Narrator: Welcome to the National Bicycle Greenways Mountain Mover podcast series. Here, you will get up close and personal with people who are taking giant steps for the betterment of cyclists and for the planet itself.

We’ve spent some time on the phone today with a highly educated man who, after a long career in mental health, created a notable market for the recumbent bicycle in the relative middle of nowhere, in the state of Pennsylvania. Armed with his genuine desire to offer test rides, that result in happy, smiling faces, Rob Gentry, tirelessly continues to sell a wide array of trikes and bents from his shop in State College called Recumbent Bike Riders. We’ll also talk about the Taiwan-based quality recumbent called The Performer he now has a big online presence for.

Interviewer: How are you doing today guy?

Rob: I’m doing pretty well. How about yourself?

Interviewer: I’m doing great. You’ve got a lot of snow back there, you were saying.

Rob: Yes. Philadelphia got a couple feet, which is bizarre for Philadelphia and down to Jersey Shores got flooded too. So, it’s not like the old Sandy but it’s pretty messy. Anyhow…

Interviewer: How far are you from Philly?

Rob: It’s about two and a half hours, three and a half hours.

Interviewer: Okay. And then how far from Pittsburgh are you?

Rob: About two and a half.

Interviewer: Two and a half? Well, Rob, let’s just get right into this. Where did you grow up at?

Rob: Right where I am, State College, Pennsylvania. It’s in the middle of the state. I was born in Lansing, Michigan, but we moved to Central Pennsylvania within a year or two, just because my father was hired at the University of Penn State, so I’ve been here most of my life, right in the middle of nowhere.

Interviewer: Wow. What did your dad do at the University?

Rob: Well, he worked in Microbiology, Bacteriology, he was a scientist, in poultry and avian diseases. So it was fun growing up because I got to play with the chickens and then I got to… I really did, we’d go and play with the chickens and later, when I was hurting for money, I could go up and be part of a project- scoop and poop.

Interviewer: Oh my God.

Rob: Hey, you do whatever you do, when you’ve got kids, you do whatever you do.

Interviewer: Yes, man, wow. So your dad, was he a PhD, then?

Rob: Yes, he actually had two doctorates.

Interviewer: Oh, my God.

Rob: Yes, he was a veterinarian, a full vet and then he actually went back for a PhD in Microbiology and Bacteriology. Dad, he was one smart little guy, that’s for sure.

Interviewer: Man, man…that’s amazing. You know, I’m in Davis, and Davis, as you know, is the bike capital of America. It’s also the home of UC Davis which is the top veterinarian school in the world.

Rob: Oh, nice.

Interviewer: Yes. There’s lots of crazy stuff around. In fact, I work out at the gym with a guy named   Yilma, I can’t pronounce his last name, but he’s one of the top educators in the world at the top veterinary school in the world and he’s getting ready to retire. So, I guess your dad is still around?

Rob: No, he passed a while ago. He also liked to smoke, which isn’t good.

Interviewer: Oh no.

Rob: Yes, I’m afraid that’s what got him. But, yes.

Interviewer: As a kid, were you a bike rider?

Rob: No, not really. I mean, I had the…as a little kid, I had the leftover 20-year-old, rusted, one-speed, three-speed that my sister had or something like that but I more or less walked around with that and pretended I could ride. Yes, I know. I tried to enter a contest, a biking contest and I kept falling over but when I got a little older I had the old Stingray, and that was my favorite. I mean…

Interviewer: How old were you when you got in the Stingray mode?

Rob: Oh, I was 10, 12?

Interviewer: Good, good.

Rob: Yes, it was fun. It was the coolest bike I think I ever had. At least I felt cool.

Interviewer: Wow. Awesome. And then from there, did you end up doing any, follow in your dad’s footsteps, any college?

