Meet Rody Walter, the man behind Groovy Cycleworks in Wooster, Ohio

I park my car next to an old, rusty Volvo and shut off the engine. Step outside and shudder from the Ohio cold. Look around, searching for movement inside the curtainless tall windows of a house that looks like it belongs in a New Mexican desert. Nothing inside; no movement. 

I’m looking for Rhodes “Rody” Walter, the man behind Groovy Cycleworks. Days earlier we had communicated through email and he gave me his address, along with a picture of the house. “First house on the road, shop is behind the house.” 

I spot the shop and walk toward it. At the door, I knock. Inside I hear the hum of machinery and I peer through a window and spot him. Protective eyewear, hoodie, jeans and Birkenstocks, his head down and his eyes fully attentive on the work. The knocks go unnoticed, so I walk inside. 

Immediately I’m greeted by the smell of metal shards, shop dust, grease. Not grungy. The shop is well lit and things are clearly kept tidy. Rody looks up and smiles. He shakes my hand and thanks me for being here. He tells me to make myself at home as Tallulah — his Australian Shepherd puppy — licks my pant legs. 

So this is where it all happens. Rody’s domain. His dojo. I look around with a face like Daniel LaRusso in Mr. Miyagi’s garden.

 He continues to work as I explore. I see posters of Groovy bikes on the walls. A dusty copy of “Machinery’s Handbook,” the 22nd edition, sits on a knee-level shelf — long mastered by this machinist. I see a Groovy Cyclework’s neon-lighted clock. Tools of the trade: a caliper, large drill bits. Race bibs. A welder’s mask. Naked bicycle frames. The sleek sheen of a finished rigid fork made of titanium.

Rody has been making bikes since 1994. Today, his frames live with their owners all around the world, in 29 countries to be exact.

Then, he turns off the three-phase electrical system that powers the shop so we can hear ourselves think and speak and approaches me. Unassumingly, he shakes my hand again and asks me about myself. He asks me about writing. My job, my love for cycling. Later I learn this part of him — this inquisitive part of him — comes naturally to the machinist. My answers give this meeting context for the machinist, this artist, and soon, we’re off into the interview. 

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PROFILE
Rhodes “Rody” Walter
Age: 52
Family: Yep. Two kids — one that lives in New York City working as a housing litigator and races within the Alley Cat realm and another who is finishing up grad school in West Virginia. A wife. Christi. 
Occupation: retired fire fighter. Bike builder. Owner of Groovy Cycleworks since 1994. 
Road or mountain bikes? Mountain. 
Miscellaneous: Dog lover. Birkenstocks enthusiast. “Gotta be comfortable, right?”

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Before we go any further, a confession. I didn’t read about Groovy Cycleworks or Rody before I entered his dojo. It didn’t occur to me that I should have until about four questions into our interview. I had visited Groovy’s website and read the “About” page and scanned the images from cycling trade shows he’d attended in years passed, but I didn’t think: “Hey, I wonder if any national media has ever written anything about this dude?” I mean, he lives in Wooster, Ohio on a dead end street and has zero social media presence. At first glance, online at least, it seems the dude doesn’t want the attention.

Maybe he doesn’t. But let me tell you, he deserves it. 

After our meeting, I went online to see if there were any traces of Groovy Cycleworks in the annals. There are some, but not as many as he deserves. A Google search of “Rody Walter Groovy Cycleworks” produces a couple hits. Mostly they’re business profile aggregation websites. But if you dig enough, you’ll find that Walter has been a frequent flyer of the North American Handmade Bicycle Show. One of his bikes won Best in Show in 2015.

Rody and his “Best in Show” cargo cruiser at the 2015 NAHB. (NAHBS/Nathan Roberson)

The win got him on some radars, most notably INSP’s “Handcrafted America.” Walter’s shop was featured in the show’s first of three seasons in 2016. Amy Wagner, the show’s host, stopped by the shop, toured downtown Wooster a bit and rode a Groovy mountain bike through Vulture’s Knob for the episode.

When you watch the episode, you see a carefree, T-shirt donned Walter telling the story of how Groovy Cycleworks all started to the host who calls Wooster a “small city masquerading as a small town.”

He tells Wagner, a bubbly actress who knows about as much about cycling as Will Smith knows about self-restraint, that he and his wife spent their honeymoon riding a tandem through Vermont. 

“And she wasn’t very happy about that,” he told Wagner, a smile forming on his face. “Because the bike we were on had no suspension. So every little bump transferred right back up to the bike into private areas that aren’t meant to be punched like that.” 

Eventually, he found Bill Grove of Grove Innovations out of State College, Pennsylvania who agreed to take a stab at building his blueprint sketch of a full-suspension tandem. 

Side note: Bill developed the “bear trap” pedals for BMX bikes back in the late 1970s. During our interview, Rody pulled one of them out from a cabinet. “Back in 1978, these pedals were $72. Now, they’re about $5,000.” A collector’s item that he received as a gift and one he’s vowed to never sell. 

Rody drove out to Grove’s shop the last weekend of build. He described it to me as an old auto shop.

“It was full of World War II machines. Gritty and grungy. But there were beautiful bikes everywhere,” he said. Inspired, Rody said he begged Grove to let him apprentice in the shop. He wanted to learn how to do what he’d done. 

“He told me no. ‘I don’t have time to hold somebody’s hand and team how to do this.’ I respected that. By the end of the weekend, I was loading up the frame to take it home and he asked if I was serious.”

