Hosting Rides for Local Recovery Centers

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Episode 15 – Bicycle Retail Radio

Tue, 8/18 10:40AM • 32:20

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

ride, bikes, facilities, working, golf cart, bicycle, rail trail, bike ride, people, recovery, program, community, treatment facilities, life, riders, cyclists, cycling, business, dealer, day

SPEAKERS

Fred Clements, Rod Judd, James Moore

Rod Judd  00:10

You are listening to Bicycle Retail Radio brought to you by the National Bicycle Dealers Association.

Fred Clements  00:16

So, welcome to the NBDA’s bicycle retail Radio Podcast. I’m Fred Clements. I’ll be hosting today and I’m here with James Moore, owner of Moore’s bicycle shop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Hi, James. Welcome. 

James Moore  00:32

Hey, Fred. Thank you.

Fred Clements  00:33

Yeah, sure. So, a lot of bike dealers have interesting and varied backgrounds before they got into bike retailing. James, from you, I know that you’ve been a teacher. You’ve worked in law enforcement. You’ve been an elected city official. In your local town. You’ve worked on animal rescue turning around a local animal rescue shelter, and you’ve been a bike shop owner and, and board member for the NBA past president of NBDA I think you and I probably first actually physically met sometime in like 2008. I want to say, and you served as president in 2014 and 15 what was very difficult times for the NBDA and, and even more difficult for James who during his term as president during difficult times, he lost his son to an overdose. very tragic. And that led to your new mission James, of working in drug rehabilitation activism. I know you’ve worked on getting trying to get Narcan in police vehicles. And you also I believe, play the tuba and other brass instruments have I captured James Moore In summary,

James Moore  01:46

that’s pretty much it. I’ve been blessed to have lived a Forrest Gump life for it.

Fred Clements  01:51

Okay. All right. So could you give us a little background as to I mean, obviously, you’ve referenced the tragic loss of Jeffrey. What was your What What got you engaged with your usual act itself in the recovery movement, I’ll go back a little further

James Moore  02:07

than that and just kind of start. I was a third-grade music teacher for six years in South Texas. And I reached a point where I’d been Yankee Doodle as many times as I cared to, and I wanted to get back into my passion of cycling. So we relocated home to Mississippi where we opened our shop in 84. And it’s always been a family shop, including having my children working in the shop as they were growing up or just being a part of the shop. And I have an older daughter, Jennifer, and then my younger son Jeffrey, they’re about six years apart. And Jenny is working in the shop. Now she is the manager and she will probably take the reins over before too long. But Jeff was going through some difficult times in junior high. And as he went into high school, we noticed that the substance use was beginning to take control. He persevered through high school, went to junior college for a few years, and got a certificate through Junior College. And the whole time he was still working with the bike shop. But again, we noticed his life getting more difficult. So the best way to put it. And Jeff came to us in 2014 and asked for our help. So we got into a doctor who recommended a detox program. And he completed that tried living the sober life on his own by going to meetings and meeting with counselors. But he found that he needed more than that. So we entered a 90-day inpatient treatment program. And I remember on one of our visits on a Saturday when we were allowed to spend four hours with him. He made the comment says that they took us to the wire today and I actually worked out I haven’t worked out in a long time and it just made me feel so good. And that comment really stuck with me. But after 60 days, he was evicted from the treatment program due to violating their tobacco policy. It was a tobacco-free policy and he was a smoker. Eight days later, he relapsed. And died from a heroin overdose. But always remember that comment and how good he felt about himself on that visit about just simply having worked out. And I began to educate myself about this disease of addiction of the fact that it is a disease and not a moral failing, I made some connections in town, began speaking at the two local recovery facilities that we have. And I tried to take my experience, basically, as what I’ve used at that time as a failed parent to go in and speak to these facilities to the Family Programs and the family members that were supporting their loved ones, to try to let them know that maybe there’s a better way to address this than what I did. In my research and reading recently, I ran across an article by a young man named Andy. And the article was basically five reasons that cycling saved my life. And he was a recovered alcoholic drug addict who had gone through the detox relapse cycle. And then one day he discovered cycling, and it’s what caused his long term recovery to stick. And so I wanted to do more for these local programs than just go and speak a couple of times a month. So I created a cycling experience that they bring their clients to once a week. And I take them out on our rail trail for anywhere from an eight to a 10-mile ride for the beginners up to a 30-mile ride for some that have had a few rides under their belt. And the whole purpose of this is just riding the bicycle for the sake of riding a bicycle, letting them experience something maybe they’ve not experienced, letting them see something about themselves that maybe they have lost through the years of addiction. And it’s I expected it to be well received. I had no idea how well it would have been received by the clients as well as the two facilities that I work with.