Rob: Oh, yes. I did some college, I went to Penn State. I was here, the deal was, since he was on faculty, there was a 75% discount in the tuition. So the deal was, if I went here, great, he’d pay for it, but if I went somewhere else, I got to pay for it. So guess where I ended up going? And then for grad school, I went to the University of Kentucky, down in Lexington and I did Family Studies and Rural Mental Health. That was my emphasis.

Interviewer: Rural Mental Health?

Rob: Yes, Rural Mental Health, it’s a whole other thing for country folks. Yes, we found out in the hollers.

Interviewer: So Rural Mental Health is different than Mental Health?

Rob: A little different because mostly, what you’re working with…the funniest part was, I wasn’t as educated, I didn’t have as much training but there are so few people out there like grandfathered in you could say. So I would have a staff of Bachelors level and Masters level doing the work that we really needed, the most educated in the field, but people want to go to private practice, and make some money, this is non…we’re a non-profit. So we did this more for the commitment than anything else. Yes.

Interviewer: Wow. So I don’t want to deliberate on this too much, because I want to talk about bikes. So Rural Mental Health, is it because there’s less education, that’s why it’s different from normal mental health?

Rob: No, I think it’s more rural mental health because we concentrate on…we’ll go visit people who don’t have any health care even. They have never seen…they don’t trust counseling as such, and by the time we get them, they may have some severe problems. So we would more or less do an intervention if we could, try and calm things down, get them to a doctor that would prescribe any kinds of medication they need. We didn’t provide any of that.

We were just more for intervention and doing the therapy we could. A lot of the times it didn’t take long, it was just a couple needed to talk or the kids needed to become more organized by the parent, should I say. It was fun, but part of what we did was structural family therapy. I don’t know…what that means is that we had two therapists, five teams of them, that would work with a family, which was really nice and then I would oversee them. We did that through Pittsburgh, Western Psychiatric Institute, that was fun, I really did like that.

Interviewer: Wow. Well, you were saying the other day, before…first off, the other day you were saying that you were able to use your training in the sales of recumbent bicycles or at least at your shop or somewhere or the other. How long…before you answer that question, speak to that, how long did you work in the field of mental health then?

Rob: Well, probably about 25 years.

Interviewer: Wow, geez…

Rob: This is the second…recumbent are like a second or third career.

Interviewer: Geez. So, how do you apply that work to recumbent cycling?

Rob: Well, I guess, in a nut shell, it goes into sales and people. I mean, we don’t have to do hard sales really in the recumbent world. If we can get someone to sit on it, that’s half the sale right there. And also, mental health… I mean, look at all the recumbent folks, we’re not exactly all normal, you know what I’m saying? And I say that tongue-in-cheek of course. But they are more open to other people it seems, and they do have a better outlook on life, more give, it’s really nice. But seriously, what I’ve learned really from people, it might sound funny but I’ve learned patience from them because I really needed that. I needed listening skills, and that was really all you do.

You ask a couple of questions and listen to the people talk, and most of the time, at the core, no matter what mood they’re in or what issue they might have coming in the door here, it’s just like what I learned before, they’re basically good folks and deserve respect and love. If you can do that, it’s good. You both bond, I have a good time, there’s no hard sales, they can trust me, they can ask me anything and I think it’s made sales nicer. If I had come into this without working with people, like I did, I think I would have been a little more cold about it, more like, what a Dale Carnegie say, type of approach and I don’t… didn’t like that. I wanted this to be fun, and it has been.

Interviewer: It’s just a lot more love.

Rob: Yes, actually, pretty much it.

Interviewer: I love it.

Rob: It’s no defensiveness. People, even if they come in and they get mad at me or they don’t like what I’ve done, or they don’t like the work or whatever…I don’t know. A lot of times, the anger in all those things come out as fear or distrust or whatever. So if I just wait around with them and be with them, be patient, we’ll get through everything. And also, they can relax and they know that I’m not trying to sell them something they don’t want or I’m not trying to make them think something that I want them to think or that they don’t believe in, it’s nothing like that. “How are you doing? What kind of riding do you do?” And we go from there.

