Until the recent bicycle boom, there were two types of bike shops in Ireland – those that barely hid their scorn when you asked to have a puncture repaired and the other charming, lackadaisical ones. Neither was all that great, as the latter tended to repair your bike as lackadaisically as they dealt with the rest of life.
After years of vowing never to return to various bike stores, it was a revelation to come upon 2Wheels on South William Street in Dublin 2. Finally, a place that could not only sell you the same range of bikes as everywhere else, but could diagnose a fault with accuracy and offer a range of alternative repair options.
The workshop manager, Cliff Mulhern, is a master wheel-builder, but he is also an inspirational teacher who manages to instil in his team the concept of treating each bike like a beloved pet. He reminds them to do the repairs the way they would want them done on their own bike. 2Wheels stocks the usual brands – Felt, Raleigh, Scott etc, and while it offers bikes from €300, it stresses that paying double that can quadruple quality. The Bike-To- Work scheme means a tax rebate of between 31-52 per cent.
The guesswork has now been taken out of choosing a bike at the Velocity Bike Store in Oranmore, Galway, by the Apex bike fit machine. This sit-on device grows and shrinks beneath you as you cycle until it finds your sweet spot. There are only 15 such machines in Europe. The measurements it spits out gives you the ideal stem height, cockpit length handlebar width and crank-arm length for your body. It then uses lasers to adjust your bike to these specifications. The increase in power is immediately apparent and so it should be for a service that costs €180 – unless you end up buying a bike from the shop.
The man behind Velocity is Mark McKeigue, chief executive of Turas Bikes, which are designed in Ballinasloe and rumoured to be built here very soon. His manager, Dan Cox, used to have a biking chalet at Alpe d'Huez in France which specialised in customising people's bikes. He now offers the same service at Velocity – full resprays, new wheel designs or components swaps.
If the little old-fashioned bike shop, where they still remember the day they took your stabilisers off, is more your thing, head to Kenny's Bi-Cycles in Mullingar. After 35 years in business, John Kenny may be lackadaisical, but he's thorough. He'll even find your old stabilisers out the back if absolutely necessary.