In this moment, Rody was around 21 or 22 years-old. The recently married man had begun a job as a firefighter in Wooster. I can imagine this was one of those life moments one looks back on later and wonders “what if?”

“I told him, ‘absolutely.’ So he said, ‘can you work hard and keep your mouth shut?’ 

“I said, ‘Well, I can do one of the two, you get to pick.’ And that started a two-year apprenticeship. After that, I started building on my own,” Rody said.

Here’s what gets lost in this origin story though. Rody and his wife lived in Ohio. Grove Innovations was in State College — a four-hour eastward drive. Rody had a full-time job as a firefighter. They didn’t have kids, but the logistics for making something like that work, even for idealistic newlyweds, are … plentiful. 

Rody tells me his job as a firefighter had him working three days on, four days off. When he agreed to the apprenticeship, he traded shifts so that he could take as many of those shifts in order to get seven days off.

“So when I’d have seven days off, I’d come home, change and drive out there. And then I’d camp out behind the shop. After a while, Bill took pity on me and invited me to sleep on his couch. But I’d always make sure I had a week at a time to go out there and work.”

Looking back, Rody doesn’t see this part of the story as particularly stirring. 

“It was just what I had to do at the time to make it work,” he said. 

The “it” for him and Christi, his wife, was to build a life in which they could afford to have her stay home and raise children. And that’s what happened. In 1995, the first of two kids came for the couple. And Rody kept fighting fires and building bikes to pay the bills.

When Rody shared this with me, I told him I thought it was inspiring to know he drove out to State College for two years while working full time and being newly married. I mean, it’s kinda like one of those storylines you find in movies, really. Here’s how he responded: 

“You know, Dillon, life has a way of presenting opportunities and it’s up to you as an individual whether you choose to grasp them or not. And that was an opportunity unlike any I had ever had before. And if I didn’t avail myself to it, we wouldn’t have had what we had for 19 years … it was a short-time sacrifice we made with intentionality in order to achieve longterm success.

“It’s unfortunate that, today, it’s easy for kids to look at what their parents have and wanting that — without recognizing you can’t get it right away. It takes intentionality and work to make it a reality.” 

Rody at his home shop in Wooster, Ohio.

Here’s the reality. Rody is not just a firefighter-turned-machinist who’s been making bicycle frames from the ground up for 30 years. He’s an artist. One that is fueled by a passion for riding his bike and sharing that passion with as many people as he can.

Riding bikes has always been an integral part of Rody’s identity, he told me.

“I’m going back to my early BMX days, talking like fourth through sixth grade — riding around the neighborhood with your friends. That was the vehicle that allowed you to expand your wings and move beyond your yard, you know? We built dirt jumps in the vacant lots between houses and different things like that.”

BMXing around the neighborhood with his friend eventually morphed into competitive BMX racing, which led to motocross, which led to criterium racing. (He left motocross when he “realized how quickly I can become injured.”

He said he got heavy into road racing for a while. He participated in Race Across America and many others.

“When we started having kids, all of that type of activity slowed down and my focus was more on what I could do around our home,” he said. “Mountain biking became the primary activity because I could do that and I didn’t have to be gone three or four days.”

In 2005, Rody got involved in Vulture’s Knob, the local MTB hub that used to be Wooster’s landfill. It’s been a 7ish mile loop through 125 acres of woods along the Killbuck River since 1992. The unusual trails feature tons of twists and turns, doubles, a suspension bridge, painted signs with trail names like Oh SH#!, punchy climbs and fun descents.

Rody says it’s the state’s longest standing privately owned MTB trails system.

Through the years, his involvement with Vulture’s Knob has led to 12- and 24-hour races, cyclocross an Oktoberfest held out there and other fundraisers to keep the trails thriving.

Rody riding some MTBs.

I left Rody’s house that day moved.

Moved by the man’s determination to manifest his love for cycling into something that all of us can now enjoy.

Groovy’s story started with dirt jumps in the neighborhood to racing to a honeymoon trip on a tandem with his wife in Vermont that inspired him to fix an annoyance.

It then took finding the right person to help him, a young dude with no welding or machining experience, to build that bike for him and his wife. When he found him, he let himself imagine a different life. And then he committed to making that vision come alive.

Rody, keep doing what you’re doing, man. The world needs more of the likes of ya.

There is a palpable energy associated with the innocence of youth.  A sheer desire to experience the unknown of adventure, the thrill of speed, true surprise without prior expectation, all without knowledge or fear of consequence.  It is an energy that encourages a child to just go for it and to absorb what may follow.  Cycling bundles all that together in a single activity, regardless of age.  

It is one of the rare life experiences that is repeatable, but always unique, for each ride unveils new aspects of life around us to be discovered.  It redefines our relationship to nature, our fellow riders, even revealing the evolution of who we are as individuals.  Though the medium changes; diving through dense wooded single track or weaving between cars through a crowded city intersection, the focal point that remains constant is you and your bicycle, a synergistic relationship.  The need to experience this becomes ingrained in our spirits, encouraging a lifelong passion.  I can't imagine NOT seeing the world, or myself, through the blur of two rotating wheels. —Rody answering the question "Can you describe the joys of cycling?”

Oh, if you’re curious … you can get a Groovy Cycleworks bicycle for $6,000 and up. It depends on what you want, of course. But for that price, you get a bike fit, fabrication of the frame, bar/stem, cranks, fork, seatpost, hubs etc. etc., a detailed paint job and the joy of getting to know a cool person.

Check out his website.