April 2005

Briefly speaking: Bike Barn keeps campus rolling

The Bike Barn offers bike and equipment sales, repair services and rentals. (Debbie Aldridge/UC Davis)

Flat as a pancake with moderate temperatures and well-marked bicycle lanes, Davis is well known as a cycling-friendly community. The city is home to more than 40,000 bicycles, and the UC Davis Bike Barn plays a leading role in keeping many of those wheels turning.

Located near the Silo, the Bike Barn operates as part of the Associated Students of UC Davis and offers bike repair services, bike sales and rentals, tire pumps and other bike accessories.

Robert St. Cyr manages the facility, overseeing about 20 part-time students who do about 10,000 bike repairs a year, making the campus shop one of the busiest in the country. "Typically, we do about 25 to 30 repairs a day," he says. "In the first few weeks of the fall quarter, we do about 55 to 60 a day."

Maintenance good for 10 years plus

Robert St. Cyr manages the Bike Barn. (Debbie Aldridge/UC Davis)

Tuneups cost $30 to $50, and overhauls -- when the bike is taken completely apart and reassembled -- range from $75 to $100.

St. Cyr says regular maintenance can keep a bike rolling for 10 years or more, but, unfortunately, most customers wait until more extensive repairs are needed. "Most people don't bring us their bikes until they don't move anymore," he says.

The Bike Barn is used not only by students, but also by faculty and staff members and visitors to UC Davis. "We help anyone who has business being on campus," St. Cyr says.

And for those members of the campus community who buy fixer-uppers at the biannual Bicycle Auction, the Bike Barn is able to help. The public sale, held next on April 30, features hundreds of unclaimed and abandoned bikes for bids as low as $20 to $30.

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