Power Plus Cycles

The shop I opened two weeks after La Palma closed

A Legend Bike Co. shop page · primary source: Bill Ryan

At a glance

Opened 1986, by my recollection — two weeks after La Palma Cycle Center shut its doors
Location Southern California, in the Cypress / La Palma / Anaheim corner of Orange County
Owners Mine. The exact ownership paperwork is not in the public record
Known for The heat press in the back room — TECH jerseys, team shirts, and favors for half the scene
Predecessor shop La Palma Cycle Center, owned by Turnell "Tuni" Henry and Richard Schaeffer

Two weeks after La Palma closed

Here is how I remember it, in my own words: "When I, Bill Ryan, opened up our bike shop, we called it Power Plus Cycles... We opened Power Plus Cycles in 1986 after La Palma Cycle Center, where I worked with Turnell Henry, Tommy Brackens, Kevin Hull and Sean McKinney, shut down."

I want to be careful about two things in that sentence, because they get mixed up all the time.

First, La Palma Cycle Center was not my shop. It was owned by Turnell "Tuni" Henry and Richard Schaeffer. I worked there. That is the whole of it. I was on the floor and in the back with Tommy Brackens, Kevin Hull and Sean McKinney, and it was one of the best rooms in BMX to be standing in at that age.

Second, the year. As I put it later: "I may have been off on the year, but we opened Power Plus Cycles 2 weeks after La Palma shut down." The two weeks is the part I am sure of. When La Palma closed, there was a hole where a shop used to be and a group of racers with nowhere to go, and I did not want to wait around. Two weeks. That is the firm fact. Whether the calendar said 1986 or something close to it, I would not swear to in a courtroom.

Rob Lynch thought I copied his name

The name caused a problem right out of the gate. "Rob Lynch was very mad, as he thought I was trying to copy his name, which was not the case at all."

Rob Lynch ran Peddlepower, over in Orange, and his main company was Power Racing Products — the outfit that built the Privateer frame. So when a kid he knew opened a shop with "Power" on the sign, Rob took it personally. He was not shy about saying so either.

It was not a swipe. Rob and I went back further than most people knew. Years before any of this, he and I worked together in shipping at SE Racing. He is the one who taught me how to fill out international shipping documents — a skill that has paid for itself a thousand times over in the decades since. I was not trying to take anything from him. I was trying to open a bike shop.

For the record, the Peddlepower name traveled a straight line before Rob had it: Steve Rink started it, Jeff Bottema had it from 1981 to 1983, and Rob Lynch had it from 1983 on. Rob died in 2015.

The heat press in the back room

The thing that made Power Plus Cycles worth writing about was not the inventory. It was the press.

I had started TECH BMX Pants at fifteen, in my bedroom at 6912 Tahiti Drive in Cypress, in 1984. By the time the shop opened, TECH was supplying pants and jerseys to S&S, S&M, Redline, Haro, the L&S team, the Boss team, some Peddlepower riders, and a long list of others. All of that jersey work needed a heat press, and the heat press lived at Power Plus Cycles.

"Billy Griggs, Jon Agnew and I used that heat press to make T-shirts, jerseys — it was always making something special." Billy Griggs and Jon Agnew were in that back room as much as I was. If you raced in that part of Orange County in the mid-eighties, there is a fair chance something you wore came off that platen.

The part that still makes me laugh

Rob Lynch sold TECH pants at Peddlepower. Same Rob who was mad about the name.

And he had his own heat transfers made up for his jerseys — Power Racing Products jerseys, Privateer jerseys — but no way to put them on a shirt. So he would drive over to my shop and borrow my press. "Rob had his own heat transfers for his jerseys but had no way of putting them on, so we let him borrow ours to use at our shop."

He would set up, run his batch, and leave. And every single time, we would find Peddlepower decals stuck all over our bathrooms. Every time. That was Rob. Around 1986 and 1987, Peddlepower was the number one bike shop team in the nation, and the man was going to make sure you knew it even in the restroom of a competitor's store.

I never scraped them all off.

What the shop actually was

Power Plus Cycles sold bikes and parts like any shop did. Tubes, tires, bars, cranks, the usual. Plenty of shops did that better and bigger.

What it really was, was a workroom. A place where the jerseys got made, where a few of us built things at night, and where the guy who was annoyed about the sign out front still came by to use the equipment because that is how the scene worked back then. Nobody had everything. Everybody had one thing. You lent your one thing out.

That is the piece of it I would want a kid reading this to take away. The shop mattered because of what came out of the back room, and because of who was allowed in it.

Where the public record runs thin

Almost nothing about Power Plus Cycles was ever written down anywhere public. No magazine ad I can point to, no shop-team results page, no directory listing that has survived. That is normal for a small shop of that era, and it means this chapter rests on my own memory.

Specifically, these are open:

The opening year. I have said 1986. I have also said plainly that I may be off on the year. Public accounts of when La Palma Cycle Center closed do not agree with each other, and I am not going to pick one to make my own date look better. The two-week gap between La Palma closing and Power Plus opening is the fact I will stand on.

The ownership structure. Whether the shop was filed as a sole proprietorship, a partnership, or something else, and who else was named on it, is not documented anywhere I can cite.

The address. I have not confirmed a street address, and I am not going to guess at one.

The closing date. Unknown. I do not have a month or a year I can back up.

If you have a photo, a receipt, a business card, or a shop jersey from Power Plus Cycles, we want to see it.

Where Power Plus Cycles fits in the bigger story

This shop sits right at the hinge between the two halves of my working life. Behind it is the bike-shop era — La Palma Cycle Center, Turnell Henry, Tommy Brackens, Kevin Hull, and the shipping desk at SE Racing where Rob Lynch taught me the paperwork. Ahead of it is everything I built after: TECH BMX Pants growing past the bedroom it started in, the fabricators and welders I would spend the next thirty years working with including B&E, and eventually Supercross BMX. My own page is here. The bigger arc is in our History of BMX series.

Sources

Bill Ryan, primary-source testimony, September 2026 — direct recollection of opening Power Plus Cycles, the La Palma Cycle Center closure, the Rob Lynch name dispute, the heat press arrangement, and the TECH BMX Pants customer list. All quoted passages on this page are his.

Supporting context on the Peddlepower ownership chain (Steve Rink to Jeff Bottema, 1981–1983, to Rob Lynch from 1983) and on Power Racing Products and the Privateer frame comes from collector-community records and from other chapters in this library. Supporting context on La Palma Cycle Center and on Turnell Henry comes from published interviews and Hall of Fame material.

Notes on uncertainty. The 1986 opening date is recollection, not documentation, and Bill Ryan has said himself that he may be off on the year. The two-week gap between La Palma Cycle Center closing and Power Plus Cycles opening is the reliable detail and is stated as such. Published dates for Bill Ryan's time at La Palma Cycle Center vary between accounts and have not been reconciled here. La Palma Cycle Center was owned by Turnell "Tuni" Henry and Richard Schaeffer; Bill Ryan was an employee there and not a partner, and any source suggesting otherwise conflicts with his own account. The legal ownership structure, street address, and closing date of Power Plus Cycles are unconfirmed. Corrections and primary materials are welcome.