Fred Clements  05:54

And that’s great. So could you describe I mean, so some of what I think we want to do here is getting into some of the details as to what it is you do how you do it how you go about it so that other dealers you know may learn from your experiences to not just working with people in recovery but others because you have a pretty unique way of going about it? You sent me a photo of a golf cart mounted with bike racks Would you mind sort of summarizing what it is you do and how you go about it? Certainly.

James Moore  06:27

The longleaf trace Rail Trail actually has a connecting spur that comes right to my store right to my warehouse. So it was just an easy fit for me to allocate 15 Fitness bikes I store them in the warehouse. The facilities bring their clients up to 15 at a time 830 in the morning. I have the bikes out. helmets, water, Gatorade, homemade brownies are cooked ready for our first break. We get on the bikes and we would just ride from the store to the trailer And go out the distance, we would usually have a stopping point where we would rest for 30 minutes. And that would have either myself do a very short talk or a guest come and speak to us, again, the experiences about the ride, not about the lecture. But the first thing I noticed on our first rides was, some of the people in these programs are fairly fit, some have been cyclists, but you have some that are still literally detoxing as are in the program. And so they’re showing up to ride a bicycle for the first time in years. And some of them still are very weak physically. So I needed to find a way to accommodate cyclists who have extremely different levels. And one of the facilities, after I started the first ride, said, we’ve got a problem. Some of our clients don’t get to go on the rides because they’re not physically able to ride and they feel they’re being discriminated against. So can you accommodate them? And I thought, Well, yeah, I’ll have I’ll get a golf cart. That way. I can take a couple of folks out that just want to go out For the outdoor experience, but the more I thought about it, I bought a really nice golf cart, I modified it to be able to carry five or six bikes. And so it’s a seamless operation. Now everyone starts out on bikes. And as some of the weaker riders began to raise their hand and say I need some help, or I need to get on the cart, it takes us 30 seconds to stop, throw their bike on the back of the cart, load them up, and we just keep on going. So it really accommodates everyone regardless of what their level you know, physically might be. And I’m also able to take that one or two individuals occasionally that just can’t ride a bike, but still won’t that same outdoor experience. Is it as far as actually getting the program going? There were some hiccups at first. I’ve got a really good insurance carrier with the business that I’ve had for years. And this carrier covers shop rides. But when I ran this by my agent, he says, that doesn’t quite qualify as a shop ride. Because you don’t have a business relationship with these people. We look at this as being a little riskier, so we can’t cover that under your policy. But he directed me to a company that specializes in providing coverage for group cycling events. And so I’ve got a policy now, that’s very inexpensive. It cost about $2 and 80 cents per person per ride, to give me the liability coverage that I need. The entire cost of the rides that come out of my pocket would be about $5 per person, per ride. And while I’ve never charged anything for this, because I get so much joy out of bringing these experiences to the folks that are at this particular point in their life. If I’m if I were to do more lives than the two a week that I’m doing one for each facility, I would have to probably charge and both facilities have invited me to put a proposal forward. Because after the rides that we’ve done now over nine months, the counselors see the benefits the facilities and their programs see the best in enhancing this and maybe even expanding it. So it is a business model if the person chose to put a monetary aspect into it. And the facilities right now that are offering Rehab Treatment cost a lot of money, you may spend $7,000 for 30 days, you may spend $47,000 for 30 days. So the treatment facilities have the funds to incorporate a program if a dealer wanted to get into this just strictly as a business prospect.

