We bought Heather's bike there. 2014. Hybrid cruiser — the kind you ride to the farmers market, kids in tow. Hannah was barely walking. We were still figuring out what kind of people we were going to be in this city.
Noble Street wasn't what it is now. The trail hadn't opened yet. The ribbon cutting was eleven years away. But Wig's Wheels was there, same address, same sign, Patrick behind the counter.
Trek dealer. Full service. The only real bike shop on the corridor.
Patrick Wigley was a U.S. Army medic stationed in Germany from 1990 to 1994. He had a triathlon coming up and no way to train for the bike leg. He rented a mountain bike.
That was it. That was the whole thing. A rented bike, one race, and he hasn't stopped since.
He came home from Germany, came back to Alabama, and started riding trails and advocating for cycling infrastructure around the same time most of us were still figuring out that Alabama had cycling infrastructure worth advocating for. That was 1995, roughly. A decade before Wig's Wheels existed.
He opened the shop in 2005. The Chief Ladiga Trail was still mostly a plan, a hope, a line on a grant application. Patrick put himself at 1229 Noble Street anyway — which tells you everything about how he reads a landscape.
We came back. The stroller needed a tune-up. The kids needed their first bikes. You end up in a shop like that over and over when you live two hundred feet from a greenway — because things break, because kids grow, because you have a flat at the wrong moment.
Patrick has been at that address since 2005. He was there before the trail, before the ribbon cutting, before Ciara Smith was mayor. He was there when Noble Street was mostly trying.
By the time the south extension opened in 2025 — four million dollars, fourteen miles connecting Anniston to Piedmont — the shop that had always been the trail's closest neighbor became its front door. Cyclists coming in from the corridor. Triathletes. Mountain bikers. Kids on first bikes. Road riders stopping in before the Weaver climb.
Patrick leads ARC and NEABA — the Anniston Runners Club, the Northeast Alabama Bicycle Association. When the south extension came with complications the press didn't handle gently — homeless encampments, dogs on the corridor — Patrick was the one at the community meetings, fielding it publicly, talking to reporters. Measured. Showing up.
I was living the same problem from the farm side. Two hundred feet from the trail. We navigated it differently. We were navigating the same thing.
He gave Mayor Smith a tour the June the extension opened. They rode past my farm. She called out my name when she recognized me. I was thirty feet from the trail, post hole digger in my hands, ratchet straps rigged up to lift the power pole. Patrick looked out at the pasture.
"It's looking good," he said. "You guys are cleaning it up."
Wig's Wheels. 1229 Noble Street. wigswheels.com. (256) 237-9447.
Road, mountain, triathlon, BMX. Sales, repair, maintenance. Whatever you need for the trail or just to get around this city.
He opened the shop before the trail. He's still there.
Related: Chief Ladiga Trail · Noble Street, Anniston
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