Interviewer: Wow. So before you got into the… to be able to bridge mental health work, with recumbent cycling, I think it’s fantastic because I see that all the time. I worked as a baseball umpire, when I did it professionally, how I’m able to bridge that into working with people. When did you do your first recumbent bicycle ride and what kind of bike was it?

Rob: Yes. How I got introduced… a friend of mine had a really bad motorcycle accident and he was laid up for about a year, and when he started getting better, he wanted to ride his bike because he was an upright cyclist and it hurt and his doctor yelled at him, because he wasn’t healed yet. But he also said that if you’re going to ride, ride a recumbent.

So, Peter Stull, the bicycle man, he went up there and he ended up coming home with a RANS Tailwind and so, I got to ride a RANS Tailwind. I rode it in the grass first because I wasn’t so sure I was going to stay afloat but, it worked out all right. In fact, after that day, I kept thinking, I wonder what other kinds there are and then I go on the internet and find out there’s a whole recumbent world.

Interviewer: What year was that?

Rob: That was about 18 years ago, 18,20. I don’t remember, something like that. Asking me memory things is not a good idea.

Interviewer: Okay. Wow. So, about 1999 or ’98, somewhere there.

Rob: Yes, before that, before that. It took me years just to come around to the idea of doing a store but I certainly wanted to get one. One of my first bikes was a BikeE, my wife and I ended up with BikeE’s, which I loved. I eventually became a BikeE dealer. Because I bought two, I guess they figured I got it right from BikeE, got into a conversation eventually and then I thought, I wonder if I can get a Vision, and I wonder if I can get a Linear and I wonder if I can get a…and it kind of built from there.

Interviewer: So, what year was that? Can I ask that question?

Rob: I started doing that… when was that? It had to be about 18, yes, that was about 18 years ago I started actually building up the idea to go into business.

Interviewer: Oh, okay.

Rob: I didn’t just one day go, “Oh, I love that, I rode a Tailwind I’m going to start a business.” No, it sunk in. In fact, I was going to do it with that friend who was in the motorcycle accident, yes. Mr. Barletta. And he comes from a background of selling used cars and I’m not, so he was going to do the sales, I did all the mechanic work and packing and shipping and whatever, and after a while, he decided he didn’t want to do it, so I took over and…

My wife was, my wife was a little bit skeptical and I was too, but one quarter, I looked back at my so-called books…I was learning how to do books and we did $30,000 gross in the 3-month period, my wife, was like “Bam, maybe this is something you want to look at.” And then from there, I got a little more serious, I started looking at how to get out of my day job what I… so I eased out of that, and it went from there.

Interviewer: So, all this time, you were selling bikes our of your garage and out of your front room?

Rob: Yes.

Interviewer: I remember those times. And you were pretty stealth on the internet too, maybe you’re doing a lot of work on the internet.

Rob: I was trying my best to learn HTML…in fact it was more simple than it is now. But I did make it with that page and I did other things to try and get the word out, so that spiders would find me for the search engine spiders.

Interviewer: Right, right. So, what year did you actually go brick and mortar, you opened up a real shop?

Rob: 2000, 1999/2000.

Interviewer: Yes.

Rob: Because there was a period of getting it ready. It was real but I got an old gas station, Unimart kind of place, convenient mart, and we had to clean that out. In fact, we took, four tons of stuff that had just been left in here, for like a decade and took it out back. And we had like four layers of linoleum to bring up off the ground. It was good.

Interviewer: Wow.

Rob: It took a while is what I’m trying to say. And then once we cleared it out, we looked at it and said yes, this is a big enough space. We had freezer space in here, we had, my freezer, big freezer, where the glass doors usually go in and we see where we would have all the sodas behind them and everything to buy. That we took out and behind that, which was the original freezer for this Unimart is where we have our mechanic stand, and I do the computer work and all that. So…

Interviewer: Wow. And that’s there in College Station?

