For the past eight years, Chris Lane has been the sole proprietor of ROARING MOUSE CYCLES, which takes its name from the 1959 Peter Sellers movie, The Mouse that Roared. In this satire, an imaginary tiny nation declares war on the United States and hopes to lose.

I want to know Chris’s beginnings with a bicycle.

He is from the North East coast of England, close to Scotland.

“The bike was too big. I failed. It scared the crap out of me.”

Two years later he moved to New Castle, a working class town with ship yards, coal mines and steel mills. The local kids had bikes and he did not.

“I grew up dirt poor. The kids went around and got parts and between us we made a bike and I taught myself to ride.”

There were many paths from the streets in England to his shop on Irving Street in San Francisco. Chris came to America for post graduate study at Harvard and received an advanced degree in Architecture with a specialty in Urban Design.

He came to San Francisco and spent a decade as an Architect and experienced ennui. In 2000, he and his girlfriend, Penny also a cyclist, took a year off and travelled all over the country as well as the Middle East and North Africa.

“Time enough to get my head straight and figure out what I wanted to do.”

Upon his return to San Francisco, he heard that his local bike shop was for sale and the owner was a friend.

“I vowed never to own a bike shop. ‘There’s an old adage, If you want to make ten million dollars in the bike business, start with twenty.’ The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was what I wanted to do.”

The tag line for ROARING MOUSE CYCLES, “Expert service. No attitude.”

Chris explains his business philosophy.

“We don’t advertise. We’re word of mouth and we look after our customers. I might not remember your name, but I know your face and your bike.”

They serve the entry level cyclist, the racing cyclist and the commuter: people just trying to get to work on their bike.

This past year, Chris has seen a significant increase in people using bikes as their primary transportation.

“I don’t think it was the gasoline prices, it’s a mindset that we have to change our ways.”

ROARING MOUSE CYCLES has a high performance racing team that performs on a professional level, but they’re a little different than other racing teams.

“It’s a grassroots team; it’s a community of mutual support as opposed to trying to win trophies. We car pool together, support and cheer for one another and there’s a requirement to volunteer for SFBC (San Francisco Bicycle Coalition).

Two women on their team have reached national podiums. Sarah is a professional in the 24 hour solo mountain biker category and Beverly, is an expert level mountain biker.

Joys of the business?

“I’m connected to a community. I’ve made many, many friends thru the business, particularly thru our racing team, several have married one another.”

Chris contrasts the life of a bicycle shop owner and an Architect.

“It’s a fast moving responsive business. In architecture, you can work on a project for several years of your life with twenty other people’s hands on the steering wheel. It’s a frustrating and inertia filled business, where it’s often political over what you think is right. In a small business, you make wrong decisions and it comes back and bites you immediately. And you make right decisions and you get rewarded, it’s a benign dictatorship.”

The challenges of the business?

“Long hours. It’s difficult to take time off and finding time to ride is ninth on the list. The current economic climate makes it difficult to get lines of credit.”

His desk sits prominently in the middle of the shop, facing the bikes, the street and incoming customers.

“I’m a strong believer if you’re running a business, you should be there.”

We both share a fondness for this neighborhood, which doesn’t require a car or a cycle.

“It’s a town within a city. You know who’s who from the homeless to the big guns. There are small businesses, not a lot of chains, the food and UCSF.”

Having had a background as a Health Care Architect, he’s impressed with UCSF.

“They have the last walk-in clinic in the country.”

If you don’t need the ER or Urgent Care, you can go to the UCSF clinic in the morning, and get an afternoon appointment.

I’m curious about Chris’s impressions of both the Academy of Sciences and the deYoung Museum.

“ A Renzo Piano and Herzog de Meuron facing each other. My favorite architect and someone I don’t quite understand.”

Greatest accomplishment?

“Getting my wife to marry me.”

He tells me the story. They got engaged halfway through their trip and were scheduled to be married in September 2001. In a two week period,

“I broke my femur, my Mum died; I bought a house and squatters moved in and then 911. We postponed it." They did finally marry and Penny the girlfriend is now his wife, Penny Lane. They have a four year old son. A photograph of Jack on his bicycle sits on the wall to the right of Chris’s desk.

I have one last question.

What can cycling, teach you about yourself?

“There’s always someone faster and someone slower, in all parts of life. It’s humility. You can’t bluff it.”

NEXT WEEK: MEET JOHN, OWNER ALADDIN RADIO, SINCE 1946.