by Janet Smellie
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 30/97) - With orders pouring in from as far north as Arctic Bay, the guys at K & W Cycle are gearing up for another busy summer.

Ken Leonardis has co-managed the bike-repair business with Wilf Schidlowksy since 1988. The "W" in K & W taught industrial arts at St. Patrick's high school -- where Leonardis was a student -- and has been known as one of the city's finest bike doctors for the last quarter-century.

Leonardis says he not only learned from Wilf "everything I know about bicycle repair," but has been able to help build the business into the full-time spring and summer business it's become.

Along with offering bicycle repair, the shop is also the city's only authorized dealer for Norco mountain bikes.

"The season's only started and we've already sold 150 tubes already this year," Leonardis says, adding, "we're repairing between 20 and 30 bikes a day."

With an incredible stockpile of new parts, Leonardis says "it's getting harder and harder to use second-hand parts these days," due to the manufacturers always upgrading and changing them.

"We've gotten calls from Cambridge Bay, Hay River and as far north as Arctic Bay. We send a lot of parts out because it would cost too much in shipping for them to send the bikes to us," Schidlowsky says.

"There's never been a bike we can't fix, even one's that have been run over."

As for the hardest job facing the pair, it would have to be concocting a new cable for Rico Tranifer ("Mr. Long Legs"), whose home-made creation could be seen entertaining plenty during many a Raven Mad Daze.

"His cable was so long he was having trouble breaking so we made him up a 40-foot (12-metre) cable so his breaks would work," Schidlowsky says.

But repairing bikes isn't all they do. Both Schidlowksy and Leonardis will also be on hand this weekend to help out with the Bike Rodeo, an event run by the city's bylaw department to encourage bike safety for kids.

The duo is also running a bike-repair course expected to start next week through the city.