Fred Clements  10:28

So logistically, when you’re on a ride with this mixture of experienced in inexperienced people, some of whom are not really physically ready to take any significant bike ride, you have a golf cart for support. Do you have a second staff person because someone may be off the front to keep the pace manageable or is the how do you actually organize the ride

James Moore  10:51

itself? Yes, good question. I always bring along one of my staff members for both mechanical support and just to give advice As far as proper cycling technique, we give us some basic instructions pre-ride, we talked about the places where we’ll be riding on public roads, our process for coming up to intersections and stop signs. I take a bike and demonstrate how to get the proper seat height. All of the bikes are equipped with quick-release seats. And I have a circular 10th of a mile pave test track at my store. So once we fitted the bikes, explained how to use just the basics of gears and brakes. I’ll have the riders load up on the bikes and make some test laps around the track. And we’ll take just a minute and watch as they go by for proper leg extension and just any other things where they may be having trouble. But usually, it’s Jenny that I take with me my daughter on these rides for the technical assistance. She also will be the one that rides at the very last of the group if I’m up on the front with the golf cart, and there are times when the golf cart will take the rear and I’ll let her take the front to cover the intersections and major road crossings that we do. So we work really well as a team. And we just communicate by phone. If we get stretched out a bit and someone needs to be picked up, I can swing back very quickly and load up on the cart. I guess you’re on a rail trail I’m ignorant. I assume there’s no problem taking a golf cart a motorized golf cart onto a rail trail. Well, oddly enough, we may be one of the few rail-trails in the country where when we created this rail trail, it was always the intent to open it up to people with disabilities or to senior citizens to use at the benefit of a golf cart. We don’t have many carts on the trail and there’s a permitting process so you can’t just show up with a golf cart. You do go through and get a permit through the management that oversees the trail.

Fred Clements  12:44

As you mentioned, for the riders that you yourself through the store, you discussed in detail the insurance helmets, you provide liability waivers, something typically a bike ride would is that involved Absolutely.

James Moore  12:57

And each ride when riders are brought here in a van by the facility. They’ve already filled out the waivers. So it’s a very quick process to get them unloaded off their van, take the waivers, assign them to bikes based on hype, make the quick adjustments of the seats, supply them with water, Gatorade, and then we’re off. So it’s a really smooth process that gets us on the trail quickly and then how long

Fred Clements  13:21

so the recovery center drops the people off at your store as you described. You get them on the bikes, and it’s about 15 riders you limited to

