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Two-wheel treasures Bike racer-turned-mechanic builds business in barn – Red Barn Bicycles of Hamilton, MT

Smoke rises from the stove pipe on a red barn off Sleeping Child Road. Inside, Chad DeVall practices his craft amid dozens of bicycles representing the last 75 years of two-wheeler evolution.

A stay-at-home dad by day, DeVall builds and repairs bicycles in the evenings in a rustic building where the Schmidt family once milked cows. And while his business, Red Barn Bicycles http://www.redbarnbicycles.com/home.html , sits off the beaten path, more and more customers find their way to his shop each year.

"I’ve been building bikes for 13 or 14 years," he said, "but this is my fifth year doing it out of the barn. Almost all of my advertising is by word of mouth, but even so, sometimes it gets pretty busy."

A former bicycle racer, DeVall said he competed in literally hundreds of races before his son and twin daughters caused him to reassess his priorities. Adorned with contestant numbers from his most memorable races, his workshop wall attests to his penchant for peddling.

"That one was in Illinois, this was in Texas, that race was in Kansas City, … there’s Pennsylvania," he said pointing to the numbers, some caked with mud. "Working on bikes and racing them is really all I’ve ever done."

Originally from Lincoln, Neb., DeVall met his wife Tracy there when she was in school at University of Nebraska. They married in 1996. He’d already worked in a number of bicycle shops, and when she went to Kansas City to attend medical school, he found employment at a giant bike shop there called Bike Source.

email: [email protected]

call: 406-369-0487

by ROD DANIEL-Ravalli Republic

Full Story: http://www.ravallinews.com/articles/2005/04/20/bitterroot/40-business.txt

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