Comeback of the bicycle in the age of a coronavirus pandemic.

Tyke On A Bike: In This COVID-19 Pandemic Age, People Are Dusting Cobwebs Off Their Kids’ Bicycles, Repairing Bikes

By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com

In this strange, new age of a coronavirus pandemic, isolation and social distancing for at least 30 days and likely longer, Aly and Shawn Losk took out their bicycles for the first time in five years and decided to pedal with their tyke on a bike, tiny Jayden who was pedaling with training wheels on a sidewalk in Summerlin.

“We’ve been teaching him in the neighborhood,” mom Aly Losk said of her young son. “We have to use the training wheels, but we have a whole month for him to learn to bike without the training wheels.”

The closest retail bicycle shop is Las Vegas Cyclery, which cannot keep its store open for retail sales but can serve customers via curbside service to repair bikes because fixing bikes are essential under transportation services.

The store is closed, but curbside service by Las Vegas Cyclery is helping people get their bikes on the road.

And bike shop workers have noticed a new trend as people are urged to stay home and not socialize to stem the spread of this coronavirus that can easily be transmitted because some people who are infected do not show any symptoms.

“People are getting their bikes prepared  that haven’t been ridden in a year,” Las Vegas Cyclery employee Bruce Balch said late Friday afternoon. “Sometimes it’s parents coming to air up their kids’ tires or people with hybrids that are dusty and have cobwebs.”

On Friday, a woman in her 60s has died of the coronavirus, the second COVID-19 death in Clark County. Nevada has 126 coronavirus cases, including 74 confirmed cases in Clark County.

At 1:30 p.m., Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak ordered all non-essential business shuttered to try and stem the spread of a virus that  human beings do not have an immunity against.

Las Vegas Cyclery owner Jared Fisher and employee Bruce Baslch keep six feet apart Friday at the curbside area.

Las Vegas Cyclery owner Jared Fisher said his business has taken a severe hit in bike sales as sales are down 60 percent, but the silver lining is that repairs are up as people in Clark County are dusting off their bicycles to make then ride-worthy. Bike repairs are seen as essential under transportation services, just like car repairs.

Fisher said his downtown bike shop in the RTC transit center has also taken abandoned bicycles and repaired them for people who need transportation to get to the store to buy food. He’s selling these repaired bicycles for anything from $18-$60 — just the cost of fixing the bikes to make then safe to ride.

“People are riding bikes to get to the grocery store after losing their jobs. They don’t have money for their car, so they’ll use a bike to get to the store,” Fisher said. “People want to get their old bikes fixed.”

If you’re outside, you will see anecdotal evidence of old-fashion exercise. With people staying home, they’re getting fresh air by walking and bicycling.

The virus appears to have a silver lining — the comeback of the bicycle. LVSportsBiz.com witnessed a young girl learning to ride a bicycle for the first time.

 


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Alan Snel

Alan Snel brings decades of sports-business reporting experience to LVSportsBiz.com. Snel covered the business side of sports for the South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Sun-Sentinel, the Tampa Tribune and Las Vegas Review-Journal. As a city hall beat reporter, Snel also covered stadium deals in Denver and Seattle. In 2000, Snel launched a sport-business website for FoxSports.com called FoxSportsBiz.com. After reporting sports-business for the RJ, Snel wrote hard-hitting stories on the Raiders stadium for the Desert Companion magazine in Las Vegas and The Nevada Independent. Snel is also one of the top bicycle advocates in the country.