This spring, the Daily Inter Lake partnered with Kalispell Public Schools on Civic Voices, a news literacy course teaching Kalispell Middle School eighth graders the fundamentals of journalism. This August, six of those students returned as rising freshmen for a Storytelling Bootcamp, where they built on that foundation with hands-on interviewing and profile writing, telling the stories of six people shaping the Kalispell community.
In this episode, student Serena Carlson interviews Hans Axelsen, owner of Wheaton's Cycle, a Kalispell bike shop with a 108-year history. Axelsen talks about starting as a shop mechanic at 15 and working his way to ownership, why he left Colorado's Front Range for Montana as Denver's growth ate into his time to snowboard, and the eleven-mile bike commute he rode into work for years, winter included. He also breaks down the least glamorous part of running a bike shop: keeping inventory accurate across a quarter million parts.
Serena's full written profile of Axelsen appears in the Daily Inter Lake on September 9.
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