Ian Klepetar

By Dave Kraus

Age: 45
Hometown: Saratoga Springs
Family: Parents; three siblings; partner, Montana
Sports: Backcountry/Free Skiing, Climbing, Running, Road/Mountain Biking, Triathlons
Occupations: Full-time Bicycle Advocate with Bicycle Benefits
Hobbies: Assembling jigsaw puzzles on top of mountains

“I understand that I’m not the traditional athlete,” says Ian Klepetar in an email about his interview for this story.

And he’s right. Ian’s upbringing near Saratoga Springs included some kids team sports including Little League baseball and youth soccer. But by his senior year in high school his outdoor upbringing and pursuits had turned him on to mountain biking, skiing, and the outdoors. 

His father took Ian and his three siblings on hikes and multiday canoe trips in the Adirondacks. But the local turf near his family’s home north of Saratoga also offered the perfect playground for a youngster loving the outdoors.

“We grew up in a rural area, so we always had the benefits of natural space right out the front door,” he remembers. “We used to live on a mountainside, so in our early teens we were already jumping off cliffs with our skis on. It’s rocky back there and there’s a lot to play on and lots to get hurt on and we liked that. Any way I could move through space outside was my mental therapy.”

Other circumstances helped shape the course of his outdoor future. In high school he worked at a local alpine sports shop three days a week where free skiing was part of the pay and another chance to fuel his love of the outdoors.

Today Ian calls himself an “athlete by default,” continuing his outdoor athletic life. “I’ve chosen to live a car-free lifestyle, so I try to engage and interact with the surroundings I have available to me nearby. My ability to run a marathon or ride a century is not through training, it’s though my commitment not to drive a motorized vehicle.”

Ian is also an avid short and long-distance runner whose endurance achievements have included running from Boston to Portland, Maine, across Vermont, and from Seattle to Portland, Ore. He’s also gotten into competitive cycling at different times, doing mountain and road bike races, a few triathlons, and riding whenever he can on “whatever bike I can get my hands on.”

The hiking bug has also continued to bite him long after those childhood outings with his dad. Today he combines hiking with what he calls “adventure puzzling” to indulge in his jigsaw puzzle hobby. He carries a table and puzzle with him to a mountain top and tries to complete the puzzle before it gets dark. He admits he gets a kick out of encountering other hikers who aren’t quite sure what to make of him. “They get on top and you’re casually sitting up there with a cup of coffee working on a puzzle and you invite them to put a few pieces in. It’s my kind of summit!”

His bicycle and his feet take him almost everywhere he wants to go, and he also loves climbing, claiming “I climb anything.” That includes the old water tower he purchased in Baldwin, Maine, in the fall of 2020 where he goes to practice his climbing skills. He and his partner Montana and their friends have dubbed it the “People’s Perch” and are working to turn the 120-foot landmark near Portland into a community hub with a garden, pay-it-forward cafe, seasonal farm stand, and the largest jigsaw puzzle collection in the world: peoplesperch.org.

Ian’s quest for education and the outdoors led him to attend college in Montana, then “bounce around for a little while” as he calls it. During his travels, he witnessed both a cyclist and a pedestrian being hit by drivers. The young cyclist was killed, and the severely injured pedestrian was in a crosswalk. The two incidents left a lasting mark on him and ended up shaping his professional life as well. 

“It still makes me emotional thinking about it,” he remembers. “I couldn’t grasp how we can just get in our vehicles and carelessly take another life. When you have that experience, the way you start looking at vehicles changes dramatically.” His voice breaks as he finishes speaking. He pauses for a moment, then continues. “From that day on my path was kind of set for me. I started working to do what I could to change that. Maybe it was being in the wrong place at the right time. Once you experience that… For me it changed everything. I knew I had to do something.”

In 2005 he got the opportunity to act on his passion while visiting his parents. He read about a local pedestrian hit and killed by a driver on NY Route 50 in Saratoga Springs and remembers how the media stories absolved the driver of any responsibility for what happened. “They were putting that person at fault for using their legs!”

