On Time Bike Shop

Sometimes people know at an early age what they are going to be when they grow up. Gil Cournoyea figured it out when he was about 12 years old.

“I came home with some money and my mom wanted to know where I got it. I said I fixed this kid’s bike down the road, and his mom gave it to me.” Cournoyea’s mother verified his story, and a career was born.

Cournoyea recently opened On Time Bike Shop, located at 9205 Lexington Ave. N in Circle Pines, where he offers a variety of bike repairs in Blaine, MN, and will hold a grand opening on Saturday, April 8. Interestingly, this is actually the second bike shop he has opened on an April 8, on a Saturday.

That was exactly 22 years ago. “Somehow, someway, I’m fortunate. I’m lucky. I’m blessed,” he said.

Cournoyea, a resident of Circle Pines, has always had a knack for taking bicycles apart and putting them back together. He’s been doing that since the 1970s, “when things were a lot simpler than they are now. I learned how to work on bicycles before bicycles really became this thing they are today.”

Bicycles have evolved like everything else. “I was around before all this stuff (gear mechanisms and swiveling parts) was even invented, and I got to learn as I went along. There are schools to teach you how to do this, but nothing beats an education like experience,” he said.

His first full-time job out of high school was working at Forest Lake Cycle and Skate. Things progressed, and he opened his first store, Bike King, on Saturday, April 8, 1995, in Inver Grove Heights. It was about this time he started a longtime friendship with Wayne Durband, who was running Sunset Cycle in Circle Pines.

While operating Bike King, Cournoyea noticed that working on bicycles came easy to him and realized quickly after opening his store that it didn’t come as easy to a lot of people.

He kept his first store until 2012, when in a midlife crisis sort of way, he sold it to a longtime employee and ventured out “to get a real job,” he said. “I went through 9/11, I went through the last recession – do I really want to be an entrepreneur forever?”

Cournoyea went to work in the automotive industry and then on pontoons, in a structured job with employee benefits.

“I went from knowing everything about everything to not knowing anything about anything,” he laughed. He soon knew what he had to do.

He called Durband. “I need some therapy!” he said. Cournoyea went to work for Durband in the evenings after his full-time job was finished. That arrangement worked well for both of them for a couple of years.

Then came a sad day. Durband passed away suddenly on May 6, 2016. Cournoyea helped keep Sunset Cycle open for the rest of the summer for his customers, before Durband’s family closed the business.

It was time. “Everything seems to be happening on time right now. I have an opportunity to get back into doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” he said.

On Time Bike Shop will offer a full line of bikes and accessories from youth to adult sizes, along with repairs of all types, including used bikes in Circle Pines. Cournoyea recognized that the internet is a competition to be reckoned with, but noted, “The internet hurts the accessories part. What they can’t sell you on the internet is service, and they can’t repair bikes.”

Cournoyea considers himself blessed to have another opportunity to open a bike shop. He nodded upward, “God creates our path before we get there, and we just have to follow it when we get there. This has been a love, a passion.”