Master Mechanic Recycles Bikes & Tours The World | Good Work

Matthew Fox's shop only sells used bikes--providing excellent, affordable service while helping to reduce consumer waste. He also tours entire countries when his bicycle mechanic business is slow. Recycles Bikes Frederick, MD https://recyclesbicycleshop.com/ YouTube/wizard onthetrail (Nick and Matt's Iceland adventure documentary) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_4izGMs37s Watch Matt perform a tune-up and talk business https://youtu.be/wuuLqWm-AV8 My name is Matthew Fox, and I own and operate ReCycles Bikes in downtown Frederick . This just kind of makes sense, there's used car dealerships all over the place but not so much for bikes. I get a lot of people that walk in and they're usually I want to say 50 percent of people are brand new to cycling and they're looking to dip their feet into it. That's kind of the whole idea of my business model is a lot of people would get sticker shock going into a new bike shop. The entry level bikes are starting to look more like $700 $800 $1,000 dollars. In the spring of 2013 I ended up picking up a bike at a yard sale and I think for $125 dollars I cleaned it up, took a couple pictures of it, put it on Craigslist for $250 the whole time thinking to myself I just wasted $125 dollars. Like, this isn't gonna work. Sold it that same evening that I listed it. $125 dollars is a big deal to a sophomore in college who typically has to work 13 or 14 hours to make that much. There was still not that trigger of like this is a business idea. It wasn't until I turned over a few dozen bikes that I realized, if I really upped my mechanical skills then there's this whole way way way more inventory out there that could be picked up for way less because it's not currently in rideable condition. I actually took a step back from selling on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace to double down on my hours in the shop, taking advantage of the fact that they have thousands of bikes coming through a year. And then I think it was late 2016 I ended up making a name and a website, ordered some business cards on Vistaprint, and started treating it more as like an organized thing. The next year in 2018 I did Japan and South Korea, And then that week out I'm like 'nobody in Japan speaks English' according to this Google Search that I'm doing right now seven days before. 'What's gonna happen if I get sick or I need help?' Google Maps behaves differently in different countries. So I did New Zealand next. The thing that was strange about this was I did it in January 2020. So halfway through this trip I start hearing rumors about COVID, and didn't think anything of it. And I was searching and I found that there were 8,000 cases of COVID worldwide, and I sent it to my dad and I said, 'please stop worrying about this, I'm going to be fine, it's no big deal.' I don't know if he remembers that, but maybe he'll see that on this video and say, 'it was kind of a big deal.' I flew back early February 2020 and I guess things really kind of hit a boiling point about 30 days after that. There was a period of time where I was very seriously considering doing a global 18-month trip. In fact, when I signed my first lease, the timing on that was such that that's what I was going to do on the tail end, which I've not told too many people that. But I definitely decided against it. I think if I was gone for 18 months that would actually take more from me than it would give me because I would just- there'd be too many things I'd miss back home. Did you have a path? Yes. OK. I had a path, and I had a month-by-month, and I had to do a ton of research on like, 'OK, where- what's going to make sense?' You kind of have to suffer at some point because it's like there's some things you just can't do. Like Australia in Peak summer--you can't bike across Australia in peak summer. Well, I mean somebody probably has, but I wasn't planning on doing it. I was gonna go East because of the prevailing winds  globally tend to be more of a tailwind. And I was going to start by going across Europe, Turkey, the Caspian Sea, the 'Stans, and then kind of horizontally across China, and then down through southeast Asia, ending in Singapore. I was gonna fly from Singapore to Perth, across the southern edge of Australia, and then I was undecided on if I would repeat Japan or New Zealand or just fly from Sydney to Los Angeles and then finish the trip from there. But it was going to take probably about 15 months, and that's if nothing went wrong. I think I mostly got the idea from watching too many YouTube videos. There's a guy named Ed Pratt that did about that route--and he did it on a unicycle if you can believe that. Bryce: I cannot. Matt: But yeah, I could literally talk about trips like all day. Mumbai, India, Delhi, Manila, Jakarta, Tokyo, Megacities, Megacity, TDC, Organic Farmer Farming, Barack Obama gets baby to stop crying, Hasan Minaj Correspondents' Dinner, Kinshasa, Los Angeles, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Washington DC