I have never owned a car and have spent the last 44 years sharing the magic of the bicycle and the freedom it provides with others.
For me it all started in 1978 when I was 20. My brother and I rode our bicycles across the United States, then spent the next year touring through Western Europe. This trip helped me realize that the bicycle is an amazing tool! In 1979 I rode back to Portland and have been working in the bicycle industry ever since.
In 1981 I started working at the Bike Gallery in Portland, Oregon as a mechanic. I began to work with the crude fitting tools and limited systems that were available at the time, really just a box of tools and charts. It was a paint by number system that measured the body and used those measurements to determine your fit. Sometimes it worked, but just as often it was really off because the body is more than just a simple measurement.
What I really learned from working with this tool is that people like to have someone work with them on the fit of their bike.
I continued to learn more and began to ride more and race my bike in regional races. After an accident that broke my left femur and hip, I began to work with a local physical therapist who was also a really good yoga teacher. I started taking yoga classes with Julie Gudmestad to help with the healing, and I began to learn a great deal about my body and how it moved, especially on a bike.
Eventually I started teaching yoga, and my bike fittings greatly improved. With the knowledge of the body that yoga provides, my work and my cycling became much more fun and successful. My hip healed and I continued to race both on a national level and a international level.
I continued to grow the fitting services at the Bike Gallery and trained others at the Bike Gallery’s 6 stores. In 1996 I approached Ben Serotta about the idea of creating a fitting school to educate his dealers. This evolved into a 3 day class covering all the details of helping a store set up a fitting service and begin to understand the biomechanics of the body.
My goal was to reach more of the bicycle industry with the idea of learning more about the interface between the body and the bicycle. I taught seminars for about 6 years and enjoyed meeting and helping bicycle dealers around the country, and in 2006 I finally got Trek Bicycle Corporation on board.
After racing for 20+ years I still have an addiction for riding. I have never owned a car and continue to ride about 5000 miles per year. Riding continues to help me learn about the interface between the bike and the body. Yoga keeps me flexible in both my mind and heart and brings it all back to a good place.
Brian Howard – Apprentice Bike Fitter, Future owner
I have been teaching Brian Howard for almost a year in my fitting process, passing along what I have learned over the years. I approached him and picked him as my successor in the business because he has the traits I think are needed to do bike fitting well. I am confident in his abilities now and that he will become great at the craft as the years progress.
Brian has been passionately learning how to fit bikes to bodies using my process and taking in as much bike fitting related knowledge as he can find. In addition he has been learning anatomy, biomechanics and yoga. Brian possesses a natural “helper personality” that drives him to help people feel comfortable and powerful on their bikes, thereby enjoying their bicycling activities and experiences. He has been fascinated by bicycles and the melding of human and machine since he was old enough to ride a bike. He started following professional bicycle racing in his early teens when most boys were picking their heroes from football and baseball. Brian started working in bike shops in the mid ‘80s at the age of 18. At that time he started racing locally, competing on both the road and velodrome into his 20’s. Brian has worked in the bicycling industry for over 8 years as a mechanic, a manager, a sales person and also has experience in manufacturing high-end bicycle components. In other words, “all-things-bicycle” has been a passion for Brian for almost his entire life. After working as a website developer for over 21 years his passion for cycling brought him back to studying under Michael and learning bicycle fitting. Over the years Brian has enjoyed participating in organized group rides such as Reach the Beach, Seattle to Portland, and others. He continues to ride his bike almost daily for transportation, fitness, and fun.
Brian and I are working toward him taking over Bicycle Fitting Services in the fall of 2026 when I will retire.