Rob: No, people make that mistake. That’s down in, listen to me, down in Maryland. Larry would not be happy with me just now. This is State College…

Interviewer: Oh, okay.

Rob: Pennsylvania.

Interviewer: I’m sorry. What do you say.

Rob: I think it’s close. I get a lot of that. People call up and ask me if that’s what it is and I go you’re looking for me or Larry Black and then we sort it out. So, University, college, it’s all the same.

Interviewer: Right, right. Okay. I’m glad I made that mistake on account of helping people. That was pretty funny. So behind every great man, as all of us know, and we know there’s a lot of truth to this, there’s a great woman. Your wife is also working in mental health, still working in it. Is that correct to say?

Rob: Yes, that’s correct, although calling ma a great man, that’s a little much. I appreciate it Martin, but…

Interviewer: You’re a great man because…

Rob: Are you kissing up or something?

Interviewer: You’re a great man because you’re in recumbence, dude, because you’re in recumbents, you’re a great man.

Rob: All right, all right.

Interviewer: And you’re able to keep the ball floating. That’s what I like about Rob Gentry. So, does she still act, does she still play much of a part in recumbent bicycle riders, at all?

Rob: No, not really. In the very beginning, she tried to with time, with but she’s a psychologist, she has her own people on that and she really realized she knows nothing about bikes, just that she likes to ride one once in a while. So, from the beginning, it pretty much was just me. She would come on a weekend to bring lunch, sit around, talk to some of the folks and when we had our rally going every year, she would, of course, be a wonderful host for that, but no, not really.

She sticks to her own stuff. Now, being supportive in the other ways, yes. I couldn’t have done this without her being supportive, mostly because I had doubts at times. I thought I had finally gone over the edge, I was going to quit my job, and use all my personal money to start a business I know nothing about. In fact, I was never a bike mechanic, I had to learn that from scratch. Eventually, I went out to Barnett’s in Colorado Springs and took his basic course and then took other courses in bike mechanic. And that helped.

Interviewer: Wow, awesome.

Rob: But certainly, she was the most, my favorite…we’re like each others cheerleaders, so…

Interviewer: And she’s really quite the high profile mental health therapist, is that correct, to say?

Rob: Yes, that’s correct to say. Yes, she’s been in a lot of…even some high profile stuff in the news, even been on some national news about stuff that she was a part of. But, I won’t get into that here. She gets embarrassed too, she’s very shy.

Interviewer: Okay. Got it. So, your shop is full service, you’re the mechanic. Everything is…it’s like a full…

Rob: It’s a full service. Me being the mechanic, not so much anymore. In the beginning, yes, that was it and then I got help like half a day, someone would come in and…a mechanic…some kid, usually from the University or wherever and help with building one, building bikes. But now, I hardly work on them at all. I work on my own for fun, but it’s beyond me now. I mean, my mechanic, Chip, he goes by Chipper. Chipper sounds funny to people but where we used to work there were two Chips, so he had to differentiate himself, so it was Chipper.

Interviewer: I like it.

Rob: But anyway, he just took apart a Rolof, put it back together, cleaned out the gearing. He’s that kind of mechanic, so it’s really nothing. We had a Crank It Mountain Quad that came in and he’s redoing the whole thing. He couldn’t redo the front suspension, shocks but he’s found the people that originally made them and shipped them off, told them what he wanted, got them back. So I mean, he’s…I wouldn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t have any idea. I’d be afraid to open a Rolof.

Interviewer: Yes, me too, me too.

Rob: Or anything else for that matter that’s like that.

Interviewer: Like a three speed Sturmey Archer, something or like that…

Rob: I would drop it, I’m sure and that would be it or put it back together and I’ve got pieces still on the table. So it’s just not good.

Interviewer: When you say Crank It, are you talking about the four-wheeled bike that’s no more?

Rob: Yes, no more. Yes, they went out in like 2000, I think.

