Nestled deep in a corner of Cotton Crossing Shopping Center, The Bicycle Shop over the past three decades has become a haven for Starkville”s cycling community.
A group meets there weekdays at 6 p.m. for 40 and 50-mile rides out into rural Oktibbeha County; they meet again Saturday mornings for rides of 75 miles and longer, depending on the weather and how strong the group is feeling.
Inside the shop, owner Mike Murphey hangs out behind the cash register while bikes of all shapes and sizes dangle from hooks in the ceiling. Rims, seats, helmets and other accessories line the walls.
Murphey, who was born in Texas but came to Starkville as an undergraduate student at Mississippi State University, has owned The Bicycle Shop since 1979. He began working there while he attended MSU, then went off to graduate school, but returned to Starkville shortly thereafter and eventually bought the business. He”s been a fixture at the shop ever since, whether it meant helping riders pick out the proper bike or part, or making much-needed repairs in a back-room workshop.
Driving around town, you see a lot of cyclists here, both at the university and among young adults. Do you stay pretty busy out here?
It comes and goes. This is probably one of our deadest times of the year, but it”s only for a few more days and then the students hit and it”s one of the busiest times of the year. We”ve been pretty busy the last few years. It”s a cyclic business. There”s times when you don”t see anyone riding, but then there are times when it seems like everyone wants to.
Since fuel costs have increased over the last few years, I guess a lot of people are looking for alternate forms of transportation.
Some are. Most people don”t ride to save money on gas. There are a few people who do it, but most people riding a bike are doing it for lifestyle or fitness reasons, or because there”s no parking on campus.
How would you describe the cycling community in the city?
That”s a complicated question. There”s your people who are using them just to get around and for mild excercise, and that”s the majority of people. There”s people who like mountain biking in the woods. Then there”s people who like riding the fast road bikes. They”re probably the most fit group and usually the smallest, but they are very, very avid.
Yeah. I”ve seen the riders who meet here during the week. It”s a pretty decent-sized group.
Yeah. It varies in size. During evening rides we”ve had anywhere from 20-odd people to three people show up, depending on who”s in town. Then there”s your triathletes. There”s a big group of triathletes around.
Would you say this is a bicycle friendly town?
I think it”s bicycle friendly in that you can get nearly anywhere you need to go on bicycles. That”s mainly because this is a small town, per se. As far as the city taking steps to be more bicycle friendly, it”s trying harder than it used to when it totally ignored cyclists. Every time you try and do something, there springs up some group who is opposed to it. Like trying to put a bicycle path in and a homeowner”s association says, “Not down our street.” So, like I said, you can get just about anywhere you want to go on a bicycle, so in that sense I guess it is bicycle friendly.
Has the number of riders gone up over the years or has it decreased?
Oh, it”s gone up. It”s cyclic, so it”s gone up recently because there”s been a bike boom the last few years nationwide. And then also because the university has severely restricted parking on campus, so a lot of students either have a choice between walking or riding a bike versus driving. Then with the fitness side of it, more people are riding also.
How have bikes and the technology changed since you”ve been in business?
Everything is lighter. You have multi-speed bikes with more gears than we used to have. When I got into this business, a standard road bike had 10 speeds with five cogs in the back and two up front. Now your high-end bikes have 10 cogs in the back — twice as many cogs in the back — and two or three up front. The frame material has also changed, as far as everything used to be steel. Nowadays, your high-end bikes are carbon and most of the non-high-end bikes, mid-range, are aluminum. Where they”re manufactured has changed. When we started off, everything was coming from Europe — England, France, Italy, with Schwinn as your main American manufacturer. Nowadays, the only major company that is still manufactured in America is Trek, which we sell. Everything else comes in from the Far East.
How did you get so knowledgable as far as bicycles and bicycle repair goes?
I worked in the shop when I was in college. I read everything I could on cycling when I started out, particularly I read all the technical discussions on the Internet when that developed later. And then I have a lot of experience riding the stuff. If you don”t ride the stuff, you can”t understand everything about it.
Are you a road biker or a mountain biker? Or do you not have a preference?
I do almost all of my riding on the road. I have mountain bikes and rode a bit in the past, but that”s just harder to do as you grow older. And my best friends are road bikers, so I like to ride with them.
Do you still do repairs on old bikes, like 1940s and 1950s-era stuff, or do you deal mostly with modern-day bikes?
Well, you don”t see anything from the 1940s or 1950s anymore. This is a humid climate. Pretty much anything that old has been rusted out. We still see people bring in bikes from the 1970s, but they”re usually not worth working on. There are some exceptions. We see a fair number of bikes from the 1980s and 1990s.
Overall would you say you enjoy your job here?
Well, it”s my life. I ride bikes. When I don”t, I work on them. I got into this business, like most people, because I believed in cycling. I thought it was good for the environment and I thought it was good for the economy to not have to import so much oil. And I”ve been doing it ever since.
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