Ridge Farm — With summer in full swing, area residents are taking advantage of the longer days to keep active by hitting the pavement, on foot and on wheels.
But for bicycle enthusiasts and hobbyists in Vermilion County, repairs or tune-ups can sometimes mean a trip to Champaign-Urbana or across the Illiana border.
Local bicycle mechanic Keith Gower aims to change that.
Gower, who runs his bicycle repair business out of his home garage in Ridge Farm, has been working on bicycles since he was a middle school kid. Originally from Alameda, California, Gower was raised by a single mother and learned to fix bikes out of necessity.
“After my father passed, we didn’t have the money to take the bike to the bike shop. So I had learned to work on the bikes myself,” says Gower. “By 10 years old, I was playing with wrenches and working on my own bikes, and then got into BMX and never quit.”
As he got older, he started working on friend’s bikes to bring in some pocket money, Gower says.
“I was always the resident bike tech, if you will. Then it morphed into working on them professionally.”
As Gower steps out of his garage to greet a new client, he’s friendly and welcoming, greeting them with a smile. Before the client can say a word, Gower takes a look at their bike and announces what he believes to be the problem.
With the expertise of a surgeon, Gower moves sveltely as he works, sometimes sharing long stories from his life or rambling off interesting tidbits from his impressive memory of bicycle history, or data about the make and model of the bicycle at hand.
Another client who is struggling with finding their balance on a new cruiser-style flat-foot bicycle stands aside as Gower makes minute adjustments to the height and angle of their seat and handlebars. Afterward, Gower’s client climbs on the bike and flies down the sidewalk with ease.
Gower moved to Vermilion County in the mid-90s and started advertising his services through the Thrifty Nickle, a community advertisements newspaper. He was charging his clients $10 less than his closest competition at the time, Champaign Cycle Co.
Then one day, around 1998, Gower says, he received a call from Fritz Miericke, the longtime owner of Champaign Cycle Co.
“Fritz reached out to me and he said ‘If you don’t have insurance to work on these bikes, all it takes is one person to get hurt on a bike you worked on …’ So I stopped immediately and only did it for friends and didn’t take money for it.”
That call was the beginning of a long and prosperous mentoring relationship, says Gower, one which helped to shape the person he would become. Then Miericke passed away in 2007.
“Fritz was real good with me. He gave me great deals on parts and stuff because he knew I worked on my own stuff and I didn’t have a lot of money at the time,” says Gower.
“So it kind of framed for me the kind of bike shop professional I wanted to be because I had come in contact with a lot of very abrasive, not-very-nice individuals. So Fritz formed and shaped me.”
In 2005, Gower was ready to get back into the biking business and decided to take a job at a local shop instead of working alone. From 2005 to 2014, Gower worked as a bicycle repairman at Cycles Plus in Danville.
When owner Randy VanVickle sold the shop in 2014, Gower stayed on for a time, but differences with the new owners pushed him to go his own way once again.
In June of 2014, Gower finally went all-in on his own bicycle repair business. He registered his business with the state and enrolled in an insurance plan, just as Fritz had recommended. He was able to bring 25-30% of his client base with him, he says, which helped him get going.
For Gower, repairing bicycles is both a labor of love and an opportunity to spread joy.
“If I can make somebody happy with a bike, that’s great because there’s not enough happiness in the world,” says Gower.
In 2020, as COVID ramped up and people were increasingly struggling with feelings of isolation and cabin fever, they took to the streets to enjoy fresh air and exercise.
Gower says he saw a boom in bicycle repair needs as more and more people became more active. Since then, as the local economy has suffered, biking is a less and less accessible hobby, says Gower.
“People have to have a little bit of disposable income to be able to do and afford these things. And it’s increasingly gotten more tough financially to do so because the cost has increased, too.”
Increased shipping costs due to reliance on overseas parts has caused prices for bicycle parts to skyrocket, says Gower.
“In the last 10 years, there have been shipping supply chain issues and manufacturing issues because people were favoring big bike manufacturers to get their parts instead of small manufacturers or people are in the general public. So, it was really tough,” he said.
Even so, there is hope, says Gower, as more and more parents get their kids interested in biking.
“The biggest category at BMX tracks around the nation is 40-, 50-year-old dads,” says Gower. “It’s a revival. They’re getting their kids back into it. All the dads are bringing them and getting them involved.”
For Gower, people love biking because it brings them back to a simpler time in their life, helping them to tap back into their childhood joys while keeping active.
“When you rode when you were young, you enjoyed it and you didn’t realize you were getting the fitness workout by doing all that riding,” he said.
But biking is more than good exercise, says Gower — it’s also great for your mental health.
“It’s good for your brain because you’re just experiencing happiness at that point. You’re having fun. You’re not thinking about the ills of the day or any problems you have,” he said. “You’re just thinking about how much fun you’re having riding.
“If that means shredding the trail out in the woods and riding on the edge and almost into the tree, that’s your bag. Or if it’s getting on your bike and riding to the corner grocery store or the gas station and getting some candy and going to the park like you did when you were 12 or 13, it makes people happy.”
To learn more about Gower or to schedule an appointment at his shop, reach out to him on his Facebook page, Keith’s Bicycle Garage.