Scott Thayer Civia General Manager

My interest in cycling started in grade school when my dad made me an offer I couldn't refuse. He said that if I rode the Blossomtime Metric Century with him, he would buy me a nice bike. Well, I suffered through 62 miles on my Sears Special and shortly after was the proud owner of a new Specialized Sirrus road bike. As fate would have it, about six years later, I became the local bike club president and ride director for the event that got me started in cycling.

From there, my high school friends got me into mountain biking. I spent my high school and college years mountain biking, building trails near home, road biking, and racing my mountain bike nearly every weekend from April through September. During my junior year in college, I raced every weekend against my roommate, Marty. We went back and forth beating each other. By the end of the season, we'd raced head-to-head 10 times, each prevailing over the other five times. Coincidentally, Marty moved to Minnesota shortly after I did and is now the photographer at QBP and takes the majority of the images featured on Civia's website and in our print materials.

Throughout college, I worked at a couple bike shops doing repairs and sales. It was there I realized I wanted a career in the bike industry. During my senior year, I began pestering the HR department at QBP. My persistence paid off. They offered me a position that began one week after graduation. I started in an accounting role and moved from there into purchasing. When QBP decided to launch a new brand dedicated to commuting and transportation, I knew I wanted to be a part of it. I was excited about melding the skills from my newly obtained MBA with my passion for bikes as transportation. I've been with Civia since day one—before it even had a name—back when we referred to it as “the commuting brand.”

In the past few years, I figure I've logged about 20,000 miles commuting back and forth between home and work. It's a 30-mile round trip and my annual commuting mileage varies from around 2,500 on the low end to 4,000 on the high end. I'm still getting out and road riding and mountain biking, though the majority of my miles are spent getting to and from where I need to be. The beauty of cycling is that it transforms the task of getting from point A to point B into an experience that is often the highlight of your day.