Alter Ego

Unit B1 at 44335 Yale Road puts Alter Ego in Chilliwack West, on the strip north of Highway 1 that holds the Eagle Landing retail center and the Village West industrial area. Yale Road runs west out of the downtown to reach it, so the shop is approachable without touching the Vedder Road corridor at all. It is an unusual part of the city to live in and a busy one to trade in. Barely 2,500 people live in Chilliwack West, most of them in cul-de-sacs and small subdivisions up the side of Chilliwack Mountain, and the commercial activity out there exists for the highway rather than for the neighbors.

Most of the trade sits along Vedder Road and in the downtown, so a Yale Road address is off the usual circuit. The listing publishes a website, alteregobikes.com, and no phone number, which makes the site the first place to look for what the shop handles and how it takes work in. Whether a business of this kind leans toward sales or toward the workshop is the other thing to establish, since the two rarely sit in equal measure. Service queues lengthen everywhere through the warm half of the year, so sorting out timing beats loading a bike into the car and hoping.