Not many roll out a Bentonville welcome mat quite like Jeremy Rose, owner of The Bike Inn located on the Rainbow Curve of South Walton Boulevard. He is a beginner’s guide to Northwest Arkansas, in the flesh, and single-handedly responsible for introducing my husband and I to some of our favorite community events, trail systems, and paddling spots. Rose’s approach to hospitality, as both a guide and motel owner, is expressed much like duty, which is spectacularly on brand for a Marine.
Originally from a small town outside of St. Louis, Missouri, Rose joined the Marine Corps in August of 1999. “My home life kind of fell apart,” he explained. “Graduation day was the day I left. A friend of mine had signed up to join the Marines in Oklahoma City, so I drove down there and ended up signing up with him.”
Following boot camp in San Diego, and electronics school in Twentynine Palms, California, Rose was stationed in Hawaii between 2000 and 2005. Serendipitously, I reached out to request an interview on September 11th, to which Rose responded, “Nice timing!” During our chat, he recalled how the events of that tragic day changed the trajectory of his military career.
“9-11 hit when I was corporal in Hawaii,” he shared. “Prior to 2001, there wasn’t much going on. The military was kind of a normal job, then everything shifted.” Instead of going to college and becoming an officer, Rose completed a specialized program to support signals intelligence. “I was responsible for maintaining and repairing the equipment our intelligence guys used to spy on the bad guys.”
His unit was the first to reach the Kuwait and Iraq border in 2003, which Rose joined the following year for a nine month deployment. “We flew into Kuwait and drove to Al Asad Airbase in Northwestern Iraq. We did 80 convoys at that time,” he explained.
Throughout his time as an active duty Marine, Rose shares about his time at Camp Edinburg - his most dangerous and challenging assignment - with fondness. “It was a British and Scottish base with a small Marine Corps detachment in the Helmand Province of Afghanistan,” he said. “It was extremely dangerous, and the worst conditions I’ve ever lived in, but the best guys I’ve ever worked with.”
What he charmingly describes as, “crappy summer camp,” Rose’s unit slept on cots in tents, with too few showers, without fresh food, for six months. “You’re sweaty, it’s hot. We were eating only MREs for six months, and you went to the bathroom in WAG bags. But it was the best deployment I ever had. We were doing real missions with real lives on the line.”
It would be easy to confuse Rose’s time as a Marine with the civilian career that followed. “I got out in 2007 and immediately returned to Iraq and Afghanistan doing contract work for SAIC out of Charleston, South Carolina,” he said. “I didn’t come back to the States for two years.”
Rose later took a contract for a company in Baghdad doing communications testing, and between 2010 and 2015, he flew surveillance drones for a small company owned by Bowing out of Hood River, Oregon. “During that time, I spent 70 months deployed to combat zones.”
It was in Oregon where Rose got his first real taste for the outdoor recreation industry. As a Marine, the bar for physical endurance and mental fortitude is set pretty high. Naturally, Rose gravitated to high-intensity athletics like rugby and enduro racing, which brought him to Bentonville, Arkansas. “I came here in 2019 for an enduro race and I was blown away by the community,” he said. “I’ve done enduro racing in the Pacific Northwest, but it was dramatically different here.”
As fate would have it, 2020 presented Rose with a unique set of circumstances, which inspired a move to Bentonville. “This is the coolest community I've ever lived in, anywhere. Hands down. Nothing even comes close.” He arrived in Bentonville around Thanksgiving 2020 and by February, was signing a creative purchase agreement for what is now The Bike Inn.
“I couldn’t believe there was a motel for sale on Walton Boulevard in 2020. I knew instantly what I wanted to call it,” Rose said. Jeff and Randy Roth of Homes by Roth had purchased the historic Pines Motel in 2017 because they didn’t want to see it torn down.
Following a walkthrough and some time to sit on shared ideas for the property, the Roths approached Rose with a unique financing opportunity. “They carried our loan for the first year, interest only,” Rose said. “We handled the design and layout, and spent our savings on the remodel, which gave us time to try to refinance with traditional lending.”
On September 16th, 2021, The Bike Inn opened with an updated facade and boutique-style units equipped with bike racks, coffee bars, and neon signs glowing with the slogan, “Bike, Sleep, Repeat.” Rose also added a community gathering space, which now includes a fire pit, hot tub, cold plunge, sauna, and gazebo, flanked by adorably cozy glamping cabins, a small bike shop, and van camping sites.
As a nod to its neon-loving community and the historic Rainbow Curve on which it sits, every room at The Bike Inn features a different colored neon “Bike, Sleep, Repeat” light, “so when they’re lit up at night, it makes a rainbow.” Clever.
But there’s another sign worth celebrating on site. In order to comply with city regulations and keep the original 1951 Pines Motel sign, along with its neon functionality, Rose had the sign designated as art with the help of Mike Abb with Oz Art.
According to Rose, his tireless work ethic, community dedication, and boots-on-the-ground marketing style are absolutely attributed to his life as a Marine. “I’m a very community driven person,” he said. “The biking community here is as close and as cool as my military community.”
Four years later, Rose is still using The Bike Inn brand to bolster community events while guiding tourist engagement with the help of his Freedom Shuttle - an unquestionably patriotic school bus, which matches The Bike Inn logo and pulls a custom Gnargo trailer built to haul up to 14 bikes and ten kayaks.
“I love taking couples on bike tours,” he said. “Every mile you see two to three people you know and they pick up on that. We have a world class city in a town of 60 thousand people.”
Rose’s military and entrepreneurial lives converge each year on Veterans Day when 15 to 20 of his Marine buddies travel to Bentonville to take over The Bike Inn. “When I think about my military career, I think about my time in Hawaii,” he said. “I would have been in college during those years when you make friends that last a lifetime; put hardship on top of that and those bonds really sink in. Every Veterans Day, we take over the motel. We do a day of bikes, a day on the river, and a day hanging out.”
Rose also claims military life made the road to entrepreneurship much less intimidating. “When you go through hard things on a regular basis, it makes hard things later in life easier.” It is with this sentiment that he encourages other veterans to consider starting their own businesses. “You have the tools to do it. You have the ability. Take a leap. Everything in life worth having is worth working for.”
What’s next for Rose and The Bike Inn? In addition to playing a more influential role with local tourism and recreation leadership, Rose aims to have the contract for his second Bike Inn property by the end of the year.
This is the coolest community I've ever lived in. Nothing comes close.
Everything in life worth having is worth working for.