Dacks and Toga Active Life August Issue For Web

How Modern Road Cycling
Came To Glens Falls
The time a teenager’s wish, a businessman’s decision, and serendipity
all combined to bring a new kind of bicycle to the North Country.
The year was 1967, and young Jeffrey
Jacobs at age 16 was off to
a two week summer ski racing
camp in Aspen, Colorado. One afternoon,
he recognized a well-known ski
racer coasting on a 10-speed bike, doing
60 miles-per-hour coming down
the road from Independence Pass.
Jeff later realized that Jean-Claude
Killy, the triple Olympic gold medalist
in alpine ski racing, was training in
Aspen that summer. He was the guy
on the bike! Jeff made a mental note:
“I have to get one of those bikes when
I get home!”
While in Aspen, Jeff was training
for a ski race along with some of the
best junior and collegiate racers in
the country. He found out that many
of the elite European and American
ski racers rode lightweight, French
10-speed bicycles called Peugeot to increase
leg strength and stamina. Upon
10 | DACKS & TOGA activelife
By John Jacobs
his return to Glens Falls, Jeff asked
his dad to find him a Peugeot bike. At
the time, none of the area shops offered
anything of the sort. You could
get a Schwinn Varsity from Skelly’s
on Bay Street, but they weighed 45
pounds! Or possibly a Western Flyer
10-speed from Montgomery Ward,
which was even worse! The road bikes
coming out of Europe used high-carbon
frames and lightweight components.
The bikes weighed less than 25
pounds, and were great for going long
distances and climbing mountains
and hills. These were the bikes that
were ridden in the Tour de France, but
very few people in the North Country
at the time knew about that.
The story really starts with Jeff’s
parents, Tom and Marilyn Jacobs, the
founders of the Inside Edge ski shop.
In 1957 Tom had been the director of
the Steamboat Springs Chamber of
Commerce and managed Howelsen
You could get a Schwinn Varsity from Skelly’s on
Bay Street, but they weighed 45 pounds!
Hill, the local ski area and ski jumping
facility. He and Marilyn, now with
three young babies, decided he needed
a “real job.” He asked his father,
a paper machinery engineer who had
done some work for Lyman Beeman
(the CEO of the Finch & Pruyn paper
company) to see if he could land him
a job. Tom was offered a position selling
paper in New York City for Finch
& Pruyn, thus the decision to move
the family to Glens Falls in 1958. Tom
would travel every week to New York
City to open new accounts for the paper
mill.
But that didn’t stop Tom from moonlighting
in the ski business. Upon the
family’s arrival, he soon took on the
ski school directorship at Hickory Hill,
and later, in 1961 when the Brandt
brothers opened West Mountain, they
offered Tom the ski school and rental
shop concessions. This was the beginning
of what would eventually become
the Inside Edge and Reliable Racing
Supply.
In the mid-60’s, Tom and Marilyn
had moved their retail enterprise from
West Mountain to a location on Bay
Street. There was a bike shop at that
location that didn’t operate in the winter,
so the shop owner rented the space
for the Jacobs’ ski shop, which became
the Inside Edge. Soon after, the
bike shop owner decided to close his
business, creating the opportunity for
year-round operations for the Inside
Edge. Problem was, no one wanted
to buy skis in the summer! That fall,
faced with the knowledge that another
summer was around the corner with
rent and payroll having to be covered,
Tom knew something had to be done.
Jeff’s request for a Peugeot bike intrigued
Tom. So he decided that on his
next business trip to New York City in
July, he would try to locate the Peugeot
importer in Manhattan. He started
with the Peugeot car dealership in
Manhattan, and they informed him
that they didn’t sell the bikes. Fortunately
for Tom, the manager of the car
dealership knew the bicycle importer,
Franklin Imports, and gave Tom his
address in Manhattan. He entered the
lower level of the brownstone and met
the gentleman from France, who barely
spoke English. Tom asked him if he
could buy a bike, and the man said,
“No, you have to become a dealer.”
Tom’s reply was “Well, what do I have
to do to become a dealer?” To which
the man answered, “You have to buy
three bikes.” Tom returned home with
three brand new Peugeot bikes. Still in
their boxes were the UO-8, UO-18 and
their best and lightest road bike, the
PX-10.
