For five decades, biking enthusiasts in and around St. Charles have supported the products and services provided by The Bike Rack, a mom-and-pop shop currently owned by Hal Honeyman, 69, of St. Charles.
While the shop offers a wide range of racing, hybrid, mountain and children’s bikes, Honeyman and his team have quietly established a niche customer group whose lives are being changed through the use of customized adaptive bikes for those with disabilities.
“We started working in recumbent and adaptive bike sales about 30 years ago. That’s when we started doing the adaptive stuff,” Honeyman said recently at his store at 2930 Campton Hills Road in St. Charles. “We’re a little unique in that we offer a large number of bikes for people with physical limitations. It’s a big chunk of what we sell.”
The catalyst for Honeyman’s passion for offering customized adaptive bikes began decades ago after he and his wife had triplets, one of whom is a son named Jabob, now 33, who was born with cerebral palsy.
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“For us it started at the shop with our son. He’s a triplet, and his two sisters were looking to start riding around the age of 3. We’re a biking family, so how do we get out there?” Honeyman said. “It set us on a search to find a bike produced out of Canada called Freedom Concepts and we got one for Jacob and with help from his physical therapist he was able to ride successfully.”
As far as the adaptive bikes offered at The Bike Rack, Honeyman said “most of the bikes are made by somebody else, but we’ll take them and mix-and-match pieces.”
“For example, (in late March) we fitted a bunch of bikes. We might do single-side controls because someone had a brain injury and only one part of their body works, or we do special foot plates so their feet don’t fall off and hit the ground,” Honeyman said. “We do a lot of modification of existing things. We get bikes from about 10 manufacturers and do the modifications, but our whole premise is anybody can ride a bike.
“Whenever a child or an adult walks in … we look at that person and say, ‘What can we do to make that person successful,’” Honeyman said of selling adaptive bikes. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re going to use what strengths you have and key in on that so you can ride and be successful.”
His son, Dane Honeyman, fits customized adaptive bikes for many of the kids who come in to the shop. He said many of his clients either have cerebral palsy or Down syndrome.
“From the time someone comes in, we can usually figure out what is needed in anywhere from a half hour to an hour, depending on how involved it is,” he said. “Sometimes it goes smoothly and goes great. Other times, we have to install a part and see if it works.”
When asked about what is the most difficult part of outfitting a customer with an adaptive bike, Hal Honeyman sidestepped the entire mechanical issue and immediately cited funding instead.
“The fitting part, for us, is relatively easy. We can look at somebody really complex with a lot going on, and get them dialed in pretty darned quickly,” he said. “The hardest part is the funding. A lot of these families have been through medical and financial disasters. We help them apply for grants that will help.”
Honeyman and his team also provide help through a not-for-profit they started known as Project Mobility.
“Some bikes are done through our non-profit, Project Mobility, but more often, we’ll work with families and try to coordinate. You got to put the hat of the grant writer on sometimes,” he said.
Honeyman said the grant process “goes great with kids but with those over 21 years of age it gets a whole lot harder.”
“If you’re a veteran, many times the VA will cover it plus there’s hundreds of veterans’ charity groups that will help, but if you’re an adult – not military – there are very few groups to help fund that. That gets a lot harder,” he said.
Honeyman said that Project Mobility was founded in 2003 and that the original purpose “was to put on camps and clinics.”
“What we started doing was to go to a population of wounded war veterans. We did a number of trips to Walter Reed Hospital,” he said. “We’d haul a bunch of bikes out there – a specific group of bikes based on who we were going to see and we’d go to Walter Reed, pull (the veterans) out of a hospital bed and put them on a bike and take them for a ride. Most people don’t know that’s even possible.”
Honeyman’s work with veterans has also led to multiple trips to the White House where he says he has met every president from George W. Bush to Donald Trump.
For Honeyman, though, working to help those with a disability enjoy biking is a reward in itself.
“Everybody – kids, adults, anybody, you name it, once we get them on a bike, the look on their face. Their eyes light up, they’re smiling, they’re happy,” he said. “That happens all the time and never gets old.”
David Sharos is a freelance reporter for The Beacon-News.