Inspired by my friend
@mattiasfredrikssonphotography , this is a short story about a local independent shop in Invermere, BC.
We rolled into
@lakesidebikeco after three straight days of getting our asses handed to us by the Purcell Mountain Range. My bottom bracket was seizing like a dying animal, and we still had 50 kilometers of dirt road ahead of us just to reach Plan C (the last, desperate, attempt to cross the Purcells and reach the vehicle we’d stashed on the far side).
Morale was low. Parts were failing. Time was a hostile force.
The boys at the shop took one look at us, dust-covered, half-feral, and welcomed us like long-lost cousins. Beers appeared. Tools appeared. Judgement did not. They let us tear into my bike and sort out the BB like it was the most natural thing in the world for a group of half-broken bikepackers to stagger in and set up camp in the middle of the shop.
As we unraveled the story—where we’d been, what had gone sideways, and how badly we needed to get to the end of that road—Matt McDonald, the owner, didn’t blink. No dramatic pause. No conditions. He just said he’d drive us.
Just like that, the trip was saved.
Without Matt’s help, we were cooked. One of our crew would’ve missed his first day of Heavy Mechanic school—the hard deadline that forced this whole trip into a five-day window of bad decisions and questionable optimism in the first place. The mountains had us beat, but the shop didn’t.
So here’s the moral of the story: support your local independent shop. Because without them, we’d all be fucked. And every dollar you spend there is another small, beautiful nail in the bloated coffin of monopolistic corporate greed.
Long live the shops.
