News

New owner keeps Dover Cyclery rolling

By Jeff Mcmenemy
Foster’s Daily Democrat
DOVER, N.H. — Michael Beshey has been working in the bike business for more than 30 years.

Then about a month ago, the long-time employee became the boss when he bought Dover Cyclery at 12 Chestnut St. downtown.

“What I got was an offer I couldn’t refuse at that time,” Beshey said with a smile as he stood behind the counter of his business on a snowy Tuesday afternoon. “The offer came up about three months ago, and it happened about a month ago officially, and we’ll go from here.”

Dover Cyclery, which has been open about 12 years, offers a variety of bikes, gear and repairs right at the downtown location.

The bike business is still “very good,” Beshey said Tuesday, and he expects it to get better “with all the new building that’s going on downtown.”

“There’s going to be hundreds of people coming on board who aren’t going to want to drive around downtown when they’re so close they can ride,” he said.

Beshey got his love of bikes after being stationed at Pease Air Force Base back in 1980.

The south Georgia native said he met the woman who became his wife and they still live in the same house.

“I picked up a bicycle and got into it and got into racing for quite a few years,” Beshey said.

He still rides four to five times a week and acknowledged “getting around on a bicycle still to me is amazing.”

“I can go and do this with just me powering it,” he said. “I love to see other people pick it up and get the bug.”

In terms of what’s new in the business, Beshey pointed to what he called “an adventure bike or gravel bike.”

“You can still do roads, but you can do dirt roads too, and you can do trails,” he said. “You can do bike packing on it too, which is getting to be a big thing now.”

Bike packing is “when you actually load it up with bags … and people will go out on tours for three or four days.”

“I had a buddy last year who did a big brewery tour around Vermont, they’d hit two or three places a day,” he added.

Dover Cyclery also offers the fat-tire bikes with bar mitts that you can ride in the winter, he said Tuesday.

“We’ve got studded tires for the ice and snow,” he added.

To purchase a basic bike, he estimated it would cost $400 to $500, but he has also built custom bikes that sell for more than $10,000, he said.

“I did one last year it was about $13,000,” he said. “There are more expensive bikes out there depending on what you’re looking at and what you want to do.”

For kids and teenagers, some “still like BMX bikes, but most of them get on the mountain bikes,” Beshey said.

He believes more teens are turning to mountain bikes as the number of trails around the Seacoast increases.

“Road bikes are still a little more rare, but you can get your kid on a mountain bike and as soon as they jump on it, they can go for a ride,” he said.

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