Interviewer: That’s too bad, it’s kind of bad that they’re not with us anymore.

Rob: Yes, but this is cool. A guy from West Virginia came up and traded it in and it’s so wonderful. It has 20 inch tire wheels now, we’re going to…we’re thinking of putting it back to the original 24s, some of them were using back in the day.

Interviewer: Yes, all right.

Rob: But each one is totally independent, which is pretty neat.

Interviewer: You also sell a lot of bikes on Amazon. Is that correct?

Rob: I do.

Interviewer: And do you sell them, do you stage them out of the…do you bring them into the shop and then…or do you dropship right to the customers through Amazon?

Rob: Well, the reason I like it is, it’s Performer, is the company we deal with in Taiwan. I like them because they’re set up as bike kits, meaning they weren’t anticipating that a dealer would put them together. They don’t have that requirement. They try to make them so that I think they’ve done a pretty good job of being able to ship it to customers who know practically nothing and them getting it put together. And we tell them, if you have trouble, call, and we have people who do because most of our folks don’t, they don’t have the special tools, they don’t have so, Performer made it so, with a little tool kit they give you, you should be able to put it together.

Interviewer: So you’re not involved at all. You’re RBR, the shop in State College, they are not all involved, they just…

Rob: I was, yes, we are actually the ones that oversee it. We’re the national representative for them. And we do all follow up, warranty, questions, anything, that it has to do with recumbent. I mean, with the Performer recumbent, bikes and trikes. Yes, the thing now is I don’t sell them out of the shop as much. I do have some here for people to try out and ride but most of them go on Amazon or they’ve read about it or they see it somewhere and they’ll just go order it online. And then we’re there for support.

Interviewer: While we were talking, you were saying you like to meet all the manufacturers for all the bikes you sell. Did you actually go to Taiwan and meet with the Performer people?

Rob: Oh, yes, and when I said that it was more of…we used to have the Recumbent-cons, of course, and you go, you meet industry people, and before that it was Interbike, that we go out. That’s right, some of the others. But I really… well, we went to Australia and met with the Greenspeed folks and I’ve been to Spain for the Metabike, because I was getting in pretty deep with the Metabikes and now the Performers just make sense.

We worked together for three years and it’s… they made changes for me and I wanted to make more changes. So it just made sense that we meet in person. And George and Christine were thinking of coming over for Recumbent-con but I talked them out of it because I really wanted to make changes in the actual jigs and the actual design.

Interviewer: Wow!

Rob: And they were quite happy that I came. We had a great time. In fact, it’s formed a friendship that we didn’t expect at all. They took my wife and I touring Taiwan. They paid for the hotel, they took us to the neatest gorges and the landscape and the people. We ate all street food, which sounds funny but it really isn’t.

There, night time dinner is mostly all you just wander out in the street, lots of vendors and it’s very clean, very good. But, Alisha wasn’t quite used to eating squid head and flowers, actually having day lily, they’re great, and fruits and vegetables we don’t even have here that look kind of strange. One looks like a little miniature Napoleonic hat that, but it wasn’t, it was somewhere between a nut and some thick-skinned vegetable, kind of interesting. But anyway, they are the good thing. It was more natural. Very natural eating.

Interviewer: Wow, so you’re the exclusive importer for Performer?

Rob: Correct.

Interviewer: Now, before you brought them on board, had you, you hadn’t met George and his wife I guess?

Rob: No, Christine is not his wife. Christine actually is just a headhunter for the recumbent folks. So she is in charge of doing the recumbent part of it. And just as a side note, Performer doesn’t do recumbents as their primary product. They really are high-end upright racing. So they do titanium and carbon fiber and some aluminum.

Interviewer: Really?

Rob: But they’re all high-end upright. In fact, I think they have 10, 20% of all Taiwanese business riders use them, which in that country is huge because everybody rides their upright for racing. It’s amazing, big, big community. But also they sell to, I think, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia, wherever, some in Europe. So they, that’s their main business.

