The journey is over.
On Sunday, Bicycle Bob walked into his namesake Old Town Goleta store for the last time as owner.
Come Monday, Bob “Bicycle Bob” Zaratzian will slow down, drop his stand, and jump off the metaphorical bike he’s been riding for nearly 40 years.
He’s heading in a new direction: retirement.
“It’s been really hard to shake off all that, but I’m 70 now and I’m kind of tired,” Zaratzian told Noozhawk on Saturday.
He has a 5-month-old grandson and two other grandchildren, twins, born in March.
“My wife said my job description had just been rewritten,” he said.
bike bob’s
Most importantly, he plans to return to the hobby that originally inspired him: cycling.
“Life has been very busy for us, especially over the past few years with a lot less riding, and we’re really looking forward to getting back there,” Zaratzian said.
In the past 40 years, he and his wife Julia have only taken one summer vacation.
“We need to catch up,” Zaratzian said. “We want to ride. We want to relax.
“We want to travel and spend as much time with our grandkids as possible.”
On Saturday, Zaratzian — as if he were cycling greats Lance Armstrong or Marianne Vos — greeted admiring customers who had learned the news from his email blast and posted a giant sign and letter on the front of the store .
They are saying goodbye to a man whose product they admired, but also loved for his commitment and dedication to his craft.
“He will be sadly missed,” said longtime client Nicholas Cornell. “He made so many people enjoy the world of cycling, access to bikes through them and everything they did for the community.
“They really helped Old Town Goleta grow and grow as a cycling community.”
For Zaratzian, the bicycle business is in his blood. His father owned a store in Orange County. As a young man, Zaratzian had the opportunity to buy the store from his father, but he chose not to.
“One day, my dad came in and said, ‘You know what, I’m done, if you don’t want this store, I’m going to sell it,'” he recalls. “I said ‘no thank you, I never want to work in the bike industry again.'”
“If you worked for my dad, you’d probably say the same thing.”
On the last day before his father sold the store, Zaratzian’s life held him back like a headwind.
“This pretty attractive young blonde girl walked in with her mother, and I ended up selling them a couple of bikes and inviting her out for a bike ride,” he fondly recalls.
He followed the young blonde to UC Santa Barbara, and a romance arose. He found a job working at a local bike shop, and their relationship developed further, leading to their marriage a few years later. He and Julia lived together and raised their children in Santa Barbara.
Zaratzian also fell in love with the South Coast and, like his father, decided to open his own bike shop.
“I realized I could do it and do it well,” he said.
Bicycle Bob’s location in Old Town Goleta is the seventh physical location.
The original shop was 800 square meters, and he was the only employee. On his last day, he was in a 9,000-square-foot store with 15 employees.
When he came to the end of the road, Zaratzian couldn’t hold back tears as he remembered the things he would miss: customers, colleagues, friends.
Some of his employees have been with the store for over 30 years.
“Sorry, I got emotional,” Zaratzian said. “That’s the hardest thing to leave, the people who work here. That’s the hardest thing for me, to leave these people.”
When he wants to leave, he calls the store his destination.
“It’s my safe place, and if everything goes right in the world, it’s a very, very comfortable place for me,” Zaratzian said.
All employees are paid the same as Trek, Zaratzian said.
He said he will also miss interacting with customers, helping them choose a family bike, or get it repaired, or simply share their bike journey.
“It’s a great cycling community,” Zaratzian said. “The cycling community is full of great people.”