike racing scene, which he notes helps him to stay accountable with exercising, he also takes advantage of the recreational bike opportunities abundant in Leelanau County and the region.
“I like to road-ride out here, so a lot of times, I won’t ride in Traverse because of the traffic and all the people, so I will commute out here on my bike and then after work, or maybe even before work, I’ll go out and ride the county roads because the traffic is real low and there’s a lot of climbing to get good work outs in and things like that,” Conway said.
Nick Killian, recreation operations manager at The Cyclery, Glen Arbor’s only full-service bike shop open year-round, emphasized the importance of getting bikes looked at by a professional, whether you want to bike for recreation, racing, or for commuting. Most bike shops need a 24-hour turnaround at minimum, Killian said, and this can be due to the size of the shop or if items need to be specialty ordered.
“In order for it (your bike) to perform optimally and be safe, you need to treat it kind of like a car when it comes to maintenance,” Killian said. “Get things double checked often, have it cleaned often, and then have it at least lubricated and tires aired up and things like that often.”
Besides those that live in the area, The Cyclery gets customers that come from surrounding towns like Thompsonville, Lake Ann, Traverse City and Interlochen, similar to the customer base that makes the commute to Suttons Bay Bikes. Killian said with Glen Arbor being a very tourist driven place, many visitors returning also bring their bikes in for service when they realize they need some work done. In addition, their large fleet of bike rentals are a popular choice in the summertime.
“The best way a bike shop can help is if the customer also has some forethought about bringing it in before they need it,” Killian said. “We might be a little bit quicker on turnarounds than some of the bigger bike shops more central to Traverse City, there’s just a population difference in density and we might be able to get through those bikes a little quicker.”
