Every bike tells a story: Inside Goodday Bikeworks and Curiosity Bags

On the evening of Aug. 4, Chris Besnia set out on his fifth attempt at the Colorado Trail Race, an Independent Time Trial start on the 515-mile route from Denver to Durango on a bike he built himself. He scratched the next day due to heat-related conditions. It’s the kind of unsupported, backcountry test his bikes are built for, and building them is the family business.

Besnia and his partner, Arly Landry, run Goodday Bikeworks, the Gunnison studio behind Goodday Bikes and Curiosity Bags. Chris hand-builds custom frames, and Landry designs and builds the integrated bags that go with them. Together they turn out bikes that are both serious backcountry gear and, in Landry’s words, “a work of art.” Every one they build starts with a story.

The two met in a Salt Lake City bike shop in August 2011, when Landry stopped in for a repair on her way to work. “Chris fixed my bike while we chatted and found out we both loved biking as well as backcountry skiing,” she said. They exchanged numbers, he called the next day, and “the rest is history.”

By 2018, Landry had spent years in the nonprofit sector and was ready for a change, something more creative and her own. Besnia had trained as a framebuilder; Landry had cycled through bikepacking bags she found lacking. “I thought I could make something better,” she said. They launched a Kickstarter campaign with five bikes and about 50 bags, working out of their kitchen and garage.  

An opportunity to return to Landry’s hometown of Gunnison in early 2020 arose just as the pandemic hit. Drawn by family support, an established bikepacking culture and 700 miles of surrounding public land, they decided to make the move amid the tumult of the time. They drove in with a U-Haul May 1 and opened June 4, 2020. 

What they build now is entirely custom, and Besnia is emphatic about why that matters. No two riders the same height fit a bike the same way, he said, while stock bikes come in small, medium or large. A custom frame is built from 10 measurements taken directly from the client. “If someone experiences a sore neck, knee pain, hand numbness or other ailments, these things can be reduced or eliminated through a properly fitting bike,” he said. 

The process starts with a $1,000 down payment and a three-to-nine-month wait, followed by a consultation on riding goals and the story it will tell. Complete builds start at $3,500, and Goodday offers payment plans. “This isn’t just a piece of gear, it is a work of art,” Landry said. From there it’s 80-120 hours of shaping and welding before a frame is finished, powder coated or anodized. Landry then builds their matching and intricate bags, which are bolted directly to the frame rather than strapped on.

The finished work carries its own story. In Salt Lake City, the couple relied on a seasoned powder coater, but when they moved to Gunnison, it quickly became clear that outside coating would become a production bottleneck. So Besnia taught himself: he built a custom oven and paint booth and bought a powder gun and compressor, refining the process through months of trial and error. The shop’s basic model is a single color, but Goodday is known for elaborate paint jobs with masking, graphics, fades and mesmerizing topcoats. “Chris has pushed the artistry of powdercoating more than anyone in the custom frame building industry,” Landry said.

One of Besnia’s most celebrated innovations, the Spacer Cradle, shows that same drive to keep refining the craft. The front rack replaces the spacers on a bike’s steer tube, functioning like a second stem: it frees up handlebar space for other gear, lowers the load’s center of gravity and protects the brake and shifting cables. The design has sold 500 units worldwide, enough that Landry said the couple could sustain a business on it alone. But because custom bikes remain the priority, it goes up for presale just once a year.

A couple of years ago, the two chose to specialize. “We realized that we were letting our customers decide what our business was, and we weren’t making what we wanted to make,” Landry said. Curiosity Bags became exclusive to Goodday-built bikes, freeing Landry’s limited capacity for their proudest builds. Doing business from a small mountain town adds its own math: slow shipping, scarce supplies and thin skilled labor, on top of a business born into COVID-19 and its aftershocks. “We don’t actually know what it’s like to operate a business under stable circumstances,” Landry said. 

Even so, the shop has built a real community for area cyclists. Since 2020, they’ve run the Gravel Club, Sunday dirt-road rides, and this spring helped 40 volunteers build an earthen wall outside the shop, a natural-building project meant to beautify the space and teach neighbors how to build with earth and local materials. 

Looking ahead, the shop opens Spacer Cradle preorders Sept. 1. Custom bikes are booking into January, and more rides and bikepacking trips are planned. By next summer, the couple hope to add a rental fleet so newcomers can try bikepacking, or what the couple call “The Goodday Difference,” without a custom build.

For the couple, that difference comes down to what a commission actually is. “When someone commissions a custom bike, it isn’t just another transaction,” Landry said. “It is a deeply intimate process, in which you have a hand in helping create a one-of-a-kind bespoke piece of gear that you will have for years to come, and will probably pass on to your children. It will fit you perfectly, it will last forever, and it will maximize your enjoyment of cycling.” 

Goodday Bikeworks is based in Gunnison. More information, including Spacer Cradle preorders and the Gravel Club ride schedule, is available at GooddayCuriosity.com.