James Moore  13:30

we have a maximum of 15 riders. That’s the number of bikes that I have in this dedicated fleet. And then maybe some days we may have only eight or 10 riders show up, but some days we’ll have the full 15 just some of the expressions that I’ve heard Fred is worth talking about. On our first ride back in August. We got a group of ladies and we have just gotten off the connecting trail onto the main Rail Trail. And we were leaving town getting out into the wooded area and This lady looks around and in all honesty, she just says, Well, I haven’t been using drugs when I could have been riding my bicycle. And on the same ride another lady after we’ve gone out into the wilderness remote area, so, so this is that outdoors they’ve been telling us about. And the responses is just so overwhelming to see the effect that just simply I mean, just a simple bike ride has all these folks at this particular point in their life. We have some people from one of the facilities that are straight out of prison, once they complete a sentence, they are required to go to one of these treatment facilities for a period of time, because they’re still under the orders of drug court. And we had a really big guy, a tough guy. I mean, a lot of tattoos. He rode the bike so hard. I mean, he would just really get into it. And we stopped for a break. And he looked at me and said, you know, on our facility, we have a gymnasium and our counselor say go to the gym, play basketball work. Get on the treadmill, you know, it helps you with physical fitness. It helps with stress. And we do that. But this is different. This is exhilarating. I love being out here. I love doing this. And I could tell that this is probably something that he’s going to want to do once he leaves that facility where he may not have access to the gym. And it was just something that gave him a lift to a spirit that I don’t think working inside the gym with. We had another young lady that was riding out and this was her first ride. And after we have written for a while she needed to get on the golf cart for a break. And she was sitting next to me and she says, you know the last time I felt like this was I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. This is amazing. And, and just recently I go into the facilities several times a month and speak as a guest lecturer. And one of the young men that had been there for going on 90 days came up to me and said, You know, I’ve been here for 30 days and I knew that day that he was going to be kicked out, or I was going to leave ama. But they convinced me to do my first bike ride. That bike ride saved my life. I would not be in this program today. We’re not for that one bike ride that I took on the day that I thought was going to be my last day here. And it just turned everything around for him. My wife is also a counselor at one of the programs. And Jan came home one day and was just things were not going well. I said, Did you not have a good day? She said I had a lousy day. I said, Well, can you tell me what it is? Yes, she mentioned the client by name. He was in a foul mood all day today. So Oh, that’s too bad. Can you tell me why? Yes. He didn’t get to go on the bike ride. And I thought, what a testament to success if missing. The bike ride really wrecks your day, that they’re just so many comments like that, that indicates what a positive impact. They’re just getting out into a group into the fresh air and sunshine can have on an individual who’s in the process of trying to rediscover who they are and rebuild their life. Yeah, that sense. Any feedback from the recovery center leadership that you could share? Absolutely. One thing that I insist on is that there be someone from the center who accompanies me on every ride. I don’t want them to use this as a babysitting service. But I want the staff to be a part of the program so they can see what’s happening on these rides. And I had one of the clients, one of the clinical directors come up to me after the first couple of rides and said, You know, I see things in my clients on these rides that I never would have found or discovered, sitting in a circle inside of a classroom. And so some of the staff members who come have been the biggest proponents of continuing and even expanding these rides. That’s great. Any hope that you can sort of plant the seed within some of these people that you maybe you’re making Some lifelong cyclists. That is what I hope will happen with this podcast read. Every every bicycle dealer that I have met in my 35 years of business and my pleasure of serving on the NVDA board and as President, every bicycle dealer wants the best for their community. I’ve never found a bicycle leader that was just in it for the money, but they all have a bigger vision of wanting to leave something behind, that benefits the community. And we’re in the midst of this opioid epidemic that is killing it’s killed over a quarter million of our citizens in the last four years alone. There is no community that’s not been hit by this. I don’t care where you are, how urban or how to rule. Every community is being hit by this epidemic, every demographic within that community. So even if a bike dealer has not been personally impacted, or his family has been spared this, if there’s a safe place to ride a bike within your community, and there is a treatment facility within an hour’s driving distance, I urge you to consider implementing a program like this. And I would be glad to speak to anyone personally by phone or by email, if they would like to get more details on how to go and set a program like this up from a business standpoint, because of how well received this program is, both facilities have encouraged me to send them a proposal for charging for these just as if I were an independent contractor. I don’t want to do that at this point, because I get so much joy out of it that I really love doing it as a volunteer. But I also would like to be able to offer more than just one ride every other week to this clinic and every other week to that clinic. I’d like to be able to have every person ride at least once a week, but that would involve me hiring more people to run the business during those half days that I’m out of the business. So if I expand it out will present a profit to be paid to provide the service. And, again, going back to what it cost just to spend 30 days in one of these facilities, the budgets are there to provide quality programming for their clients. If any dealer wants to look at it from purely a business standpoint, the proof of the fact that this has a lasting impact is that even though I did not start this program with hopes of selling any bicycles, because so many of the people in the programs in this area are from out of state, they’re from all over the country. I’ve had four individuals now that as soon as they’ve completed their program, they’ve shown up at my shop and says, I want to get a bike just like the one I’ve been riding on your rides. And so I’ve had four or five sales that were direct results of someone getting really enthusiastic about bicycles.

Fred Clements  20:54

What style of bikes are you riding on these rides?

James Moore  20:57

Well, what I like to go with is what I call a This bike or a flat bar road bike, they’re the bikes that have approximately the 700 by 35-millimeter wheels 60 to 75 psi. So they’re efficient rolling. But they’re not so small that if you go off the edge of the pavement, which happens pretty frequently, that you take a spiel trying to ride back upon it, the bars are low, like a mountain bike, rather than upright like a hybrid. So the client gets more of an upper-body workout than they would if they were just going along on a cruiser bike or a handlebar hybrid. And that seems to be the bike that most people are comfortable on. I have upgraded the seats to a little softer seat because these folks aren’t really on the bikes long enough to get conditioned to them. So they want that softness from the start. And these bikes have just worked out really well. For this purpose. We can do 10 miles for a starting lab that’s five miles out and back. But as we get into some groups that have done Repeat rides, we’ve gone up to 30-mile total ride. I was hoping to be able to continue this year-round. And it’s working out well so far. So for the colder weather, I plan a different route. That’s a shorter ride. It’s about an eight-mile round trip. It takes us down through part of the rail trail but also through our city downtown. And it terminates at a park on the river. And so the shorter rides when we get down to the park on the river. I carry along some cookstoves, marshmallows, Hershey bars, and graham crackers. And we’ll do hot chocolate coffee and make some s’ mores and sometimes build a fire. So we’ll do less distance. And we’ll do a slower speed when we get into the weather down around in the 50s. But it looks like it’s going to be a year-round endeavor that we can do here.