For Ian, that was the final straw. He put up notices around the area and reserved a room at the Saratoga Springs Public Library to host a meeting to find others interested in trying to help. At first, he says, just he and his friend Eamon were there, and he thought they were the only two who cared. Then others began to arrive, and they formed the Saratoga Healthy Transportation Network, now known as Bikeatoga. Since then, the organization has contributed in many ways to cycling in Saratoga Springs, including supporting development of bike lanes and paths, and starting the Bikeatoga Workshop – a volunteer-run bicycle recycling program designed to repair used bikes and get them back on the streets. Ian himself also started Bikeatoga’s “Slow Roll” bike rides when he was in town visiting his parents during the 2020 pandemic. During the pandemic he also ran a service in Saratoga to deliver jigsaw puzzles on his bike to residents to help brighten up their Covid isolation.

Immediately after starting the Bikeatoga group in 2005, Ian worked to write a bike master plan for the city and lobbied to implement Complete Streets standards to create infrastructure that encourages non-motorized transportation. But dealing with politics and bureaucracy was frustrating. The master plan produced few tangible results from the city and the complete streets recommendations were sent to a committee that ended up producing a report that did little to help in Ian’s opinion. In 2007 he decided he’d had enough, left Saratoga Springs, and started what he calls his “bike tour that lasted for 15 years” that started with a two-year stint teaching English in Ushuaia, Argentina.

But that first experience in Saratoga taught him some valuable lessons about enlisting local support for community improvement projects. “It’s important to get the support from the business community and for them to see the benefits of affiliating themselves with pro-cycling projects and people. There’s this idea that people look at cars and think ‘that means business.’ But cars can’t shop. People do.”

Even before he left Bikeatoga, Ian acted on that experience by starting Bicycle Benefits, a program he could spread nationally that would help integrate community action, safe cycling, and local businesses around the country: bicyclebenefits.org. When he returned to the US, a friend helped him create a website, and within a year he had over 100 businesses participating. Today the program includes over 2,300 businesses across the country with a smartphone app added to help participants find and patronize member businesses. 

For the program, individuals and organizations reach out to local businesses, where owners purchase the Bicycle Benefits helmet stickers for $2.50 each, then resell them to individuals for $5. They then offer discounts or other special perks to customers who show their Bicycle Benefits helmet sticker. For individuals, participation is simple – buy a sticker, put it on your helmet, then reap the rewards shopping at member businesses. Requiring the stickers to be on helmets also encourages helmet use for cycling safety.

Ian says that while the program has yet to take off in the Capital Region (Saratoga Springs has 33 businesses signed up), it has made major impacts in cities such as Charlotte, N.C. (247 member businesses) and Madison, Wisc. (182 members). The program has been very effective, especially in communities where a “critical mass” of businesses have signed on, he says, citing the example of a grocery store in Madison that hands out $100,000 in discounts annually, which equates to customers spending over $2 million at the store. (Update: Bicycle Benefits is being relaunched this spring by Bikeatoga in Saratoga Springs.)

Ian’s latest project for Bicycle Benefits is “Bike Bingo” to help support local business members. During each four-to-six-week Bike Bingo “game,” individuals get a card and get “Bingo” by getting it stamped each time they visit one of the local member businesses or events listed on the front. Member businesses are encouraged to popularize the game by giving out small prizes for a completed row or blacked out card.

Ian says the game is intended to be “a celebration of your city by bike” and has received a lot of positive feedback from both game players and business members. Another recent project of his has been becoming a published children’s book author, with two books in the works and several titles already for sale on Amazon including “Where Do Missing Socks Go?” for two-to-six-year-olds and “Limitless: Unearth Your Superhero Self,” a book that encourages young readers to take action and move forward with various ideas that will help inspire positive growth in their personal lives and in their own neighborhoods.

Ian says he’s looking forward to doing more in the future, both outdoors and to help the communities he lives and works in whatever way he can.

“I’d love to change the world, but I have to celebrate my victories on a small scale.”

Dave Kraus (dbkgrafik@gmail.com) is a longtime area road and gravel cyclist, photographer, and writer who is looking forward to another season of vainly trying to keep up with friends on a variety of rides. Visit: krausgrafik.com.