Interviewer: Really?

Rob: The recumbents haven’t been…George does it because it’s fun. He got into it because he’s really likes recumbents, which is, I find amusing. But I’m glad he did. So, he has a factory. He’s got over 20 employees and they are mostly making uprights. But what I like is that anytime I have a question or I need a new type of pad or I want them to do a change or boom or something, they do it. They’re glad to do it, and George just had enough questions about what I would like to do and that it just made sense for us to get together.

Interviewer: Wow.

Rob: That’s why I went over there. I’m glad we did. They’re really super nice people and I got to understand the Taiwanese people. You don’t when you travel, usually.

Interviewer: Right.

Rob: Unless you’re with someone who’s from the country, you usually just sort of go through as tourist. You looked at a few spots for five minutes before the bus goes to another spot.

Interviewer: Right.

Rob: But it was neat to have someone who spoke Chinese, who could sit down and have conversations with folks and find out what they’re doing for the day. I really liked that a lot. We plan to go back now. I never would have thought I would, but we plan to go back there.

Interviewer: Wow. So, you’re saying that there’s a huge body of cyclists in Taiwan that race?

Rob: Yes. And they’re just always…and when they do this, they go full blast. I mean, their kit…they’ve got a full racing kit. They’ve got every piece of high-end everything on their uprights, every piece of accessory you can imagine. And we went through this one gorge and we were passing teams, like 12-15 people in a group, going up these mountains that’s 14 degrees, and 12 degrees and steeper actually, and they’ve been, we were like hours in the middle of nowhere.

So, we talked to some at the top and that group was a couple of Australians and a guy from England who would come over because this is the best place to ride competition because these guys were competing. But the average Taiwanese rider was their trainers because they obviously do the mountains, to them wasn’t a big deal. So, these guys kind of like it. It blew their mind how in shape and how dedicated they were and how strong riders they were. So it was interesting to talk to them.

Interviewer: Am I kind of missing something? Why haven’t I not heard the Taiwan Cycling Force and for example, like the Tour de France?

Rob: I don’t know. I don’t think they really care that much.

Interviewer: No?

Rob: I mean, it’s kind of like I asked them, “Why aren’t you in the United States selling these uprights?” And he said, “I don’t know, why should I?” He said, “I don’t know if there’s a market and I don’t really want to spend the time building one. So we’re doing fine. I’m having a good time and life is good.” And it’s that same sort of…I don’t want to say it, that is the world looks kind of weird for them, I think.

Interviewer: So, would their machine be on equal par, like for example a Masi or a…?

Rob: Yes.

Interviewer: Really?

Rob: Oh, some. They have the whole spectrum.

Interviewer: Wow.

Rob: So you can have an aluminum frame, they can even make steel frame ones there. I personally like steel anyway, but you can have the whole thing, but they like the carbon and they like the titanium. He likes titanium a lot, George.

Interviewer: Wow.

Rob: George does.

Interviewer: Cool. So…

Rob: That was kind of surprise to me, really, when I went there to find out. Really? This is an afterthought?

Interviewer: Yes, yes, God, holey moley.

Rob: That’s a real full factory. It’s great.

Interviewer: Geez. So, let’s move to a wrapping up here. You’re opening a shop in Pittsburgh maybe, is that still coming on, 150 miles away? Is that so? You’re still going to do that in the spring?

Rob: Yes. That’s kind of been coming for a couple of years now.

Interviewer: Yes, yes.

Rob: There are several reasons. One as far as sales go. Some of my favorite manufacturers, their sales are going down for me, like Bacchetta. I love Bacchetta. In fact, my wife and I ride Bacchettas. My wife actually won’t ride anything else but she has a Corsa from the first year back and won’t give it up. But we have less and less business and it’s because being in the middle of nowhere, there’s more dealers and more people starting to sell that I think it’s easier for them to go to these other places. For instance, like a Catrike, my Catrike sales have been going down slowly, that’s because there’s a Catrike dealer that is closer out in Ohio.