Fred Clements  22:48

I noticed the weather in Hattiesburg today was 44 degrees. So you answered my question already is what do you do? I assume they’re just wearing jackets and regular clothes that they would have on a day to day,

James Moore  23:01

their lives, right? They are and because these people come from sometimes as far away as, like New York, Washington State, California, they didn’t bring a lot of winter clothes. So I have a large compartment on top of the golf cart. And in that compartment, I have an assortment of sizes of windbreakers rain ponchos. And I’ve got a large assortment of cotton gloves. One size fits all and even has a few little toboggans that I can put out, you know when the ears get cold. So we’re well equipped to help them acclimate to the weather. If it’s 50 degrees or above the rides on, we’re not afraid of a little chance of rain because

Fred Clements  23:43

all of our rides have some rain shelters about every 10 minutes by bike. And so you mentioned that you sold some bikes through your business. Are you getting any sort of visibility within the community through your shop and obviously you’ve been you’ve had pretty high visibility within the recovery community but hasn’t They’re been had there been other impacts on your business,

James Moore  24:02

I could have a lot of positive PR in that regard if I chose to. But because I rail-trail is heavily used, and when you see a group coming down the rail trail towards you, with a golf cart with flashing lights and bikes up on top, and you get 10 or 15 people behind riding somewhat wobbly, if I were to do any local PR, it would come out on the coverage as Mr. Moore is taking people out who are in recovery from alcohol or drug addiction. And I want to protect these folks’ identities. So I don’t want them to be recognized easily as folks that are drug addicts or alcoholics. So I’ve not done any local PR on this. My hope though, is that I can get the word spread on a national level because this program would be so easy to replicate elsewhere and it has so much potential to be life-changing. There are some people that we meet on the trail because when we stop under a pavilion and we have A brief lesson or a brief discussion. Others are within earshot, and they understand what’s going on. And Fred, these community members that are out on the trail all the time, will call me later, or come into my store and say, I see what you’re doing. That really means a lot to us. We’ve been touched by addiction in my family, take this money and put it into whatever it cost you to do this. Or if you ever need anyone to come out and help call me. If I can provide anything, let me know. So people who ride on the trail have figured out what we do and why we’re doing it. And I’m just overwhelmed to want to be a part of it.

Fred Clements  25:36

Yeah, it makes total sense because of the what’s still I think, would be called a stigma against in some ways, people who are in recovery or hadn’t occurred to me that the anonymity and the privacy are really important. So that’s something I hadn’t thought of. So

James Moore  25:51

when my son died, Fred, I was driving around in my car, and I had a picture of Jeff and myself that I carried with me, and such as a sense of anger came over me one day that had we not as a society had this stigma towards addiction. Jeff might have come forward years earlier to for help when help would have been successful. And I got to thinking about Emmett Till’s mother. Emmett Till was the young black man that was killed in the Mississippi Delta for allegedly whistling at a white woman. He was badly beaten, and his body was thrown in the Yazoo River and was not discovered until about three days later when he was pulled out of the water. And the sheriff called Mrs. Tail who was in Chicago and said, we found your son, and she wanted him sent home on the train for burial. And the sheriff said, but he’s in really bad condition. You just want to be sure that you know that and she decided to have an open-casket service because she wanted the world to see the brutality that it takes in the son’s life. As I’m driving around with this picture of Jeff and myself in my car, though, you know, I would like to put that up on a billboard in town, so that we, as a community could see the damage that our attitudes and that our wrong thinking has had on not just Jeff, but all the people who have died before him. And at the end of the day, I went to a local billboard company, and I handed the owner of the pitcher, I said, what would it cost to put this up on a billboard, and put the message simply, addiction is a disease, not a moral failing, seek help. And my friend looked at the picture, and he says, if you’ll just pay for the printing of the billboards, anytime a slot becomes available, I’ll put it up. And over the next couple of years that billboard showed up all over not just our town, but all over the region. And it opened so many doors and it started so many conversations. That’s what I’m trying to do is to change the way that we look at those with this disease. We need to look at them as recovery being about not a bad person becoming good, but a sick person becoming well.

