New bike shop opens in Prineville

Good Bike Co. offers bicycle tours, along with sales, service

By Joseph Ditzler / The Bulletin / @josefditzler

Published Nov 12, 2014 at 12:01AM

Check out Good Bike Co. online at www.goodbikeco.com.

PRINEVILLE — The new bike shop in town sells bike tours, too, and, because this is Central Oregon, beer.

James Good opened up the Good Bike Co. on 284 NE Third St. just a month ago, after moving to town with his wife, Dr. Natalie Good, in July from Ogden, Utah. Natalie Good works for St. Charles Health System.

Prineville made them feel welcome, James Good said, and people such as Woody Starr of the Central Oregon Trail Alliance and Crook County Commissioner Seth Crawford encouraged his plan to open a bicycle shop. The potential for guided road and trail rides in Crook County is boundless, Good said.

He also plans on organizing bike tours farther afield, to Bend breweries, Oregon wine country and Utah, and in conjunction with other services such as lodging and farm-to-table dining.

“Not one person has said, ‘Good luck,’ or, ‘This isn’t going to work here,’” Good said. “Everybody comes and says, ‘We’ve needed this.’”

Prineville has one other bike shop, Back Alley Bikes, at 311 NE Beaver St. Owner John Malpass said he and his wife sent flowers to the Goods when they opened the Good Bike Co.

“I’m a little, tiny maintenance shop, and I work on a lot of older bicycles,” Malpass said. “I don’t sell bicycles or lead bicycle tours or anything. What James is doing is a different business model than I’m doing.”

Good’s shop fills a vacancy in the local tourism economy, Crawford said. No other local business offers guided trail rides in the Ochoco Mountains, for example, he said.

Crook County has joined with Jefferson County and the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Indian Reservation to promote the area as River Canyon Country, a tourist destination, Crawford said. “We’ve been under-served by tourism promotion up to this point, and this is an opportunity to shine a light on some of those assets,” Crawford said.

He said Good impressed him with his background in outdoor recreation and his enthusiasm for opening his own business. Good started work at a small bike shop in his native Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he learned the basics of bike maintenance and customer service. After earning his business degree at the University of South Dakota, he worked for REI’s bike and ski shops in Seattle and Boulder, Colorado, and in quality assurance for Petzl, maker of climbing equipment, in Ogden, he said. He also guided rock climbers in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

“I bounced within the outdoor industry from bikes to climbing to skiing,” Good said. “I’ve been kind of pinballing around.”

All along, he said, he held on to a dream of owning his own shop. The sale of his and his then-fiancée’s homes in Ogden provided the capital to get started, he said. Start-up expenses included the building renovation, along with the requisite parts and tools for bike repairs and an inventory of bicycles. He carries Schwinn, Cannondale and Surly brand bicycles for rent and sale. Good is one of a handful of bike shops in Oregon with a license to sell beer and will pour customers a pint of Boneyard Beer’s RPM or Solstice Brewing Co.’s Better Off Blonde from the taps inside the shop.

He’s busy enough, he said, to plan on hiring someone next spring. In the meantime, he said, he lays out tour routes and rides his own bicycle whenever he gets the chance to explore Central Oregon.

“After living in five states in the last eight years or so, the riding potential out here, it’s endless,” Good said.

— Reporter: 541-617-7815,

jditzler@bendbulletin.com