So why would you travel two and a half, three hours to get to me when you can go an hour and a half to someone else. So it was a great strategy for a business in the beginning, me being here because I’m using millions of people in my market and my millions was made up of the cities. And since there’s no one around, people were willing to drive in, two and a half hours is the average drive, but I brought folks from Washington D.C. and New York, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Philly, Jersey Shore, Ohio and Michigan. So we would pull a lot of folks, some because of the odd and the varied bikes we carried, But why do that?

I can see why people would look around closer and go close. And I think, I just think the market has gotten…it just needs enough of an increment and more sales that they won’t drive this far. Now, I still think business is, business is good here, don’t get me wrong. It is doing well, but I see the trend coming. So my biggest market being around Pittsburgh can only make sense to open up an RBR Pittsburgh.

Interviewer: Wow.

Rob: Now, all of that being said, I’m not going to go to Pittsburgh to run it. So I don’t know if you know Dan Bleumenfeld (sp?), but he does the randonneuring, as Rando Dan.

Interviewer: Okay!

Rob: Yes, I know. And he’s just an avid recumbent rider, he’s always up on the boards. He expressed an interest in it, “Boy, that would be kind of neat to have a bike shop, recumbent shop.” So, we got talking. And he will be opening it. He’s now starting in his garage now while he’s setting up a store front in Pittsburgh, working out the deals actually, in the next week or two, we’ll know more. And then he will have a store front and then we will have RBR and whatever we sell, he can sell. And we’ll get Pittsburgh sales up there. So some of the specialty work also he will do, since he’s ridden Metabikes, he loves his P38.

He’s done all sorts of…he just took someone to ride on… they bought an R-84 because they wanted a racer type, which Dan is, to talk with him about the Lightning brand and how it’s made and the benefits of it. He already knows all this, and being a randonneur person, he’s a full mechanic. Randonneuring, you have to take care of your own stuff.

Interviewer: Right.

Rob: You take it at your own pace, you’re really racing against yourself but you have to…if you get broken down, you get a crack, you get a broken part, you have to fix it. So he does know his stuff.

Interviewer: Wow.

Rob: So, I will stay here and still do this but I can see down the line, it’s slowly moving more out there and I probably then increase the Performer business here. It makes sense. I’ll still have the standard grade Terratrikes. You’ve got to have Terratrikes because of the trails, it just makes sense.

Interviewer: Right.

Rob: For the trails. So, of course, I’ll have things like that, I have some Performers, I’ll have some Bacchettas and other things but I’m not going to push some of the bigger lines. People really need a day six touring a loop, out on the trail, Allegheny Trail. So, they can try it out, so, they can see what a good touring bike it is. Here, they ride around my parking lot and they don’t really get an idea. They don’t really go out 20 miles on it to test it. They can do that there.

Interviewer: All right. Because you’re right on the trail head?

Rob: Yes, I’m in the middle, I’m in the town.

Interviewer: And just…

Rob: And he would be out on the Allegheny.

Interviewer: In terms of an editorial insight, I’ll just add for the listeners that he’s located in Pittsburgh on, when he says Allegheny, that’s the trail that you can take all the way to Washington D.C. it’s 300 miles…

Rob: Correct.

Interviewer: But the trail meets up with the C&O  that is a reconverted rail bed that’s part of our National Bicycle Greenway route across the nation.

Rob: Right.

Interviewer: And he’s going to be introducing people to recumbents on that trail. Wow, all right, Rob.

Rob: Yes, and that’s really…that make sense because that’s a great trail for them. It’s pretty relatively flat and you can go forever. You can camp your way down if you wanted to.

Interviewer: Right, it’s about 300 miles, so it’s about… our riders take usually five days to get to D.C., or a full week if there’s so much going on the trail.

