Valley Bikes

Since I moved to Salinas and work a few blocks from home, I decided to start riding my bike to work. I noticed a bike shop a couple of blocks away from my house and thought to myself «that might come in handy pretty soon.» «Pretty soon» came one day when I got my chain stuck down in the wheel between the cassette and the spokes. I noticed right away how friendly and knowledgeable the owner, Kenny, was. He took care of me and got me back up and running in a day. He even fixed a few other issues my bike was having and tuned it up for me. All for a very fair price.
Well, almost two years later he has a new (much better) location, and he has helped me out of numerous jams, and I even bought my next bike from him. He gave me a good price (I researched it everywhere online and otherwise and couldn’t find it lower). I love my new bike! And I wouldn’t take it anywhere but to Valley Bikes for service.

So I’m a new rider to the Salinas/​Monterey area, and I was looking for a good shop to help out with repairs that were above my level on my road bike. Just before moving to the area I purchased a carbon fiber road bike for a deal online. The bike is great, but I was having repeated issues with flats, broken spokes, and the brakes were really loose. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. I’ve been riding for a couple of years and usually do my own minor maintenance, but this was over my head.
I took the bike to a largest bike shop in So Cal where I lived just before moving here and paid 125 to have them fix the problems, but nothing changed. I saw this shop on the way to work, and figured I would give it a shot and see if they could help me out with the problem. It was Thursday afternoon and I was really hoping to have it fixed up by Saturday morning because I wanted to go riding with some friends, and I am so glad I brought my bike in to the shop.
By late Thursday the owner, Kenny, had figured out what was causing the persisting problems and figured out the wheels the guy sold me with the bike were thrashed. He also figured out that the guy screwed up setting up the brakes so they were almost useless and that’s why they weren’t stopping like they should. I’m thinking to myself, «Well there goes my weekend ride.» But I was wrong about that, Kenny hooked me up with a sweet pair of reasonably priced wheels that he could get by Friday and had the bike fully tuned by 5:30. He even managed to shave a pound off an already light bike.
I’m still trying to find where to go to get good Indian food in Salinas, or good Thai, or where a cool place to get a beer is. However, anytime I have problems with any of my bikes I’m bringing them to Kenny at Valley Bikes. Great service, and great people. Thank You Kenny.