Fred Clements  27:57

Yeah, a little kindness goes a long way. So it goes a long way, it occurs to me that this sort of, you’re obviously doing it for personal reasons. And, you know, right from the heart, potentially, I would see for other stores that may not be near a recovery center or, you know that this could be adapted for other groups of people who haven’t written, you know, the transformative power of the bicycle is well known to those in the industry. Could you see it working with others? You can’t think of what one would be but you beginning cyclists have some way the You seem to have a pretty good formula down.

James Moore  28:34

I think this would work. Great. If you went to local businesses that had 15 or 20 employees and offered this experience as a team-building exercise, you know if someone were to come to me and say, I’ve got a great thing that your employees probably have not done in years. It’s a turnkey operation and for X amount of money, we can give them the time of their life over a morning or an afternoon, I would jump at that. So I have thought of approaching somebody businesses, hospitals, universities, and so forth, and offering these rides just as an out in nature bicycle experience, I could charge for that. And I could use the proceeds and profit from those rides to further enhance the recovery rides that we’re doing. But I absolutely think that if you set out to design a process where you can deliver the absolute best cycling experience possible that there would be a demand for that. There’s also a program in our community called youth challenge that takes place our local military base, and it’s for young people who have dropped out of high school, encountered some trouble with the law. It’s a second chance for them to get their GED, and it’s a six-month program, where they go to a military-style encampment on a military base. And it’s a very disciplined program where they get their GED. And those kids they’re brought to basketball games are brought to the College Board. ballgames that’s a group that also may approach about incorporating them into some bike rides. So yes, if you look around your community, and you create something that’s just a stellar experience, I think that there’s a demand for it.

Fred Clements  30:13

James, you mentioned or volunteered to

James Moore  30:16

have communication with any dealer that wants to chat more about this. Maybe I’ll give your email addresses. As a way of contacting James Moore, it’s Mooresbikes@gmail.com. That’s it. How to get to James, Hattiesburg, Mississippi is in the Central Time Zone, I guess incorrect Is there anything else that I haven’t asked her that is on top of mind for you that you’d like to add here if someone is interested if they will start by sending me an email, then I will give my cell number and we can have a live conversation which would really speed things up and would be more than happy to talk to someone about the nuts and bolts of how to put this kind of program together and also how to approach the local treatment facilities to win their support because it’s a lot of trusts that these facilities place in me when they show up with a van load of people and unload them onto my property and put them in my care for the next three hours. But I’d be glad to help in any respect. And just on a personal note, Fred, I want to thank you again for all of the support and commitment that you’ve given to the bicycle dealers over the years through your leadership of the NBA, and your continued leadership through programs like this podcast.

Fred Clements  31:29

Well, thank you. That’s very nice. So yeah, so I guess we’re pretty much done here. Unless there’s another comment or something. But are we done, James?

James Moore  31:37

That’s it for me forward to speaking to anyone that would like to implement a program like this.

Fred Clements  31:43

Sounds great. Well, thank you for taking the time out today. And hopefully, this is an idea that will appeal to some others and it certainly seems to be working in your town. So thanks a lot. Thanks for the opportunity to read. Okay, bye-bye.

Rod Judd  31:55

Good luck. This has been bicycle retail radio by the National bicycle dealers. Association. For more information on membership and member benefits, join us @NBDA.com

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After spending 12 years as a writer and editor, Fred Clements worked as executive director and vice president for the National Bicycle Dealers Association for 28 years. He then moved to Interbike in a retail relations role, later transitioning into consulting. He enjoys helping the NBDA with podcasts from time to time and rides about 3,500 miles each year on his road bike.

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The NBDA has been here since 1946, representing and empowering specialty bicycle dealers in the United States through education, communications, research, advocacy, member discount programs, and promotional opportunities. As shops are facing never-before-seen circumstances, these resources offer a lifeline. Together, we will weather this. We at the NBDA will not waver in our commitment to serving our members even during this challenging time—but we need your support.

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