By David McKay Wilson
On a chilly morning in late February, Eric Marcos ’86 is pedaling
his lightweight carbon-fiber bike along the winding roads of Westchester County. It’s
what Marcos, one of suburban New York’s top bike-store owners, calls “a good
day”—he’s
riding 35 miles over the hills he biked as a teen.
Then he spots a “Shared Roadway” highway
sign with a bicycle on it. It reminds him of his life with his wife, Ilene Waxman Marcos ’86.
They met at Dickinson in freshman philosophy class.
“That sign’s so emblematic
of our lives,” says Marcos, 40, who as
a freshman lived in the same Morgan Hall room that Ilene’s father, Ron Waxman ’61,
occupied 25 years earlier. “We’ve been on this path through life together,
and cycling is this endeavor we share.”
At their shop in a renovated 100-year-old
building in Mount Kisco, N.Y., the former Dickinson English majors cater to the suburban
cycling crowd—families looking
for junior’s first two-wheeler, and serious recreational riders and racers investing
in high-tech bikes that can cost as much as a used car.
Eric is the technical guy,
overseeing the repair shop and sizing cyclists for their custom-fitted bikes made from
titanium, aluminum, steel or carbon fiber. Ilene, with an M.B.A. from George Washington
University, handles the finances and does most of the ordering and sales.
One of them
leaves the store each day to meet their son, Tyler, 6, when he returns from kindergarten.
They still close the store for a week in October and February to take vacations.
“You’d
think after 11 years we’d get better at that,” says
Ilene. “But when it’s your own store, we want to have at least one of us
there.”
They began working together in a Connecticut bike store, shortly after
they were married in 1990. Three years later, they bought Bicycle World, a once-profitable
bike shop that had fallen on hard times. By 1998, sales were so strong that they purchased
the building on Main Street.
Running a small business, with a seasonal staff of seven
to 15 employees, is a challenge as they face competition from other shops as well as
mail-order and online outlets. Ilene keeps the store’s shelves filled with the
latest bike outfits and accessories, like the carbon-fiber helmet called the Atmos that
she’s certain will fly off
the shelves this year.
“They will be hard to get, and we’ll sell everything
we can get our hands on.”
Eric, meanwhile, has developed a reputation as someone
who has mastered the art and science of custom-fitting a bicycle to the rider. For
serious riders in Westchester, he’s the bike guru for a growing cadre of middle-aged
cyclists looking for the best bike they can buy.
A bicycle is a quirky biomechanical
puzzle that works most efficiently when a bike’s
geometry matches up with a cyclist’s physiology. So Marcos can take an hour or
more with customers, measuring range of motion, inseam and reach, while also learning
about their injury histories. He’ll then watch customers on a stationary bike
to observe their pedaling style.
“It would be easy if you could just apply a
mathematical formula,” says
Marcos. “But you can’t do that with the human body. We are all marionettes,
and our strings are on the inside.”
When his calculations are complete, Marcos
hopes to have assembled a bike that offers comfort and performance.
“Those two
things can coexist,” he says. “You are juggling four or
five variables, and if you do it right, you can get it all.”
While serving the
region’s recreational enthusiasts, both Eric and Ilene stay
fit. They still ride a tandem bike, with Eric in the front, and Ilene behind him in
the stoker’s seat. They hike and snowshoe in the woods behind their home in Somers,
N.Y. Eric rides up to 5,000 miles a year, including last year’s trip to the Pyrenees
with cyclist Frankie Andreu, one of Lance Armstrong’s former teammates.
His most
exciting moment was on a steep descent down the Tourmalet, on a route that cyclists
consider hallowed ground because it’s part of the Tour de France. Marcos
was flying at 50 miles per hour when he had to dodge some wild horses in the road.
“My
front tire blew out as I went under an overpass, but I hit the gravel and was able
to stay upright,” he says. “It was a wild ride.”•
David McKay Wilson, a New York journalist, writes frequently for alumni magazines
around the country. |