Rob: Yes, it’s very fun. You can do credit card camping or traveling touring. And there’s lots of bed and breakfasts and I’d love to see Dan also try and get some of the trikes up and down at the bed and breakfast places so they could ride them while they’re staying.

Interviewer: Yes.

Rob: So set up your own rental system right on it and then sell from there, Terratrike Rovers would be great for that.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Rob: So that’s kind of what we’re looking at but I’ve got another thing now and then I’ll be quiet. Since I have come from a background, working with a lot of different disabilities, some are mental but some are the children dual-diagnosed with their physical problems. And here in the store for the last 15 years we’ve been doing things with anything from Make-a-Wish to working with Vets and ALS and Amputees Across America. Dan comes from the same idea.

Dan really wants to help some of the riders that he sees around Pittsburgh, either Vets or non-vets, it doesn’t really matter, but he wants to do hand cycles. So we’re looking to get  a line of hand cycles there and actually start to approach the hospitals and approach different places and kind of get the word out. Everyone is, put people to the pedal, so to speak, so that… we think that would be the way to go.

Interviewer: Awesome.

Rob: And I’m always going to care. I mean, that’s part of my greatest joy is watching someone who never thought they would move more than a mile, half a mile an hour in a wheelchair, all of a sudden going across the parking lot at a pretty good clip. It just…sometimes I’m just a puddle of tears at the end of it. But, that’s why I like it. And Dan has the same sort of passion behind him.

Interviewer: Wow, that’s awesome. So Dan does that, that’s great. We can sit, I’m catching myself here, look at the clock going on, oh no. We’ve got to wrap up. I mean, there’s so much we can talk about, my God. Based upon what we’re talking…

Rob: It’s called babbling, I’m afraid.

Interviewer: No, it’s not. You’ve got so much interesting stuff here guy. But, based upon what we’ve talked about, did I miss anything? And or what did I not cover that needs to be touched on in a couple of sound bites here?

Rob: Wow, I don’t know. I don’t think anything. I think you’ve kind of…

Interviewer: Umm..

Rob: You’ve got almost everything there. I mean, that’s my whole…yes, I don’t have anything else.

Interviewer: Oh, that’s awesome. I’m sure,  even if I just want to ask you half a question, I’m sure that it would…

Rob: Sure.

Interviewer: I’m sure it would cause a whole avalanche of thoughts to come back to you.

Rob: Actually, I do sometimes talk too much during the show.

Interviewer: No, you don’t…

Rob: I have to, yes, and what’s funny about it is that I’m really not a people person. Yes, at the end of the day, I’d be content with just being by myself, no problem when we go for a ride…

Interviewer: We’ve talked about that Rob. Remember when we talked about that when I said when you’re happy with yourself you have more to give away.

Rob: That’s true. I think that’s very true. And I do love the people when I’m here.

Interviewer: Yes.

Rob: And so, it’s actually been good for me over the years to bring me out of myself and not be hiding so much from other people because they seem to not hate me, so what the heck.

Interviewer: Well, you seem like…I mean, I’ve met you and we’ve been doing business for years. I always have a great, great experience when I talk to you and you’re absolutely awesome.

Rob: And tell about the fun.

Interviewer: You’re an awesome person. Everyone loves you in the industry and that said, I probably should wrap up and say thanks for taking some time for me, guy. You’re awesome.

Rob: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Interviewer: All right.

Rob: You take care, Martin.

Interviewer: Okay, Guy. We’ll talk soon, man. I’ll talk to you in the soon and just thanks so much for your time, man. Take care.

Rob: Thanks.

Interviewer: Bye, bye.

Rob: Bye, take care.

Narrator: That wraps up another edition of the National Bicycle Greenways Mountain Movers podcast series. We hope you enjoyed it. This has been NBG Director and Awake Again Author, Martin Kreig. For more info about the NBG or to access this podcast in the future and to the other shakers and movers that we’ve interviewed, go to bikeroute.com.