Jeff and Tom managed to assemble
the bikes as best they could, and started
riding them. Jeff rode the PX-10,
The rumor had spread locally as well, and coming
out of the woodwork were a couple of local guys
who actually had knowledge about cycling.
and Tom the less expensive UO-8 while
the rest of the Jacobs family shared
the UO-18 “mixte bike” (a smaller
frame with reclining top tubes that
Marilyn and the younger, shorter kids
could actually straddle and ride). Later
that fall, knowing that spring would
soon come and summer income would
need to be generated, Tom called the
importer in New York and placed his
order for “20” to be delivered in May
the following spring. Word started to
get out that the Inside Edge had ordered
these lightweight road bikes,
and folks started to express interest in
them through the winter.
Tom was sure the importer had taken
his order for 20 bikes, but showing
up in May was not 20 bikes. It was a
20-foot container of bikes! In disbelief,
he and his manager Steve Dew
off-loaded the bikes from the container
and contemplated just how they were
going to sell over 200 bikes in one season
so that he could pay the invoice!
Tom quickly got the word out through
his ski racing connections throughout
New York and New England that the
Peugeot bikes had arrived at his Glens
Falls store.
The rumor had spread locally as
well, and coming out of the woodwork
were a couple of local guys who actually
had knowledge about cycling.
Jack Sturgeon was a plastics engineer
who helped develop the first extruded
catheter. Jack was a bike racer and
knew just about everything there was
to know about cycling. Joining him
was Mick Hinnoff, an insurance executive
at Continental and former collegiate
cycling national champion at
Yale. Mick was as equally expert as
was Jack. That summer, in their spare
time, Tom hired Jack and Mick to help
assemble the Peugeot bikes and do
bike repairs. He even convinced them
to teach a few local teens, Tom’s sons
Jeff and John, Steve Kvinlaug, Wes
Bishop and Tom Eletto how to properly
ride a road bike. The teens were also
quickly mentored by Jack and Mick on
bike repairs and assembly. The boys
learned how to build and true wheels,
adjust a derailleur and perform general
bike repairs and maintenance. Soon
after, Tom hired Huck Davies to manage
the bicycle effort, even expanding
into a Schenectady location the following
year! Somehow, the Inside Edge
managed to sell just about every Peugeot
delivered that spring. The invoice
got paid and the Inside Edge became
a true bicycle specialty shop, a perfect
complement to being a purveyor of alpine
and Nordic equipment.
In November of 1969, Tom was
scheduled to board Mohawk flight
411, a flight from LaGuardia Airport to
Warren County Airport with a stopover
at Albany. For some reason he missed
his flight. Flight 411 crashed near the
top of Pilot Knob Mountain, killing all
14 remaining passengers and crew.
For Tom it was an epiphany. He soon
after resigned from Finch & Pruyn, after
which he and Marilyn put their full
time effort into their growing ski and
bike shop.
Much excitement was generated by
Tom in those early years of road cycling
in the Glens Falls area. In the 70’s the
Inside Edge sponsored a weekly time
trial series on West Mountain Road,
and the shop became known by some
of the most elite riders in the US. US
road racing champions like Stan Swain
of Manchester, VT, John Howard and
Bob Allis would occasionally attend
the time trials, and ultimately in 1976
the US Olympic road trials were held
in Lake Luzerne where the team for
the Montreal Olympics was named.
Many people in today’s local cycling
community got their start at the Inside
Edge, including Rick Chiasson of
Rick’s Bike Shop, Steve Fairchild of
The boys learned how to build and true wheels,
adjust a derailleur and perform general bike
repairs and maintenance.
Grey Ghost Bike Shop, Andrew Cappabianca
of The Hub in Brandt Lake and
Fred Patton of Trexlertown, PA (Fred
would go on to become an internationally
respected timekeeper and cycling
official). Ben Serotta would spend a lot
of time at Inside Edge looking at frame
designs. He would go on to establish
Serotta Bicycles and become an internationally
acclaimed custom frame
builder and bike manufacturer.
So, somewhat by accident - along
with purposeful intention - the first
lightweight road bikes came to Glens
Falls, and as they say, the rest is
history!
Photo of vintage Peugeot PX10 by John
Paul, Courtesy of Victor Miller, Vic’s
Classic Bikes, Louisville, Kentucky. Photo
manipulation by Active Life magazine.
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