Bespoke Tours: Ryan Fogle & Ride OKC

Between raising their toddler, Finn, and running two growing businesses, Ryan Fogle and his wife Ashley have their hands full. When the former is not working on historical preservation and urban design through his architecture firm, Goldy Architecture, he and Ashley are busy meeting the growing demand for bike tours in Oklahoma City with their company, Ride OKC.  

Ride OKC is the number one outdoor attraction on Tripadvisor in Oklahoma City, and Ryan has hosted tourists from as far away as Thailand and the Netherlands. Ride OKC’s two most popular tours include an architectural bike tour that visits 23 sites in downtown and a Bikes and Brew excursion that visits five breweries with tastings and a behind-the-scenes look at how beer is made. It’s a rewarding side gig for this entrepreneur committed to preserving and sharing Oklahoma City’s history.

Tell us a little about your background and professorial journey?

I grew up in Nicoma Park, Oklahoma, with my two sisters. My mom was a registered nurse and my dad was a firefighter and semi-professional motorcycle racer. I spent a lot of time with my great-grandma Goldy.   

She saw my love for building things and told me I would grow up to be an architect, and I did it. Before going out on my own, I had the opportunity to work with a few great architecture firms in the city, and found that one of my passions is working on stadiums.  I had the opportunity when working with local firm Populous to be the on-site architect at the University of Oklahoma for the south endzone expansion at The Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium — which I still consider one of my highlights to date. In 2016, I made the decision to start my own architecture firm and named it Goldy Architecture, after my great-grandma. Goldy focuses on modern urban design and historic preservation.

How did you come up with the idea for Ride OKC?

I have been riding bikes my whole life, but the idea of taking something I love and connecting it with tourism never crossed my mind. When I began dating Ashley, she would always talk about one of her favorite travel experiences being a bike tour in Paris. My mind immediately went to the Tour de France with athletes decked out in spandex; it wasn’t until she took me on our first bike tour in Vancouver that I understood what she was talking about. A local tour guide, passionate about their hometown, would essentially show us around on a leisurely bike ride and teach us about the history and architecture, while occasionally stopping at a restaurant or bar to try the local fare. Like any good traveler, we’d do our research before the trip trying to find the best spots to visit, but these bike tours almost always took us off the beaten path where the locals hang out, not to places found in travel books or blogs. Frequently the bike tour would become the best part of our trip. 

After returning from that first Vancouver bike tour, I was invited by the OKCMOA Moderns to lead an architecture bike tour. I was excited to lead it, but not expecting much of a turnout. To my surprise, almost 100 people turned out. It was so much fun combining my two passions: architecture and bicycles. 

This first tour included a few cyclists from Downtown OKC Partnership and Visit OKC that supported the idea of an OKC bike tour. Because the demand continued, in 2017 my wife and I made the decision to start OKC Ride. Our business began with a fleet of 10 bikes, a cargo trailer, a homemade website and some professional photos. We began popping up around town just like a food truck — and it just seemed to grow from there.

Tell us about the different tours Ride OKC offers.

Our flagship tour is the Art & Architecture Tour: It lasts two and a half hours, stops at 23 notable sites downtown and gives riders the opportunity to know the city on a much deeper level. 

Another popular tour we do is the Bikes & Brews Tour. It visits five breweries in five hours and includes beer tastings and an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour explaining the brewing process. This tour also stops at notable historical sites in between the breweries, so there’s something for everyone. 

We do team building and custom private tours that can include scavenger hunts, and food tours where you get to meet the business owners and chefs, like our Pizza Crawl, Street Taco Tour of Capitol Hill and a Cookie Tour of the best bakeries in town. 

Our seasonal tours include the Haunted Ghost Tour during October and our Holiday Lights Charity Ride in December. We also love teaming up with John Rex Middle School to help teach their urban cycling P.E. class. 

Our routes are all planned with safety in mind, including the avoidance of high-speed streets, riding parallel streetcar tracks and steep hills.

