Pedalling his way to success
Stewart Frey cycled 5,500 km to learn how to build frames
WELLESLEY TOWNSHIP — Stewart Frey, an Old Order Mennonite with a young face and light suspenders, had a fat-wheeled mountain bike up on a mini-hoist.
“I do a lot of repairs,” said the 26-yearold owner of Frey Bicycles in the hamlet of Dorking on busy Highway 86 between Elmira and Listowel.
“I’m just trying to get this guy’s disc brakes working.”
Repairs are fun if you have the right tools, the cycling enthusiast insists. Even if you’re running a high-end bicycle fix-up and sales shop at the eggs-for-sale intersection of Mapleton, Perth East and Wellesley townships.
For four years, he’s been fixing flat tires and selling luxury bikes for serious cyclists — prices range from $500 to $4,000 — in this refurbished former auto garage owned by one of his three sisters.
Old-timers used to bring their tractors here. Now, it’s a hub of high-end bikes, with 60 models on display. He’s got about 500 customers a year, including Mennonites who pedal as much as they ride in a horse and buggy.
Frey sells about 130 bikes a year, he says. One day, after he gets the right tools in his shop, he’ll make custom models. That’s why he went to Portland, Ore., six years ago. He took a two-week course on bicycle frame building at the United Bicycle Institute. He designed a frame, built it and brought it back.
How did he get to Portland? He rode his bicycle.
He and one of his brothers pedalled 5,500 kilometres over a month.
“We didn’t take the shortest route, either,” Frey said.
But it was scenic.
They saw Mount Rushmore, the Crazy Horse Monument and the Montana headquarters of Adventure Cycling, which provided their maps.
Then there was that herd of bison on the road as they passed through Yellowstone National Park.
“Tourists were stopping,” Frey recalled.
“It was a nervous moment for us because we were backed up behind them, passing them five feet away.”
But the bison didn’t seem to mind the cyclists and the Frey brothers cycled on. They endured a daylong climb up a hill in the Bighorn Mountains, followed by 50 kilometres of downhill coasting and braking. And when class completed and it was time to return home to Dorking?
“We took the train back,” Frey said.
The bike he made, now blue and white, sits in his shop. He doesn’t use it much. He won’t risk wrecking it. But he’s got a new mostly-black race bike he likes to ride around Conestogo Lake, a 34-kilometre circuit he does a few times a week pretty much all year, day or night.
Frey’s first bike as a little kid was blue. Mennonite cyclists are not limited to shades of grey.
“Most of them actually prefer something else than black,” Frey said. “As far as I know, there’s no standards on colours.”
Frey’s supportive parents still expect him to do his chores on the family dairy farm, where he lives, about a kilometre up the road. Those 42 cows need feeding before the shop opens and after it closes.
His customers come from a 50-kilometre radius. Word of mouth, even in a digital age, is his main advertising. He takes phone calls and credit cards.
Groups of cyclists don’t really stop in to his shop. Commuter traffic on the highway is relentless. The cyclists go “one road over” to “The Third” to get their pedal time in, Frey said. But over time, they’ve found his shop. Some become regular customers.
“He’s a super nice guy,” said Kitchener’s Nicholas Abbott, a cycling enthusiast who stumbled on the shop, said of Frey. “For him, it’s a passion. You can see it in a lot of the Mennonite guys, they love their bicycles. It’s their Cadillac. It’s their transportation.”
Frey says he has a lot of local customers. His busiest time of year? When school gets out for the summer. He went to East Dorking school, just a short pedal up the road on his blue bike.
These days, he takes his dark racing model out for a spin to get his cycling heart beating after a long day at the shop and farm.
“Just to blow off some steam,” he said.