NEW ORLEANS -- Fernand Lapeyre had no interest in the bicycle business until he ran into repair problems with his granddaughter's multi-speed bike.
That was seven years ago.
On Monday, the 70-year-old New Orleans native travels to Atlanta to introduce the product of those seven years -- a new foot-shift transmission he says converts bicycles back to the rugged and reliable machines they used to be.
'The bicycle is basically too efficient a machine to let it get bogged down in repair shops,' Lapeyre said.
He said the derailleur shifting system, which became the bike rage of the 1960s, presented a repair challenge for even a graduate engineer like himself. Its delicate controls and cables required frequent adjustment.
'They sentenced bicycles to repair shops by making them so complicated,' he said. 'We used to repair our own. Now a lot of people get so frustrated they just give up on their bikes. That's a pity.'
He said his new Kik-Shift transmission, to be installed as standard equipment on a new line of bikes, will make bicycles safer in the snarl of modern traffic.
'We've put the shifting controls in the foot pedal so that the rider can keep his eyes of the road and both hands on the handlebar while shifting gears,' he said. 'That's where they belong.'
Lapeyre has built his transmission of metal alloy and enclosed it entirely in that material to make it more durable than exposed derailleur systems. And he pronounced his system much easier to maintain than traditional shifting devices: all it takes, he says, is a few drops of oil.
The 1932 Tulane University graduate is a member of an inventive family that holds more than 100 patents.
Lapeyre inventions range from an automatic shrimp peeler that revolutionized the Louisiana seafood industry to Digicourse, a marine magnetic compass system that has been used in America's Cup races.