Congratulations on being ranked #1 on Tripadvisor for outdoor activities in Oklahoma City — where is the farthest someone has traveled from to take a bike tour with you?

Thank you!  It is a huge gift to ride bikes with people from all over the world. One example that still sticks out in my mind is a group of just-graduated high school seniors from South Korea, where it’s mandatory to serve in the military soon after graduation. This group of young men chose to visit Oklahoma City as their last big trip before boot camp. They said it was because, on TV, it appeared as though the Thunder had the rowdiest NBA basketball fans. 

Another memorable tour was with a large group of men from Copenhagen. They were traveling on Harley-Davidson motorcycles from NYC to Santa Monica via Route 66.  It wasn’t until halfway through the bike tour that I realized only half of them understood English and what I was saying.  

I know you love traveling; what has been your favorite bike tour location and what made it your favorite? 

Bangkok was my absolute favorite. My wife and I were in Thailand for our honeymoon and the only bike tour we could find was a night ride, which in hindsight made sense because of the large amount of daytime traffic in this city. It was an eight-hour bike tour! Turns out all the gold-encrusted temples bustling with tourists during the day are actually open at night, almost empty and free to attend. Our tour guide led us through a flower market, a food truck and down a dimly lit back alley to the window of a shanty where we were offered the Thai version of tequila and lime (mango, tequila, spiced salt rim and Red Bull, I think). 

A few minutes later, we were loading the bikes onto a barge and traveling across a river to be served a traditional Thai dinner at a family’s home as fireworks were bursting in the distance. After dinner, we rode past a new mega mall,only to hear Alicia Keys playing a concert at the grand opening. My wife and I love traveling off the beaten path and would never have had this type of adventure if it was not for the bike tour company.  It was truly unforgettable. 

What has been the biggest crossroad in your life?

Toward the end of my time working for a big corporate architecture firm, I was traveling across the country on a weekly basis. I loved traveling in my twenties, but I couldn’t see how I could maintain this lifestyle in the future as I began thinking about being a husband and father. In 2015 I decided to embark on a path that grounded my work in Oklahoma. I became the on-site architect at the Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium expansion, and that was the beginning of the next chapter in my life that included getting married, starting Ride OKC, building my own local architecture firm, Goldy, and becoming a father.

What should we expect to see from Ride OKC in the future?

We have our eyes set on adding a brick-and-mortar location. Also, our firsthand knowledge of biking in the city has provided us the opportunity to work with several civil engineering companies as a bicycle consultant. We are exploring starting a pilot program to chalk out bike lanes before they are painted and bringing our fleet of bikes so stakeholders can see what the design will look like and ride it before it’s built.

What is one habit you have adopted that has helped make you successful?

Never stop learning. Architecture is such a specialized field of study; I had some gaps in my knowledge base that needed to be filled in, especially when I decided to start a tour company. Oklahoma history and public art are something I have always been fascinated about. Spending time learning about subject matter you’re interested in is as simple as going to the library [or] the Oklahoma History Museum, or signing up for a graffiti class with a local artist in the Plaza District.

With the experience you have now, what advice would you give to your younger self?

Read more books. It’ll help you discover who you are and where you want your life to take you quicker.

What is one of your favorite life luxieres?

Travel. My wife and I are “ballers on a budget.” We may tend to have expensive tastes, but we know our limitations, so we bargain shop our flights like some people follow the stock market. We use a flight tracker for the most inexpensive international flights and then use airline miles to get to whichever departure city that is in the U.S. Even if it’s not where we want to end up, domestic flights in other countries are so much less that we know we can eventually get to our final destination, but with the bonus of an added stop or two to a new place we’ve never been. As a new parent, I am looking forward to maintaining our sense of adventure by traveling with our 18-month-old son, Finn. People more times than not say we’re crazy, that it won’t feel like a vacation taking a toddler, that he won’t remember. They’re probably right, but we will remember for him … plus, it will make for great stories, and that’s what life’s all about.

Photography by Jordan Mobley