SUGAR HILL — Someone made a big mistake.

A presumed loyal customer walks into Sugar Hill’s Southern Cycle on a sweltering Thursday afternoon, visiting the 35-year-old Harley Davidson institution with a concern about this part or that modification.

He realizes his error immediately upon entering the store, individual motorcycle parts masochistically hung from the walls and ceiling around him.

“Crap,” the man, somewhere in his 40s, says, “I forgot what shirt I was wearing.”

The shirt, green and old, is one from a local rival bike shop.

No worry, says John Cheek, the shop’s owner. He proposes a deal.

“You give me that shirt to use for a new doormat,” he says, “and I’ll give you one of ours for a real good price.”

It’s done. The guest strips down right there, and the shirt finds its rightful place near the front door.

‘Overly committed’

Cheek, growing up in Decatur, got hooked on hogs at a very early age.

“One day my uncle came over on a little Honda 305 Dream,” says Cheek, now 62. “I was probably 8 years old, and the next year I got a little mini bike, scooter-type thing.”

He’s had some sort of motorcycle for the 53 years since.

For the last 35 of those, he’s run Southern Cycle at its location on Nelson Brogdon Road, tinkering with other people’s motorcycles and priding himself on top-notch service, parts, accessories and bike building.

“It started out just toying around with other people’s motorcycles, and always working on my own,” Cheek said. “It just evolved from a hobby into whatever the business is today.”

What the business has become is a tireless squad of workers who replace countless tires, add on numberless customizations and build a handful of bikes from the ground up each year.

It’s one that Cheek says takes pride in doing it the right way, and does so with a willingness to work on, well, anything.

“Hopefully having been in the same location for 30-plus years, that’s had some influence on it,” Cheek said. “But I think a big part of our forte is that we work on anything, from the early models from the ’30s, all the way up to current year.”

“A lot of franchises, they cut it off at 10 years to current,” he added with a wink. “And we appreciate their doing that.”

John Humphrey, a reserved but congenial technician and shop foreman, has been in the business for more than 30 years, including four at the Sugar Hill shop, where he used to be a loyal customer.

“It’s a lot of hard work,” said Humphrey, part of Southern Cycle’s always-busy four-man crew.

The secret for success, like so many small businesses, is no secret at all, Cheek says. It’s hard work that keeps Southern Cycle revving its engines while a handful of Harley shops open and close in Gwinnett each year.

“There’s no secret,” Cheek said. “You just have to be overly committed, and refuse to fail.”

“Now it’s six days (a week) and 10, 12 hour days. Before it was a lot of 12-18 hours days. Whatever you had to do to pay the bills, get your head above water. We make a profit, but it’s nothing anybody’s going to retire on.”

Added Humphrey: “You better just love your work, I know that.”

‘Something you’ve got to like to do’

Back in the shop, the ill-dressed but good-natured customer has gone. Cheek now sits in his humble office, scouring the web for deals on catamarans, a new passion he’s likely to be able to pursue in the coming years.

By his own account, the expansion of Ga. Highway 20 was supposed to have his shop out of there about three years ago. Cheek now figures the road widening will put him out of business by 2016 or so.

He figures he’ll help move his shop “somewhere up around Highway 64 near Hiawassee.”

Then he’ll be out.

He wants to pursue sailing, but it won’t replace the passion he’s carried throughout his life.

Asked what his favorite motorcycle is, Cheek has an answer ready immediately.

It’s not the ’65 panhead, or the ’71 Super Glide, both collector’s bikes displayed in his shop.

It’s simply, “one that I’m sitting on, going about 60 through the mountains.”