KAILUA-KONA — Oliver Kiel was 13 years old before he was tall enough to fit a 10-speed bicycle.
He hopped on the first one his father ever bought him and hasn’t looked back, pedaling to school and soccer practices throughout his childhood in Germany, and later into the sport of triathlon as an adult.
He couldn’t ride a bike to Hawaii Island, but made sure he’s had one handy ever since arriving 17 years ago. Running Cycle Station, a staple of the cycling community in Kona, with his wife Julia for the last 12 years certainly helped in that regard.
Now Kiel and Julia are spinning their wheels toward something new — focusing on ownership and operation of Kaloko Furniture right next door to the bike shop in Hale Ku’i Plaza, which they purchased 16 months ago. The process of closing Cycle Station is underway, beginning with the selling off of inventory.
Kiel said he’d been in discussions with a potential buyer but the sale recently fell through. Moving on without someone to assume control of the handlebars at Cycle Station wasn’t a choice he made easily.
“For Oliver, that was a really hard decision for him to come to,” Julia said. “I’ve been actually trying to get him to do it for well over a year, but he was adamant about keeping it going. It was his dream to have a bike shop and he wanted to see it continue.”
That dream began with a 25-passenger Hertz shuttle bus the couple transformed into a mobile bike shop after Kiel left his position as a manager at Bike Works, another well known Kona bike shop. Mondays, the bus found its way to Waimea. Tuesdays, it rolled into Waikoloa. Saturdays, it made the trek to Ocean View.
But after a year, four combined hours of driving, setting up shop and tearing it all down three days per week grew tiresome and proved less economical than a traditional store. Kiel set up a retail space a dozen years ago, doubling the store’s floor space since that time.
Several patrons expressed disappointment with word of the shop’s closing, citing exceptional customer service and the personable nature of the Kiels as reasons they’ve formed an emotional attachment to the store.
“I’m not a triathlete, I’m just a dorky bicycle rider in Kohala,” said Judith Annettes, who has purchased five bicycles from the Cycle Station since it opened and shed tears upon hearing the news. “They made it really clear they were more geared toward servicing the local people than the triathlete business and they really were honest about that. Every time I walked in, they’d call me by name. It made me feel like I mattered.”
Kelii Bibb, who was in the store Wednesday, took up cycling only last summer. It was a transition his body welcomed happily after “a lifetime of combat” characterized by years of practicing mixed martial arts and engaged in other physically taxing athletic endeavors.
He said the Kiels and their bike shop made that transition considerably smoother.
“My bike has given me this one issue, and I had to bring it back a few times,” Bibb said. “(Kiel) just went above and beyond, bent over backwards to help resolve this problem. He was just always cool about me bringing the bike back. It’s really quality service. I can’t believe they’re going to close.”
Kiel said the sentiment expressed by Annettes and Bibb is one he’s heard several times since he broke the news he and Julia were closing their doors.
“Some customers start crying, that’s kind of rough,” Kiel said. “The cycling community is kind of tight and small, and you have customers that only go to this shop or that shop. These people that come to me are devastated, they don’t know what to do.”
He added, however, that during the nearly two decades he’s spent on the island, Kona has always had two bike shops. While he doesn’t expect it to happen tomorrow, he believes someone in the community will jump at the opportunity to fill the market void the Cycle Station will leave in its absence.
He believes that to be particularly true because Cycle Shop isn’t closing due to financial reasons. In fact, Kiel said their numbers were up in the last year.
But now 50 years old, Kiel said working six days per week while Julia runs two businesses simultaneously has become tiring. Instead of continuing to pedal uphill, the two are looking to cruise a bit during the last stretch of their professional lives before retirement.
The first leg of a smoother journey will begin in May, when Kiel and Julia head to the West Coast for an 11-day, 868-mile ride from Los Angeles to Albuquerque.
Julia was never as big of a cycling enthusiast as her husband, but said marrying a former triathlete wed her jointly to the sport.
“If I wanted to do anything with him, I had to find something he did that we could do together,” Julia said. “I didn’t want to run and I don’t know how to swim, so I took up cycling.”
Still, once the shop is closed and following the trek from California to New Mexico, she plans to scale her cycling down from five days every week to perhaps three.
For Kiel, moving on from Cycle Station isn’t just about relaxation. It’s about getting back to his roots.
“I want to spend more time with my friends,” he said, calling back to a time when he and his classmates would ride their 10-speeds through Germany’s woods. “We were always outside. It’s like the old days when there was nothing else to do except (ride) with your buddies.”
